Story Photos
 Bernie Mendoza of Skamokawa, a CNA at Columbia View Care Center in Cathlamet, wakes 103-year-old Mildred Pinsen. Greg Ebersole / The Daily News
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Tireless caregivers devote themselves to care for area's frailest residents
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 5:30 AM PST
By Cathy Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleCATHLAMET - It's 7 in the morning, the fog's got Cathlamet in a bear hug and Bernie Mendoza's on the move. The strapping nurse's assistant with a pony's plume of dark hair has been working since 6, and already she's roused four of her nine charges, washed and dressed them.
"Two had baths, one a bed-bath, the other a regular shower," she said, power-walking down her wing of the Columbia View Care Center, the sole nursing home in this rural riverside town.
Surely this place, home to 32 frail humans, should be a shrine to sleeping in.
But no. A wide-awake 103-year-old clutches her baby doll. A tiny woman they call "Rangoon" is searching for a doughnut. Housekeepers are mopping, aides are chirping "Good morning Lucille!" and Mout the cook is making biscuits and gravy.
Mout's worked here for 22 years; Bernie's been around for 14 and has no plans to quit.
Their jobs at Columbia View, which employs the second-most workers of any place in Wahkiakum Country, may be in jeopardy, however.
Last year, a state task force earmarked more than $8 million in state funds plus another $9 million in federal monies "solely to increase nursing home payment rates" in 2009. But the majority of the state's task force on long-term care have now recommended that the nursing homes receive half that amount, leaving the rest for "purposes unrelated to nursing homes."
Nursing homes with Medicaid patients can't make ends meet, can't pay their employees a living wage and end up with constant turnover that hurts patient care, said Duncan Cruickshank, administrator of Columbia View.
"Even our private-pay patients don't pay much more than Medicaid," said Cruickshank, a genial Scotsman who left a 225-bed facility in Bellevue to manage the Cathlamet nursing home, which is owned by Eagle Health Care.
Cruickshank is part of a grass-roots effort led by Justice for Nursing Home Workers that is urging the Legislature to stand by its earlier pledge.
On top of the potential loss of those funds, the town of Cathlamet is losing its resident physician, Cruickshank said. "This could be huge," he said. "People will be taken over by doctors at St. John," the hospital 35 miles away in Longview, who may not know about Columbia View or be able to follow through with patients who go there.
"We'll have to do a better job of knowing who is going to the hospital," Cruickshank said. "We need those referrals."
Nursing home care is a rugged business. Stingy reimbursements create budget stress. A November report by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid rating Evergreen Frontier Care in Longview among the worst in the state stings other facilities that have good ratings, as Columbia View does.
For work that's demanding and sometimes depressing, pay starts at minimum wage, or $8.03 an hour. Bernie, a 53-year-old CNA, makes $12.25, she said. "It takes you six months to get to know the people and get up to speed. After that, I think we should all make the same. Even graveyard is no cup of tea. ...
"The die-hards are here for the people. The ones who just need a paycheck don't last."
Cathlamet and Skamokawa are not far from the Longview-Kelso hub, but they can seem that way because of the highway that winds along the river and over hills to reach the smaller towns.
The area is close-knit, a place of rugged beauty, rich history and distinctive community endeavors.
Newcomers are drawn here; old-timers don't want to leave. Columbia View built a new rehabilitation facility on its ground floor that employs physical and occupational therapists who have moved to Lower Columbia towns from California and Portland.
Many workers upstairs, like Bernie Mendoza and Mout Jones, have a long tenure. Karen Voss, a dietitian, has consulted at the facility for 30 years. Carol Wegdahl has been social services director for more than 30 years, and Dixie Sanders has been a housekeeper for 22 years.
"It makes a huge difference" in the quality of care, Cruickshank said.
Bernie admires the 30-year Army colonel, gets chocolate milk for the resident who won't take her meds otherwise, and doesn't bat an eyelash when a woman down the hall screams "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!"
The caregiver takes off in her back brace, adjusting her white visor. "I wear this hat because it keeps the sweat out of my eyes," she says. "I gotta keep going. My trays will be coming out in 5 or 10 minutes."
After calming the wailing woman, Bernie rolls Mildred Pinsen to breakfast. She cared for this 103-year-old in the last place she worked, 15 years ago.
"Mildred's always been a morning person," Bernie says. In the Depression in Birmingham, Ala., Mildred picked cotton and washed floors, "anything to care for her kids."
Curly Cochran, Mildred's surviving son, visits his mother every day, Bernie says. That afternoon he shows up, a husky, limber man in his 80s who kneads "Mama's" shoulders and talks quietly to her.
That's another thing about Columbia View: It offers the community a place for its elders that is easily accessible to their families.
For Jack Linquist, it means his wife of 67 years, Coral, can be with him for several hours a day and sleep in the recliner next to him at night.
A World War II veteran, Linquist is on oxygen because of heart and lung ailments. Coral lives down the block, she says, "so I can come and go. We want to be together."
All through the day shift, workers change diapers, strip and make up beds, record residents' input and output, help each other operate lifts and turn patients confined to their beds.
Bernie stops to talk to Millie Kellogg, an 86-year-old woman who has battled cancer for years.
"I'm not afraid to pass away," Kellogg rasps to the caregiver. "I know I'm going. I'm at the right place at the right time."
"I know you are," Bernie says gently. "And I know Frank is waiting for you."
This prompts the gaunt, struggling woman to describe how she met her deceased husband and years as an airline pilot. Even as her eyelids drift down over huge blue eyes, words still whisper out.
From Kellogg's room, Bernie whizzes down the hall to take care of a male patient. This one, she confides, is extremely vulgar to the women on staff. "We go in together."
"It's part of his dementia," she explains. "They can get real sexual, but they never act on it ...
"I quit one time for about four hours," she said. "My husband said, 'That's OK. You don't have to work. But who's going to take care of your people?' "
Of course she went back.
"It would be devastating to lose this nursing home," said Bernie, who moved from California after she and her husband sold a dairy business. "I don't want to move to Longview. I'm very content to live here."
Nursing home workers around the state wrote letters that were bound in a book for Gov. Chris Gregoire and members of the Legislature. The hand-written notes make a plea for the total allotment that would help them serve clients better and get above the poverty line themselves.
Overwhelmingly, they're women. A few write in Russian or Cambodian with translations. All close with "respectfully," and "thank you for your time." One says, "My name is Marsha Williamson. I am cook assistant manager. I am writing more funding is needed for more help and money just to go to the doctor."
Another letter ends, "Please, Please, PLEASE HELP!" An on-paper version of the Columbia View patient who cries out.
Bernie Mendoza has no letter in the book, although she should.
"One day," she tells us, "I was brought to tears. We had the flu go through here, and I had cleaned up one woman six times. They called me and said she threw up again.
"I said, 'I need five minutes to myself. I have to go downstairs and get control.'
"They said go ahead. I went down there and cried --- you never want the residents to see you cry. Then I said to myself, 'You've done it six times. What's one more? You gotta go back up there' And I did."
Editor's note: Millie Kellogg passed away Friday, the day after this story was reported.
Hip-hip horray for CNA's wrote on Feb 26, 2008 6:37 AM:
somedude wrote on Feb 26, 2008 7:20 AM:
Aides - the heart of a home! wrote on Feb 26, 2008 7:25 AM:
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JB wrote on Feb 26, 2008 7:40 AM:
Great story wrote on Feb 26, 2008 7:44 AM:
Grey Squirrel wrote on Feb 26, 2008 8:42 AM:
CNA'S/Caregivers wrote on Feb 26, 2008 8:46 AM:
annie wrote on Feb 26, 2008 9:48 AM:
susie q wrote on Feb 26, 2008 11:10 AM:
Great Story wrote on Feb 26, 2008 6:18 PM:
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