Therapy for retirees
A recent article in the Washington Post featured residents of a nursing home in the Netherlands who are learning physical therapy from a 22-inch humanoid robot that can move, speak and dance.
The robot Zora “demonstrates different exercises which the residents try to mimic.”
The chief executive director of the nursing home, Tinie Kardol, says, “One resident hadn’t spoken for four months. The staff used the robot to address her by name and ask how she was doing.”
“I’m well,” she blurted out, surprising everyone in attendance. They then carried on a brief conversation.
Maybe she had nothing new to say in four months. After a while conversations between old people are robotic, and everyday routines become monotonous.
Traveling to a foreign country can break up the monotony of life. Ray and I were the only two Americans we saw in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, so we had to combine our Spanglish to navigate the grocery store, the bus station, and the menus in restaurants.
It was difficult to eat lunch at 3 p.m. and dinner at 9 even if you eat a bigger meal earlier in the day. We loved going to the corner patisserie for croissants and to the markets to buy manchego cheese. But we walked so much more than we normally do. The app on his phone said we averaged 16,000 steps a day.
While in Spain very few of the television channels were in Spanish so my husband and I spent many nights listening to music and drinking Rioja. (Five euros for a lovely vino tinto.) Our host had a CD player in the flat and we discovered Brazilian artist Marisa Monte and the CD “Ainda Bem.” I downloaded the song “O Que Voce Quer Saber de Verdade” on iTunes.
I asked my Brazilian friend Cris who lives in Rio de Janeiro to translate the song title. “Someone is wondering what the other one wants to know. The expression ‘de verdade’ means for real. Many people don’t ask what they really want to know.”
I hope robots don’t become a fixture in nursing homes. What we really want is people to talk to. We need people who listen to us even if we repeat ourselves.
Write to me at lgraff1979@gmail.com.
