project 12/

TREATMENT WITH MEMORIES

N. Selikhova, Pensioner, Moscow

Medicine knows very well that treatment is difficult of elderly patients. those confined to bed, especially if the disease is accompanied by pain. As a rule, this state is usually accompanied by a worsening state of the spirit, by thoughts of old age, and if the patient is rarely visited by relatives, which happens rather often, then everything taken together leads to constant depression and the deterioration of the state of health that is already poor.

A maneuver that would distract, take the patient far away from the sad and painful reality would be extremely desirable in these cases, and under some circumstances, it is simply obligatory.

Such a means could be served by the making of a slide-film at home.

The relatives and close friends of the patient, and if there aren't any, then anyone from among the medical personnel, can order black-and-while slides with photographs from the patient's family album: pictures of him in his youth, during trips, on vacation, "sitting around" with relatives, children, etc. The more slides in such a program, the better. The bed with the patient is moved to a separate ward, curtains veil the windows (but not so that it is completely dark), and the slide-film is projected on the white wall of the ward opposite the lying patient. It is desirable to show the photographs in chronologi- cal order. Decisively important in this method is the temporal interval between the slides. It should be very "drawn out" - 10-12 seconds, no less. It is highly desirable that some rela- tive "dubs" commentaries for these photos so that a phonogram can be turned on at the same time. A slow changing of the slices, the semi-dark place will help the patient to be distracted and to submerge into a deep sleep.

TREATMENT WITH MEMORIES

1. Place a bed with sheets, a blanket and pillow at a distance of 180 cm from the wall of the "Palace of Projects" (the wall is of transparent plastic).

2. Place a night stand next to it with a carafe for water, place a small rug on the floor and hide everything with a white "medical" screen.

3. Prepare a slide program from a selection of family photo- graphs made into black-and-white slides (24-25 in all).

4. Accompany each of them with "memories": who is on the pho- tograph, what is he doing now, point out some funny detail.

Record this commentary with a tape recorder.

5. Combine the slide program and the reading voice into a unified whole. The interval between the slides should be 3 seconds; each slide "stays" on the screen for 10-12 sec- onds.

6. Project the program on the same place on the wall made of transparent plastic* with two projectors: the first one projects onto the wall an empty white spot, the second one projects the slide program. The projection of the black- and-white slides on the bright spot will soften the sharpness of the slides and will create the effect that the faces and events are drifting from the "shining depths of the past."

* Understandably, since this is a project in the "Palace," the projection will take place from the external side of the wall.