Carme Noguera, a historic 110-year-old nurse: "I studied English and French until I was 105"
She is the last representative of the first class of nurses who graduated in Catalonia.
Barcelona"Don't talk to me in a formal manner, you make me feel old," Carme Noguera says ironically at the start of the interview. She is 110 years old, has a clear mind and a sharp sense of humour. At 19, she entered the Nursing School of the Republican Generalitat; she is the last of the first class of Catalan nurses to graduate almost a century ago, but she remembers everything clearly. She was working at the Hospital Clínic when the Civil War broke out and looked after civilians and soldiers in the centre's emergency room. She did so with historic doctors, such as Moisès Broggi and the brothers Joaquim and Antoni Trias i Pujol, although no hospital has been named after her. She is, however, the last survivor of that period of resistance in the streets and in the hospital: she is the oldest living person to have worked at the Clínic.
For most of the war, however, she devoted herself to caring for Barcelonans who fell ill with tuberculosis. In fact, she worked in a sanatorium that was set up for these patients in the Palace of the Counts of Fígols, on the Via Augusta, when the Nationalists entered the Catalan capital. According to the history of medicine magazine Gimbernat, Carme earned five pesetas a year, but when she talks about her profession it is clear that she did not do it for that little money. In fact, she firmly states that what she is most proud of after living 100 years is having been a good nurse, and she is very clear about what to do to excel in her job: "With a patient you have to be patient, you have to take care of him, you have to help him with whatever he needs. To be a good nurse, you have to be patient ...
After the war, she continued working at the Hospital Clínic for a few more years, until she returned to Olot with her family. But she did not leave her profession there; she continued visiting patients at home and women with children. They could not keep up until they opened a dispensary in the city and hired her to work. When she married her husband, Manel Solà, she left Olot for Vic and stopped working at the dispensary, since married women were forbidden to do so, but she continued working as a nurse in her own way. Since she was not allowed to work at the health centre, she went to neighbours' houses to give injections and work as a callus remover, a job she continued to do with three children in her care until the day she retired. Those around her recognise that she has always had an enviable energy.
"Until she was 105, she studied English and French. In 1995 she went on a cruise around the Baltic and in 1998, with her English class, she went to London. She didn't use her cane on the whole trip," her daughter Dolors Solà explains, laughing. Carme has had three children, two granddaughters and this week her first great-grandchild was born. "I'm very happy because they've made me a great-grandmother and because everything has gone well," she says from Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, where she has been admitted for seven weeks and undergoing rehabilitation due to a fall that has become complicated. However, nothing dampens Carme's spirits, who is already looking forward to returning to Taradell, where she and Dolors have lived since last August.
Before moving to Taradell, Carme lived in Vic on a second floor without a lift. Every day she was able to go up and down the stairs at 109 years old, to the surprise of all the doctors who look after her, for whom she only has good words. "They treat me like a queen," she says with a smile. In February last year she broke her femur in a fall, had an operation in Vall d'Hebron and everything went well. In fact, she was able to go up and down the stairs in her house by herself again. But last autumn her thigh was in pain due to an infection and, finally, at the beginning of the year she was admitted to the hospital again to have the affected area opened and cleaned. As it was not clean enough, says Dolors, at the end of January the plate in her femur was changed and now she is undergoing rehabilitation to recover from both operations and return home.
"I have never been ill nor have I needed anyone's help"
"I suffer because I can't do what I used to do. I've never been ill or needed anyone's help. Now I can't get up and leave, but if I could, I would," Carme admits. She is waiting for the last stitch from the last operation to close and hopes that next week will be her last week in hospital. The specific area for fragile trauma patients that exists at Vall d'Hebron has been key to her recovery. The head of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Service at the centre, Judith Sánchez Raya, explains that in this area there are professionals specialised in patients like Carme who need a different approach from other trauma patients.
"These are patients who can experience cognitive deterioration, who can become disorientated, and you must stimulate them a lot to prevent it," explains the expert, who warns that there will be a high percentage of the population over 90 years old who will break their femur. This is due to the progressive ageing of society, so it is important to have specialised units like this one to offer the best possible care to these people. For the time being, Carme will have to continue doing rehabilitation until her wound heals. At the end of the interview, she is taken away to begin exercises with the walker, but before that she tells the photographer and makes sure that everything is as she wishes: "Take a good picture of me, eh, I'm very vain." In August she will be 111 years old.
