A Day In the Life Of...

This afternoon I was telling a friend what happens at the nursing home where I work for three hour shifts. The lady I look after was a bit aggressive yesterday, and among other things, threw her breakfast at the nurse who was feeding her at the time, spat a mouthful of lunch at me, squeezed my hand until I thought my fingers would snap, and snatched something from my hand and threw it at me. Poor dear was having a bad day (this is not meant to be humorous by the way). Today, in complete contrast, she was very quiet and sleepy, ate most of her food instead of refusing it, and wanted me to cuddle her (which I did).

One of the male residents was having a very bad day. He sat with his eyes closed, and held a loud conversation with himself, most of which consisted of the F word and other choice language. We (the staff) were laughing some of the time but after a while it got a bit much, so we tried one by one to quieten him down, but he would have none of it. He finally stopped when he was being fed his lunch, and when I commented on the peace and quiet, my client looked at me and smiled! You never know just how much of their environment dementia-affected people take in.

Finally (and stupidly, I told Ken this at the tea table), one of the female residents who is always very quiet, was about to be given her lunch by one of the nurses, when she (the nurse) sniffed suspiciously. Put her hand under the resident and pulled it away with a yell of "Oh SHIT! Oh POOH!!" Yep, that's what it was. The rest of us absolutely cracked up!!!!