Working the majority of my life in health care has afforded me many unique, odd and very strange encounters.
One such encounter, as I recall, happened late one night in a particular nursing home with which I was not real familiar with. Now I should state here that I worked at the time, for an agency that had me traveling all over the city working at many different facilities. The money was great, however the main disadvantage was that you never got to know the patients.
I was sitting at the nursing station when the call light came on. As walked down the hall, a co-worker said to me, "that's Mrs. So-n-so, she probably just needs to use the bedside commode".
As I entered the private room and turned on the light, I could see the commode off to the side of the night stand which held held a phone, a vase of flowers, a glass of water containing a soaking pair of dentures and another large container that had the words "Salted Cashews" blazoned on the side.
I moved the commode in front of the night stand towards the top of the bed and I lowered the safety rails. I sat her up on the edge of the bed and applied the "gate belt" (a device that fits around the patients waist to assist in transferring). In one quick, smooth move I had transferred her from the bed and onto the commode. It should be noted here that up until this point the patient had not said a word, what needed to be done had only been (correctly) implied.
As I stood there off to the side trying to give her as much dignity as possible, I saw something catch her eye. There, on her bed was a large, fully intact cashew, right where her backside had been. With the speed of a young child, she had snatched it up and it was now heading straight for her mouth. Thankfully I was a bit quicker and I had managed to stop the cross contamination from taking place. She let out a very loud, indistinguishable verbal lashing as I tried to pry the unsavory nut from her hand while trying to calmly explain that I would be happy to get her another one from the can. The grip, fight and tenacity with which she still tried ingest the filthy nut was nothing less then astounding. However I was young and male, I had the advantage, her fingers slowly gave in, I had successfully removed what I now realized was NOT a cashew at all, it was the poor woman's hearing aid, which she was trying NOT to place in her mouth, but in her ear. I sheepishly returned it to her hand and apologized as she placed it in her ear.
Not all things are as they appear...
One such encounter, as I recall, happened late one night in a particular nursing home with which I was not real familiar with. Now I should state here that I worked at the time, for an agency that had me traveling all over the city working at many different facilities. The money was great, however the main disadvantage was that you never got to know the patients.
I was sitting at the nursing station when the call light came on. As walked down the hall, a co-worker said to me, "that's Mrs. So-n-so, she probably just needs to use the bedside commode".
As I entered the private room and turned on the light, I could see the commode off to the side of the night stand which held held a phone, a vase of flowers, a glass of water containing a soaking pair of dentures and another large container that had the words "Salted Cashews" blazoned on the side.
I moved the commode in front of the night stand towards the top of the bed and I lowered the safety rails. I sat her up on the edge of the bed and applied the "gate belt" (a device that fits around the patients waist to assist in transferring). In one quick, smooth move I had transferred her from the bed and onto the commode. It should be noted here that up until this point the patient had not said a word, what needed to be done had only been (correctly) implied.
As I stood there off to the side trying to give her as much dignity as possible, I saw something catch her eye. There, on her bed was a large, fully intact cashew, right where her backside had been. With the speed of a young child, she had snatched it up and it was now heading straight for her mouth. Thankfully I was a bit quicker and I had managed to stop the cross contamination from taking place. She let out a very loud, indistinguishable verbal lashing as I tried to pry the unsavory nut from her hand while trying to calmly explain that I would be happy to get her another one from the can. The grip, fight and tenacity with which she still tried ingest the filthy nut was nothing less then astounding. However I was young and male, I had the advantage, her fingers slowly gave in, I had successfully removed what I now realized was NOT a cashew at all, it was the poor woman's hearing aid, which she was trying NOT to place in her mouth, but in her ear. I sheepishly returned it to her hand and apologized as she placed it in her ear.
Not all things are as they appear...
2 comments:
OK...this made me laugh....you have a talent young Grasshopper...I shall continue to follow your progress..
LOL! I had a similar incident when I worked at a nursing home. I was getting a resident ready for bed. This resident didn't speak or understand english very well. I was trying to remove her dentures and she kept trying to bite me. I finally went to the charge nurse and told her that Mrs. So-n-So wouldn't let me remove her dentures. The nurse started laughing and then said, "What dentures?" Turned out this eighty something still had ALL of her teeth!
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