The nursing home....

Hi there...well..yesterday was the first day at the nursing home...I was very excited to be going there so I had a hard time sleeping the night before...I was like a kid on Christmas eve....my patient was an elderly man who had been an immigration lawyer for the government...he had been a very active man...but a few years ago he was diagnosed with parkinsons disease...now he can do nothing for himself...he is a complete care patient...he has a feeding tube and cannot perform even the simplest tasks for himself...he is a very sweet man who cannot communicate very much...he may answer yes or no from time to time and he tries to talk but he is difficult to understand...he tried to help by raising his arms when being bathed or dressed...i felt sorry for him because he had such an active wonderful life and now he was in this state...it makes you appreciate your own life and you realize how precious life is...live each day to the fullest for who knows what tomorrow may bring...

Now...since my patient was tube fed I had nothing to do at lunch time so I offered to help another patient...I was assigned what looked to be a very sweet little old woman...LOOKS CAN BE VERY DECEIVING...she was in fact very sweet...for about a millisecond...then she wanted to kill me and break my legs and she wanted to get those people over at the other table because she did not like them...then she was sweet again...I was warned that she liked to punch and kick and to be careful of her...but...in spite of it all...I wanted to help her and take care of her...so after I tried to feed her the lunch, (which she did NOT want at all...she told me to eat it...) I found myself checking on her throghout the rest of the day...

I felt good about the day and now I am looking forward to going back again next week...

this is my blog for the day...over and out