Tales from the Nursing Home

Most of you know that I work at a Long Term Care Center, or a Nursing Home. Many people think this is a depressing place, but although there are sad days, we really have a lot of fun. We have some residents who are alert and oriented. They may be there for a short while, receiving therapy while recuperating from surgery. Others have dementia and may be very confused. We enjoy getting to know all of them and it makes each day different!

I want to share something that happened at our place last week that made all of us laugh. Some of the residents who are confused, are not safe in walking on their own. Because of this confusion, they may take off on their own, forget their walker, or do other things that put them at risk for a fall. One thing we do to prevent this is have some people wear alarms. These alarms attach to the residents clothing with a clip and the alarm hooks to the wheelchair or bed. If the person tries to get up on their own, the clip separates from the magnet on the alarm and it sounds.

One of our ladies is not happy with this. She sees no reason why she shouldn’t get up on her own and forgets she has fallen while doing this. She frequently takes removes her alarm and has thrown it across the room a few times. This past week while she was in the bathroom, she decided she had enough of it. When the aide was standing at the sink, she grabbed the alarm, and before the aide could get it, she threw it in the toilet and then flushed it! She then said “There, how do you like that?” This was funny, but it was made funnier by the fact that the alarm got trapped in the plumbing and kept sounding until the maintenance man removed the toilet and could get the alarm out.

You just have to love feisty little ladies!