Life at the Nursing Home

Every once in awhile I like to share a few stories about some of my sweet little people at the nursing home. There is really never a dull moment there. A lot of people think nursing homes are depressing and boring, and they would never believe how much fun and laughter happens at our place!
Here's a few stories from the last few days.

We have a lady who used to be a nurse. They say nurses are the worst patients, and it seems to be true. This lady always questions each medication she gets and can be very sarcastic. The other day she was having quite a day, and had decided to sit at the nurses station. She was repeating things we said in quite a mocking tone. After she had been sitting there for about half an hour, her son stopped by. Upon walking in and seeing her, he asked what she was doing. Her answer? "Spying on these people". Her son was not surprised by this answer.

We had a cooking activity last week. The residents who took part in it, had to wear a paper head covering and gloves. One of the men didn't want to take off the head covering, stating it was his football helmet. He sat near us, talking much more than normal and refusing to give up that "helmet".

It was a quiet day on the weekend, so I took one of my ladies in her wheelchair, behind the nurses desk with me. I told her I needed help up there. She is quite confused but enjoys joking around. When she heard the whole line we have to say when answering the phone, she wasn't interested in that job. I asked her if she wanted to put nurses notes into the computer and she didn't think that was the job for her either. We decided she would greet visitors with a smile, and ask "May I help you?" I have to say, she was cute as can be at this job. She then told me - "I need $5 an hour for this. I'm a union worker you know!"

One of our little ladies came up past the nurses station, heading for the laundry area. Hanging over the front of her walker were some underwear. One of the aides offered to take the underwear to the laundry for her. As she carefully picked it up at the waistband, the resident said "thank you, they fell in the toilet". : )

You see? We really do have fun!

Guess who's coming to visit?

The Nursing Home I work at has a large Dining room, that has 5 sets of sliding glass doors. These doors look out onto a patio. Every morning there are quite a few residents that are up early and take advantage of the continental breakfast served there. Many of them like to sit and look out at the patio and watch the birds. They often build nests in the pergola that is over part of the patio.
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Here is one of the little birds sitting on the pergola.
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This year there have been a lot of rabbits in our yard. Many of our residents really enjoy watching them hop around. The other day one of the ladies called me to see 2 baby bunnies close to the window. This is one of them. He didn't seem to be too scared of me, he let me get quite close to take this picture.
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This is one of our more unusual visitors. This tree frog was probably only about 1/2 inch long and was sitting by our back door. He's pretty cute for a frog!
That's about all the wildlife we have near us. We used to have deer that came near us in the back, but a development going in that area has stopped the deer. We'll have to be content with birds and bunnies!