Margaret and Vince

From time to time, we'll get couples in our nursing home.  Some want to live together in the same room, and others...well let's just say that it's better for their health and sanity (and those of the people who work at the nursing home) if they are put in different rooms. It's also really interesting how the dynamics of a relationship change as the couple ages. I mean, alot of the men that come to stay with us are veterans--men's men.  Strong men who fought for our freedom.  Men who have traveled around the world and were probably womanizers at one time. And the women of the Baby Boomer Era were homemakers generally.  They gave their lives to their families.  They were typically Christian woman who believed that men were the leaders of the home.  I use those terms in the past tense because all of that changes as they get older.  It's been my experience that women get more ballsy and men get more submissive! Women wear the pants in the nursing home relationships. It's like the men are so beat down, they'll do anything to shut their wives up. We have a couple who have been at our facility for a while now and they live together--Margaret and Vince.  I haven't heard Vince speak but maybe a few words and Margaret can be loud and crass.  A couple of days ago, I was doing some swallowing therapy in the dining room and was sitting at a table next to theirs.  They had finished their breakfast and Vince had gotten up to leave, leaving his prune juice untouched. He was just about to grab his walker when Margaret yells at him. "Daddy, you better drink that prune juice!!!!" He looked at her with an annoyed sigh.  She yelled again, "Daddy, you better drink that prune juice or you'll get the constipation and I don't want you to have the constipation!!!!!!!" He didn't say a word but picked up the juice and took a small sip. She immediately yelled at him, "DADDY--DRINK, DRINK, DRINK IT!!!!" And as he chugged that god awful stuff, she started chanting, as if he were shot gunning a beer, "DRINK! DRINK! DRINK!" And after he drank it, she said in a normal tone, "Now, see.  All done.  And you can poop now." And he walked off with his walker in silence, leaving her to trail behind him.

After they left, it made me wonder what it would be like if my husband and I had to live in a nursing home together when we got old.  And all I have to say is--based on my personality now-- that I feel SO sorry for him when that time comes!!!  He's gonna thank the Lord that he's 8 years older than me....

Claire Again

Well, now that Claire is doing therapy, it seems that we can't get rid of her.  Even after her session is over, she wants to hang out in the therapy room.  We have a dog that lives at our facility named Cosmo--he's old (he just turned 14), lazy, and deaf.  He, too, hangs out in the therapy room all of the time.  But that may be because he gets a regular flow of doggie treats throughout the day there.  Cosmo has a bad habit of laying down right in front of the entrance to the therapy room for some reason, which makes it a little hard for our residents to get in. This afternoon, Claire decided she wanted to eat her ice cream sandwich in the therapy room, but Cosmo happened to be in the way.  My PT suggested to her, "Just encourage him to get out of the way.  Let him know you mean business and he'll move. And remember, he's deaf, so speak loudly."  Claire looked down at Cosmo and yelled at the top of her lungs, "G*D D**N SON OF A B****! MOVE YOUR OLD ASS OUT OF THE WAY!" Now, I'm used to cussing--it's actually kind of sad that I'm almost immune to it.  But the bad part of the whole thing was that today was payday at the nursing home.  And when it's payday, the employees all bring their young children to the nursing home with them to pick up their checks.  At this particular time of day, there just happened to be a bunch of little children doing puzzles in our therapy room.  And they ALL looked up at Claire after her little outburst. I immediately said, "Claire, there are little children in here."  And she quickly snapped at me, "Hell Melissa. You know I can't see."  And then muttered under her breath before taking a huge bite out of her ice cream, "Those kids can just get over it."

Dottie

Dottie was playing Bingo with my speech therapist today in the dining room.  Now, in the world of nursing homes, Bingo is an obsession.  The elderly flock to Bingo games when it's announced over the intercom.  Some have all of the Bingo games circled on their calendars, and they get there an hour before it starts to pick their cards.  And yes, I mean more than one card.  We have ladies who will use 5 or 6 bingo cards. We have ladies who have to have an entire table to themselves because they have so many cards. I've actually had to have an intervention with ladies who just can't handle the multiple bingo cards anymore.  And it's traumatic for them.  It's like you put a big ass B on their chest, showing all of the other bingo players they just don't cut it anymore. Dottie is one of those one bingo card gals. As the numbers were being called out, Dottie suddenly did the cough/fart combo and her false teeth shot from her mouth and bounced onto the floor (Now I'm not going to diss my nursing home but you NEVER know what is on the dining room floor).  She looked up from her Bingo card and said in a loud surprised voice, "OH MY GAWD!" Then she looked around, picked up her dentures, and put those suckers right back in her mouth.

Claire

We have a very funny lady named Claire who lives in our nursing home.  She is pretty hard of hearing and can't see 10 feet in front of her.  She also happens to have large breasts for her small frame. And she never wears a bra and is always tucking her shirts up under her melons when she gets hot. We've tried to get her to participate in therapy many, many times, but she always refused...that is, until I hired a male physical therapist. Then she reconsidered. She was doing therapy today and was pretty out of breath from walking.  The physical therapist looked at her with concern and asked, "Claire are you out of breath?"  She squinted at him and said, "What?" He rephrased the question. "Are you breathless?"  She looked at him in disbelief and said, pointing at 'the girls,' "Hell no I'm not breastless...have you seen these?"

Eula and Cathy

I was in the dining room during breakfast one morning, and it was one of those quiet meals where nobody speaks to each other because they are still half-asleep.  Well, Eula and a lady named Cathy eat at the same table.  Cathy had finished her breakfast and decided it was time to get up out of her chair and grab her walker to leave.  Cathy ALWAYS has a hard time getting up out of her chair and today was no exception. Heave, heave, ho.  Couldn't get up.  Heave, heave, ho.  Nope, she wasn't going anywhere.  Heave, heave, ho. FART FART FART. And she was up. I looked around to see if anyone was looking at her or laughing (yes, old people still laugh when someone farts--if they can still hear.)  But no one had even turned their head in her direction. Eula continued to eat her breakfast and just turned to Cathy with no expression on her face.  Then, in her LOUD Slingblade-like voice, she said "You got the arthritis?" And Cathy replied, "Yep, I got the arthritis." Eula was nodding her head and said loudly, "Yeah you gotta watch that arthritis.  One day you'll be feeling fine and then the next day, it will take you down like the f***ing Titanic." Cathy nodded "Ain't it a bitch?"  And Cathy walked away.  Yep, just another normal breakfast in long term care.

Dorothy

Part of my job is to work with people who have swallowing problems.  It's great in a nursing facility because I can usually get a couple of my patients in the therapy room at lunch and have them eat in there with me, so I'm not running around for an entire hour and can actually do effective therapy.  Well one day, I had 2 patients for swallowing therapy at lunch and my OT had 2 other patients in the therapy room to help them with self-feeding.  All of them were women--thank goodness.  You'll understand later in the story why I'm grateful a man wasn't in there!  A funny little lady named Dorothy was in the room working with my OT--Dorothy had Alzheimer's.  She had a sweet doll-like face to go along with her 200+ lb frame.  But part of Alzheimers in the later stages is that the person isn't able to use facial expressions---they have what we call 'flat affect.' Dorothy never smiled. So here I was feeding one of my patients (I was sitting across the room from Dorothy) and I accidentally dropped gravy on my pants--right below my zipper on the leg of my khaki pants.  I went and got a wet paper towel and starting scrubbing my pants trying to get the gravy off.  Meanwhile, my OT was asking Dorothy a question about her meal--but Dorothy did not respond.  She was a little preoccupied watching me clean my pants.  Actually, staring is more like it. Dorothy finally held up her hand to my OT and said, "I'm sorry--I don't know what you said.  I can't think of anything else because I'm watching this masturbation."  I immediately looked up in shock!  And I tried not to crack up--actually we just ignored her because we honestly did not know what to say.  After I got the gravy off, I had this big wet spot on my pants.  So I grabbed the box fan sitting on the floor next to me and turned it toward me so my pants would dry.  Dorothy looked at the fan and then looked back at me and said frankly, "That's right girl.  You heated it up, now you gotta cool it down."  And that's when I cracked up.

Hank

I had a gentleman who came in our nursing facility with his sodium levels out of whack.  You would never really guess the importance of the right amount of sodium in your system until you saw someone with low sodium.  Let me just tell you, those people have been thrown for a loop.  Well, I did an evaluation and ended up picking Hank up for speech therapy because he was so confused.  One day, I went in his room to get him for therapy and found him laying in his bed butt naked fanning his genitals with his pillow.  I got a little closer, but not too close, you know.  Old men are like baby boys--you never know when their little thingy is going to let loose.  And I DO NOT like to be peed on.  So I got close enough to him for him to hear me and I said, "Hank, I've come to get you for therapy."  He looked at me blankly, and then said, with his upper dentures just flopping around in his mouth, "I don't like broccoli."  I shook my head and said, "No, Hank.  I don't care if you like broccoli... I'm here to get you for therapy."  He pauses from fanning himself, leans his head toward me, and yells at the top of his lungs, "I DO NOT LIKE BROCCOLI!!!!!!!"  So I left his room--And I went to the dietary manager to make sure that broccoli was listed in the dislike column of his meal card, and I left it at that.  Sometimes, that's all you can do, you know?  Just leave well enough alone and make sure the man never gets broccoli again.

Bitsy

This month, we had a funny little socialite named Bitsy come and stay with us for a few weeks.  She had the air of a debutante with the humor of a dirty old man.  She also loved to talk in a faus Southern accent.  And she was also confused as hell.  Well, one day, she walked out of the therapy room bobbing and weaving with her walker and I happened to be walking behind her. She turned to me and asked, "Honnneey, do I look like I'm drunk?"  I casually replied, "Well, I can't promise that you'd pass a sobriety test if you got pulled over." She thought for a minute and said, "Well, is it the walker or is it me?"  I told that that it definitely wasn't the walker's fault, to which she quickly replied, "Damn,  I was hoping it wasn't me."  She paused and turned, saying, "Honey, if I try to break out of this joint, please don't let me drive."

Virgie again

I love Fridays.  They are my group days.  Today the topic of conversation was Valentine's Day.  Old ladies love to socialize and gossip, so I thought I'd start the group session by asking about the nicest Valentine's gift they've ever gotten.  Virgie was in my group today.  We went around our circle, with each lady talking about her nicest Valentine's gift and whether or not their husbands were romantic and thoughtful.  Virgie's turn came around, and remember she's really hard of hearing, so I got up from my stool and went over to yell in her ear.  "Was your husband romantic, Virgie?"  And she looked up at me and said loudly, "Which one?"  We all started laughing and I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Your 2nd one."  She started giggling and said to the entire group, "I've had so many, I don't remember which one was second."  That got all the ladies rolling!

Mabel

This just happened.  I'm at work and probably shouldn't be writing this right now but whatever. 

It's raining outside pretty hard and there is a chance of hail this afternoon.  I'm driving my husband's truck today and he was concerned about possible hail damage, so he came to my work to take his truck home to safety.  The front of my nursing home is all glass windows and my husband called me to let me know he was out front to get the keys.  I went outside to give him his keys and he pulled me in for a big wet one.  A nice smooch in the rain :)  I went to walk away and then turned to smooch him again one more time.  We said our goodbyes and I went back into the lobby.  'Mabel' happened to be sitting in the lobby near the windows, and as I passed, she called out to me to come over there. "Any more of that and you woulda done got alot more wet if you know what I mean!"  And her eyes gazed downward at my 'pretties.'  I cracked up.  I love Mabel.

Carol

I usually do group therapy sessions on Fridays.  It gives the residents a chance to socialize with each other and it gives me an opportunity to get alot of people done at one time so I have a chance to catch up on paperwork later in the day.  Well, one day I had several patients in the therapy room and we were practicing memory strategies.

I was explaining that one way to help remember a person's name is to come up with an adjective that begins with the same letter as the first name of the person whose name you're trying to remember.  Now, let me stop and explain who was in my group that morning:  a 65 year old Caucasian man with a traumatic brain injury from a car wreck, 2 Caucasian ladies who had been really ill and needed some help with their cognition, and Carol, a 40 year old African American woman who had been on drugs in recent history and as a result, had severe brain damage from lack of oxygen to the brain.  So after explaining, I said, "Ok, let's each try to come up with a way that the rest of the group can remember us by using this strategy." Almost immediately, Carol pipes up and says, "Well...I'm the only f***ing black one in here." A little stunned and trying really really hard not to laugh, I told her, "Well, that is true, but let's try to come up with an adjective that starts with a 'C' that describes you.  That's the strategy we're working on."  She thought for a long time, started giggling, and said, "What about Crackhead Carol? Heh Heh Heh. That pretty much sums it up for everybody."  Needless to say, not a single person in that room forgot Carol's name. 

Virgie and Eula

My parents are divorced.  I'm not going to go into the juicy details, but the gist of the whole drama (and it is drama, believe me) is that several years ago my dad decided to have an affair with a much younger woman.  Which would be bad if that's all it was.  But it's worse when that woman is the small-town America head football coach's wife who taught with my mom at the same elementary school. Needless to say, my mom and her aren't on the greatest of terms.  And that's putting it very very nicely.  If they were ever in the same room (even if it was 30 or 40 years from now), I'm afraid one of them would not make it out of there alive. And I'm pretty certain I know which one that would be.  What in the heck does that have to do with funny nursing home stories you ask?  Well, here's why.

We had a lady named 'Virgie' admit to our nursing facility for rehab.  She was coming from home and had had a spell that left her really weak.  She needed rehab, so we had her sweating to the oldies in our therapy room.  Anyone tooling around the halls is likely to wheel/walk by our room, because it's on the same hall as the dining room. And for those of you who haven't been to a nursing home, there are two times of the day that the elderly look forward to--meal time and the time when their bowels move.  So the therapy room gets alot of foot traffic! Anyway, so here's Virgie doing her exercises when along comes 'Eula' wheeling to the dining room. Eula is a very social lady who has the beginning stages of Alzheimer's.  She always says hello coming and going from the dining room.  And she has the most distinct voice--you can hear her from a mile away.  Anybody ever watched Slingblade?  Well, Eula sounds like the guy from that movie...you know, the guy who, after every sentence, says "Mmm Hmm?" So all of a sudden, I hear, "Virgie Vernon is that you?"  And Virgie, who I always thought of as really sweet and a little deaf, replied, "Damn straight it's me Eula North."  And a staredown takes place.  Then Eula says in a loud voice, "You bitch!" Virgie smirks and states..."You're still pissed off, huh?"  And being the one who is supposed to be in charge and is supposed to create some sort of order, I come between them. "Whoa whoa.  What is going on here ladies?"  And Eula proceeds to tell me that Virgie had an affair with her ex-husband 30 years ago and they ran off together with Eula's kids.  And I look at Virgie, really just expecting her to tell Eula what a big fat liar she was. But nope.  Virgie looks at Eula and then does a Vanna White hand motion down her body.  "And look what he got." HA.

Needless to say, I made sure they weren't on the same hall.  But the funny thing is that this happened about a year ago, and now, Virgie and Eula sit together at the same table in the dining room.  They drive each other crazy but in some twisted way, they have become friends.  I still hear Eula tell Virgie to "shut the hell up about her indigestion"  or Virgie bark at Eula to quit sleeping during lunch, but for the most part, they tolerate each other.

Cecil

Here's one from today. 
Side note: Please forgive the vulgarity.  I'm just telling it like he said it.

I went in Cecil's room to check on him at lunch.  Cecil is on a pureed diet (looks like baby food) and he has a tendency not to eat it. Sometimes I don't blame him.  Anyway, I asked him how his lunch was and his response?  "Tasted like shit."  I said, "Well then, why did you eat it?  You can always ask for something else at lunch."  And he replied, "Well, I'm starving and I figured it would be better to eat shit than to eat nothing at all." I laughed and said, "You didn't even like your dessert? I think it's apple crisp."  And he thought for a second...and said, "I tasted it and you know what it tasted like?  Opossum cum. You ever had opossum cum?"  To which I quickly replied, "Nope. Sure haven't." (Who the heck has even thought about tasting that???)  And he said, "Welp, I've eaten it and it tastes like shit.  Just like that dessert."  So I left--I didn't have much to argue with him about. Because I'm sure opossum cum is pretty darn nasty, and if the dessert tasted like it, I wouldn't want to eat it either.

Ned the Pervert

When I first decided to write a blog about my job and the funny things I hear from geriatrics on a daily basis, I realized that I could not begin telling funny stories from the day I started the blog.  I have too many hilarious things that I've written down that happened 'pre-blog.' So I want to share those first.

The first side-splitter that I was a part of happened 2 weeks after starting this job.  I was fresh out of graduate school and was still wet behind my ears, so to speak.  I evaluated a man with middle stage Alzheimer's disease and put him on my caseload.  Funny thing about him--let's call him Ned--the more advanced the Alzheimer's got, the more perverted he became.  More than once, I had to slap a hand away and tell him sternly, "No I will not get in bed with you." So one day I decided to take Ned to Bingo...get him socialized and become more of a part of our community.  We sat with another one of my patients, a sweet little lady named 'Doris'.  And I warned Doris--I said, "Doris-please don't take offense if Ned says something inappropriate.  He can't help it."  She assured me this would not offend her and we started the Bingo game. It wasn't 5 minutes into it when Ned looked at Doris and said, "Damn you got a nice pair of titties." I was in shock--and Doris started laughing so hard she couldn't breathe.  I kept apologizing and got really really red.  She caught her breath and said, "He really must be out of his mind--I've had a double mastectomy. But thank you just the same honey."