Today was another day of nursing home fun. More tea was made, biscuits eaten, and hygiene laws flouted!
I actually had a good day today considering I spent it in the second worst place in the world. The first worst place is located in the same space and time but with a slight dimensional shift so that time has slowed down and air freshener has not been invented.
I am a part qualified paramedic. I can do stuff to you if you're dead that with luck with make you not dead any more. I can do checks and ask you questions to establish what might make you dead and so need the first of my skills. If you call an ambulance, a person less qualified than me may well be dispatched to you to stop you from being dead, until somebody more qualified can get to you and say that there is nothing we can do and we need to take you to hospital anyway.
However...
I cannot change sheets, help people get dressed, take them to the loo, or do anything else deemed personal care whilst working at this nursing home. I'm not sure why. Nobody will explain, and it seems nobody cares. This has made me and the two other students working with me become a little, how would you say, depressed?
One of my colleagues, let's call him "smiles", is having a really bad time. I have never met a happier more energetic person in my life. He is like a CBBC presenter who has been given a massive line of cocaine and told her arm will grow back by morning. I normally hate this kind of person. OOkay, I DO hate this person. I hate that he doesn't get upset by all the shit and pain in the world. I hate that he sees that I hate this and instead of being upset, he tries to make me feel better.
So, imagine my glee and happiness when "smiles" comes to me today as says that he's not sure he can take it anymore, that he has been hiding from interacting with the patients. That he is feeling a bit down. That all the death and age and shit and piss and anger surrounding him is just all to much.
Well what could I say? What words of comfort did I have?
"Welcome to the world smiles, take a good long look."
The funny thing is I did have nice things to say, I just kept them in. I don't feel angry and useless here. These people don't have a choice about their surroundings. All the things that upset me are not found in them. The system is to blame for treating them like crap and reducing them to livestock.
I have fed an 82 year old lady every day. It takes a long time. She has no top teeth. I talk to her while she eats and hold her hands so she doesn't take the spoon from me and hurt herself with it. She has advanced dementia and it's hard to understand her, but I have had time to see past the shakes and random words. If you look into somebody's face long enough, it's almost like the outside drops away.
Today after her lunch, whilst I took her napkin, she grabbed my hand, and with the most intense stare that lasted maybe a second, whispered, "Thank you for you kindness". Then her hands relaxed and the look was gone.
I'm an angry man. I shout and have hit people in the face, but I could see something "smiles" couldn't. We can't change the big stuff and some of it SHOULD upset you. It's what you do when it does that counts.
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