Hey! So back we are from Canada. We had fun hiking with all the Low's in Waterton National Park, which is the Canadian side of Glacier National Park. There were deer walking around the whole town we stayed in, they were not afraid of humans at all! One even licked Rich's hand (scandalous!)
Anyway, after a long drive and a trip to BYU-Idaho to see how it's doing, we are home. A couple nights ago, one of the ladies who's new (the one who would stare at her wall), was having a rough time. She is known to take all her clothes out of the closet and put them on her bed, and then we usually just hang them all back up. But this day, she was taking all her clothes outside. "Hey Jean, where are you going? Let's help you put these back inside." We put them all away, but when we were done, I couldn't find her! So I look down the road and I see her about a block away, struggling to walk through some sprinklers. "Jean! Where are you going? Did you want to play in the sprinklers?" It was kind of a cute site, she was wearing this adorable blue house-dress that looked hawain along with purple slippers. She was very timid, and wouldn't really respond. Once I tried to put my arm around her to help lead her back home, but she swung her arm around and tried to slug me! But I ducked just in time. She ended up tripping over a little cement wall and got herself back up on the grass.
"You keep pushin' and pushin' me!" She said. She continued to walk briskly away, down and away on the street. Meanwhile, richard finally made it outside and decided to just follow her to make sure she's safe. I ran inside and called her family to ask for some help. Anyway, about an hour and a mile later, she made it home safe. It was quite dramatic for her to snap this way. Amid her Alzheimer's she made it all the way to her own home! She remembered where it was. That was quite impressive. Anyway, the next day during another person's shift, she did the exact same thing. Jean can't be reasoned with, due to her disease. So it turns out that she cannot stay at our facility due to her running-away. Her family has agreed to put her to bed in the evenings, since she tends to get funny at that time of day. I feel so bad for Jean, she can't help what's going on in her head. Nothing will make her happy, and depression medicine just makes her act very, very strange. So it is with Alzheimers, you can just never predict what will happen!
And that's our latest adventure!
Friday, July 31, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
IKEA
Well, thankfully things have calmed down since that last post...the lady "Mildred" is healing just great after some major doses of antibiotics. We are so glad she's doing better and her foot is healing great. I was joking with Dani about how we don't have a child yet to write about in our blog, but I guess our old ladies somewhat count! I should write more of the funny things that we experience here more often. I promise we have more hilarious experiences than bad.
Rich and I decided to cure our July 'blahness' by re-arranging our room (which we are kind of confined to on the weekends while other people work our shift)...and have managed to make it cleaner, more organized, and so much more functional! And this is all thanks to wonderful IKEA. :-)
Rich and I have been considering moving out of our nursing home after we've been here a year (which is what we promised them), but we do like this job when it's not so crazy, and the benefits are truly great. After going to Sam's Club this afternoon (where I worked for 4 summers), I was reminded about the fact that any job has his downfalls, and our job seems to have so little compared to it's benefits.
So we figured, maybe we can cure our feelings of being 'cooped up' on the weekends in our room by making our room a better place to be. So today we ventured to IKEA and bought a really cute loveseat so we could have somewhere to actually sit comfortably in our room to watch a movie or read a book. We used to drag the Beehive home's lazy-boy chairs from the living room all the way into our room on the weekends, and they were bulky and took up so much space. Our new loveseat is the perfect size for us to both sit on and cuddle, without taking up the entire room. It makes our room feel less like a bedroom but more like a modern-styled living space, which juxtaposes our very old-fashioned nursing home. This makes it a true escape, and so far it doesn't feel like we are always at work. Even though we don't technically have our own place to call 'home' quite yet, I am reminded of what Richard's mission president told him:
OH, PS...I will post a pic of our new room once we get the right cover for our loveseat. We accidently bought the wrong size...that store can be so confusing!
Rich and I decided to cure our July 'blahness' by re-arranging our room (which we are kind of confined to on the weekends while other people work our shift)...and have managed to make it cleaner, more organized, and so much more functional! And this is all thanks to wonderful IKEA. :-)
Rich and I have been considering moving out of our nursing home after we've been here a year (which is what we promised them), but we do like this job when it's not so crazy, and the benefits are truly great. After going to Sam's Club this afternoon (where I worked for 4 summers), I was reminded about the fact that any job has his downfalls, and our job seems to have so little compared to it's benefits.
So we figured, maybe we can cure our feelings of being 'cooped up' on the weekends in our room by making our room a better place to be. So today we ventured to IKEA and bought a really cute loveseat so we could have somewhere to actually sit comfortably in our room to watch a movie or read a book. We used to drag the Beehive home's lazy-boy chairs from the living room all the way into our room on the weekends, and they were bulky and took up so much space. Our new loveseat is the perfect size for us to both sit on and cuddle, without taking up the entire room. It makes our room feel less like a bedroom but more like a modern-styled living space, which juxtaposes our very old-fashioned nursing home. This makes it a true escape, and so far it doesn't feel like we are always at work. Even though we don't technically have our own place to call 'home' quite yet, I am reminded of what Richard's mission president told him:
"Live the first ten years of your marriage like nobody would like to live, and you'll be able to live the rest of your marriage like nobody can afford to live."This gives me hope. It's true, I've seen this manifest itself in so many other people's lives. So here we come, Beehive home, ready to stick it out another 6 months and continue to think long and hard whether we want to remain here another year after that or not. It's worth the effort, I think. We'll hope for the best.
OH, PS...I will post a pic of our new room once we get the right cover for our loveseat. We accidently bought the wrong size...that store can be so confusing!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
drained
Phew. I love our job here at the nursing home, but lately it's been very draining.
Here's my chance to moan out my frustrations!
One of our lesser anxieties is the new lady who doesn't really do much except sit in her room and stare at the wall. She worries over the fact there is too much light in her room. It's somewhat depressing to see her so blank and desolate, and have this constant worried look in her eyes. She refuses to watch TV, read, or any other activity we try to have her do. I really feel bad for her, I can't comprehend what makes someone so out of it. Alzheimer's is a very real and scary thing.
Our biggest anxiety is a lady (let's call her Milda) who is so shaky most of the time she will drop whatever she holds. For days she could not walk at all, and was going undiagnosed with whatever condition she had. Diarrhea, vomiting. It wasn't the prettiest picture (or smell). I really did feel bad for her. It was especially frustrating when this happened over the holiday weekend when all the doctor's offices were closed. Even on our one day off the worker woke us up twice in the middle of the night to help her pick up Milda after she had fallen like dead weight on the ground.
Meanwhile, we haven't gotten a stress-less night of sleep for the past week due to this, and she's not showing any improvement. They've finally diagnosed her with a bladder infection (which I suspected from the start) and she is on antibiotics. She still cannot walk, and she will fall involuntarily out of her bed in her sleep. Every morning I find her on the floor.
I guess you have to be there to see it. I just get upset because her family is kind of oblivious to how bad she is sometimes. I can't stand to see someone suffer, so I spend alot of time in her room just fixing things up and organizing things because she can't do it herself.
Here's my chance to moan out my frustrations!
One of our lesser anxieties is the new lady who doesn't really do much except sit in her room and stare at the wall. She worries over the fact there is too much light in her room. It's somewhat depressing to see her so blank and desolate, and have this constant worried look in her eyes. She refuses to watch TV, read, or any other activity we try to have her do. I really feel bad for her, I can't comprehend what makes someone so out of it. Alzheimer's is a very real and scary thing.
Our biggest anxiety is a lady (let's call her Milda) who is so shaky most of the time she will drop whatever she holds. For days she could not walk at all, and was going undiagnosed with whatever condition she had. Diarrhea, vomiting. It wasn't the prettiest picture (or smell). I really did feel bad for her. It was especially frustrating when this happened over the holiday weekend when all the doctor's offices were closed. Even on our one day off the worker woke us up twice in the middle of the night to help her pick up Milda after she had fallen like dead weight on the ground.
Meanwhile, we haven't gotten a stress-less night of sleep for the past week due to this, and she's not showing any improvement. They've finally diagnosed her with a bladder infection (which I suspected from the start) and she is on antibiotics. She still cannot walk, and she will fall involuntarily out of her bed in her sleep. Every morning I find her on the floor.
I guess you have to be there to see it. I just get upset because her family is kind of oblivious to how bad she is sometimes. I can't stand to see someone suffer, so I spend alot of time in her room just fixing things up and organizing things because she can't do it herself.
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