A Tribute to Bernice

So I had my last day of work on Monday. Now I have all of this free time where I am not constantly amused by elderly folk. I really miss my job. I actually would look forward to that job, even when working the 6am laundry shift. I loved the clash of people who worked and resided there immensely.

So a tribute to Shady Grove Nursing Home.

Some of my favorite moments/ conversations:

#10: Conversation with SSo on the bus to work

S: "I haven't painted realistic people in a while; I need to buy a black paint with a less green hue." Me: " Your black paint has a green hue? Huh." S: " Yeah I know right? (as a black man gets on the bus) You would think all blacks would be the same!"


#9: The day that State Survey came to observe the building, and a pipe broke in south hall bathroom. Leave it to Joyce to venture towards the faucet and try to turn off the water, getting herself completely drenched, and having to go home and change clothes.

#8: Any day that Bernice tried to escape the building was an entertaining day. But also any day she would just stand up from her wheelchair and her wheelchair alarm would go off, that was also entertaining. One day a nurse tried to coax her back into her wheelchair with promises of yogurt. Apparently Bernices like yogurt.

#7: Once when cleaning CTh's room, she told me "I hope you find a million dollars. I'd split it with you."

#6: Another time when cleaning CTh's room, she was complaining to me of an upset stomach. Once I had finally gotten her to push the Help Button, she let out an enormous belch, and then told me she was fine.

#5: I'll never forget the time that Joyce referred to the clock on the washer as "The Time Machine." When I began joking that I was very upset nobody told me we had a time machine, she didn't understand.

#4: Or having to work Thanksgiving night, when the nurses convinced me to take a goodie-bag home full of food. Later I opened the bag to find six cups full of what I guessed via smell was pureed turkey, mandarin oranges, and vanilla pudding. Apparently Ruth didn't want her goodie bag, and I don't blame her.

#3: The time I tried to leave work at the end of the day and didn't realize that the door was alarmed. They alarm the doors whenever high-risk residents are nearby. When I ran from the door, they found DJe at the scene of the crime, and wheeled him away. I got off scot-free.

#2: Folding laundry with SSo while simultaneously dancing to The Jackson 5. It helps the day go by faster.

#1: My favorite moment while working at Shady Grove Nursing Home was when I convinced all of my fellow employees that one of the residents spoke perfect English, when in reality he's Spanish-speaking from Portugal. The conversation went something like this:

Cs: "All he ever says is 'Clean Clean!'
Me: "Really? He speaks perfect English to me."
Cs: "What?? How is that possible? I've been working here for two years!"
Me: "Oh yeah he only speaks English when you're not around."

Britches

I am afraid that the longer I work at Shady Grove, the less aware I become of the hilarity that surrounds me. To avoid forgetting the day-to-day amusements, I am going to try documenting them.

The first one is that I frequently am asked by residents to assist them. Whether or not they mistake me for a CNA I'm not sure, but nonetheless the residents consistently try to seduce me into doing odd things for them. I fall for it every time. I can't ignore their yelps for assistance, and I always get there before the CNA does. Just today I wheeled a woman to her bedroom only to have her ask me to undress her.

All I can do is politely inform them that I am merely a housekeeper and that they need to wait for a CNA to assist them further. But to tell you the truth, I'm pretty sure they know I'm a housekeeper, and are just desperate/impatient.

When it comes to wails emanating from the bathrooms, I stay far away. If I get asked to wheel someone to the bathroom, I wheel 'em and ditch 'em. It's only my job to clean up the mess afterwards. Which brings me to my next observation.

Does everyone recall that scene from 'Daddy Daycare' where a little boy attempts to pee unassisted for the first time, comes out saying "I missed," after which Eddie Murphy looks up at the ceiling with horror? That's me every day that I clean bathrooms. I catch myself saying "How does this even happen??" about three times a day. I love that the residents claim to be wheelchair-bound, but in reality are flexible enough to leave stains in just about every crevice of the stall.

Also something that I may never understand, is these people's ability to fall asleep in the middle of eating their food. One lady takes three hours every single day to eat lunch. She gets there an hour early, and stays an hour late. The reason it takes her so long is because she falls asleep, sometimes with a spoon still held up to her mouth. But you must give her efficiency-points for her use of a spoon to skewer her dinner roll in an attempt to eat faster. I think another part of the problem is her incessant flirting. One cannot possibly consume an entire meal, while fishing for a new boyfriend, in just an hour. These things take time. Especially if you are consistently falling asleep.

This same woman stopped me just yesterday to complain about the hard-boiled egg she was eating.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I want to eat THIS part of the egg (pointing at the yolk), but I don't want all this FAT around it" she tells me.

It seems I don't know much about eggs, but apparently the egg whites are very fattening. Why a woman at her age, who just last week assured us that she was going to die, cares about fat, I don't know. But as I walked away without knowing how to comfort her, I got to witness her telling another person the exact same thing, desperate for some help with her serious egg problem.

Shady Grove

For those of you whom I do not encounter on a weekly basis ( and if you do, i guess you can read this as well...) I wanted to keep you updated on my life here in Provo!

Sorry I can't post any amazing photos, because well...I don't even have a camera, so all of the photos of me are already on FB anyhow via Haley and Freyja and Maranda etc.

BUT I will tell you about my adventures living here in Provo, and working up in Orem at the nursing home which Maranda and I have dubbed "Shady Grove" even though it's not the least bit shady, nor is it in a grove....actually it's right by an orchard (hence it's real name).

So I've been working at this nursing home since the very end of October and I am very much in love with the people (residents and coworkers). I just started out working about 5.5 hours a day; 5 days a week, but just recently I began full-time. The building just came under new administration, and the new head-honcho likes things to be spotless (I'm a housekeeper). We all received full-time hours after they fired the 60 year-old laundry lady whom they discovered had been stealing toothpaste bulk. With her hours gone we all got to divvy them up amongst ourselves.

This past week in particular was the state survey, during which state officials come for four days and make sure that everything in our facility is under regulation. Which means that I get to clean with, what my coworker JJ refers to as, "the devils" breathing down my neck. It was really stressful the first day because they come unannounced, but by day three we all gave up the idea of being perfect. Our facility has been rated as a 5-star nursing home, and we wanted to keep up our rating from last year. So this meant I had to make sure all of my chemicals were labeled properly, that my mop water was changed out every 2-3 rooms, I couldn't clean the dining room until EVERY resident was finished eating, and a billion of other tiny things.

The reason cleaning the dining room after EVERY resident is done eating is so annoying, is because this is about sixty people all over the age of 70yrs, who take their sweet shaky-hands time trying to get those peas onto their spoon. Not that those peas make it into their mouths, because I can say first-hand that about 50% end up under their wheelchairs, smashed by their wheels as they're wheeled away. This is a very common occurrence, most especially with our resident who will be 107 this coming summer. Eat your cheerios every morning like this woman, and you too may be able to live to be 106.

Just yesterday I was sweeping said dining room when I overheard one of the social workers interviewing one of the residents who just came back from the hospital.
"If we find you unconscious and not breathing, would you like us to resuscitate you?"
She promptly told her "No", which seems depressing, but at the same time I would have to say the same thing in her situation. I give all of you reading this blog permission to take a can of Raid to my face if I am ever unable to use the bathroom unassisted, and/or find my most pleasurable entertainment to be staring at a parking lot. Don't hesitate.

Wheeling my cart around the building, hurrying to do my cleaning, I often hear bits and pieces of conversations throughout the building. My most favorite one so far was about a week ago, wheeling past one younger resident (probably only 60) who had just struck up a conversation with one of our dementia residents approaching maybe 75 or so. All I heard was
"Did you have a bowel movement today D?"
*nods head happily
"That's great! Because I know it's been a few days."

I know he's trying to be supportive, but I don't want my conversations to ever revolve around bowel movements. Ever.

Because of various reasons, a lot of the residents can't really talk. I need to take these pictures, but there are a few hand-written signs throughout the building that the CNA's/ Nurses leave to each other to remind them of routine things with each resident. For instance in one room, next to a resident's bed, it says really large " Did you remember to take out Mary's teeth?"
It's always there so I assume it's a daily thing to take out Mary's teeth. I don't know what will happen if they don't remember.
And my favorite sign is also by a resident's bed. This one says " My name is Helmut. Please put MY clothes on me. Thanks."

Can you say 'P'?

I figured that since I don't talk to all of you all too regularly that maybe I should blog at least one post to cover the last six months of my life. I was accepted to start college at BYU-Provo for summer term, beginning June 20th! Which just so happens to be one week (count it; seven days) after I graduate from high school. So I'll be in Utah in a couple weeks for Genuine's graduation, and I'll be scoping out all of the hot spots....if they even exist. I'm just kidding, I think I'll have a good time. I have fond memories of visiting the Provo campus as a kid and I can't wait to take some revenge on some nasty geese.
Other than preparing for college I am still working as a receptionist at the same hair salon, but the whole salon is preparing to move to LO about five minutes away from our current location. I've already told them I'll be leaving as soon as June. I hadn't realized how attached I'd gotten to some of the stylists until some of them started finding new work before the move. Some of them decided to try out other salons and found this time of moving the perfect opportunity to start anew. I hadn't realized how much I would miss them when the time came!
Besides THAT, I'm contently finishing the last few months of school, and my last day is June 3rd! And then I graduate June 13th! and then I start school ALL OVER AGAIN the 20th! Fun times.

Even though my life isn't all too exciting, I might as well update for those people who don't see me everyday.
Now that Fletcher is gone it's just Haley and me with the 'rents. Haley is leaving for school at the end of this month, so then it'll officially just be me left. People keep asking me about how i 'feeeeel' now that Fletcher's gone....but he never talked much in the first place, so it doesn't 'feeeel' much different, like at all.
It's almost back to school for me in september, I'll be a senior. I know strange right? I just turned seventeen! When I was young I remember my older sisters being seventeen and thinking they were adults, with thighs! Now I'm seventeen and I feel young and kinda scrawny. Maybe I'll get thighs later into my seventeenth year.
For my birthday my friend Spudge threw me a surprise swim party. It was tons of fun, and I have never had so many consecutive chicken fights in my life! Complete with friends, a pool, cupcakes, and presents. I got a hammock from LCl and now I need to find a time and place to put it up.
Work at the salon has been good. I've been working there since spring break, and just within the past two months they hired a second girl to split my hours so my paycheck is sadly about a $100 less than it was before, but I don't really mind since I get much more free time. I used to work basically everyday, and my friends complained they never saw me. Now I only work two or three days max per week.
I mainly answer phones, greet people, bring them water, alert the stylists of their time shifts and problems. I haven't made any major mistakes yet because I'm very careful to ask for help scheduling anything that may even cause the slightest problem to the stylists. I think they prefer you ask them for help rather than being surprised the day of work when they need to 'adjust.'
Other than that I'm pretty lazy most days. I got my top braces off in July, and I get the bottom braces off on the 25th. My abnormally small teeth that I had next to my front teeth were what I like to call 'corn-dogged.' They filled in the gaps on either side with 'bony material' and now they're regular sized and I got a new retainer. I call it corn-dogged because the original tooth is there, but the new stuff was put around it...kinda like how the corn meal is deep fried around the hot dog.
So with that out of the way, I need to get my senior picture taken. I think Haley wants to do it with her fancy Nikon. Although I always imagined Audrey would be the person to go to.
Anyway, that's all I've been up to. If I've forgotten anything just let me know.