As she wandered the hall aimlessly, her eyes caught mine. “Where is my mama?” she asked me, sobbing. My heart instantly melted. A young forty-five year old woman with an eighteen-year old daughter and twenty-two year old son exposed early onset Alzheimer’s for the nightmare it truly is. “Let’s go find her,” I said gently, [...]

It is truly inspiring to see some of the committed couples at the nursing home where I work. One man has come to bring his wife dinner every single night for six years–neither rain nor snow nor hail nor sleet (nor illness) will stop him. Another man lovingly shows his wife his care by showing [...]

Last night at work, the first thing I did was walk in on a woman trying to strangle herself in the call light cord. That incident set the tone for the night. Though the whole night was not bad, the first part of it was incredibly frustrating: working with someone who didn’t want to work, [...]

In the past, I have been frustrated at myself for not starting out my education in medicine. In high school, that is what I wanted to do, but changed my mind mid-senior year. Since returning to the dream about a year ago, I keep wishing I had just done it in the first place. Now, [...]

I used to gossip about people all the time. I would gossip about my friends, my non-friends, my family, or any other random person to anyone who would listen. Starting about the age of thirteen, however, guilt and worry began to creep in. Guilt that I had said something mean in the first place and [...]

Too bad that the person who proposed to me tonight wasn’t Steve! A woman on the hall I worked tonight proposed to me a few times. It was a rather interesting night, though most of it was not particularly the good kind of interesting. Oh, well. Some days are just long and tiring and don’t [...]

Yesterday was my first real day at work. I have been working, but until yesterday it was all videos and orientation. Even though it was just my first day, I got to help the nurse change a dressing on a rather gory looking wound, something even my trainer could not do. She told me, “The [...]

I realized today that despite being away from all that mess for over a year now, I still don’t know how to assert my opinion on things when it comes to people who believe the same things I used to believe, and I don’t know very well, but like. As a classmate/co-worker and I headed [...]

I will never work at the nursing home in which our class did clinicals. While I never wanted to grow up and die in a nursing home, I did not realize how bad they could be, despite having visited and volunteered in them numerous times in my childhood/teenage years. I think what got to me [...]