A mix of acute short term hospital (the one in nursing school), and private home settings and “senior living” - apartments without skilled nursing on site. I do home health care at the moment.
Glad your mom is improving. Strokes have a remarkably long healing process sometimes. 
1 in 3 American women will have her uterus removed. Same rate as abortion, actually.
I see a little bit of this in my own mom, who’s 70, and it’s even worse in my aunts and cousins who are in that age range and are less educated than my mom. My grandmother was appalled, actually offended at me when I asked her doctor a question about a different treatment option when grandma was hospitalized for a plaguing back problem.
Black women have long been taught, often to our detriment, to defer to doctors, not ask questions, not seek second opinions, do as we’re told and just be grateful that we have access to medical care at all. The attitude is still there, but fortunately fading in younger generations.
Hijacking my own thread…
Yep. I see that every day. I think it’s an age thing, not just a race thing. Older folks of all races seem to put their doctors on a pedestal and dare not question. I credit the internet for making us younger folk more informed. That can give one a bad case of Googlitis, but it can also make one ask more pointed questions and feel like you’ve got some sort of power over your own health care, which I think is a good thing.
Had a patient today - elderly gentleman whose primary caregiver is his slightly younger but still getting up there wife. I’ve been seeing them every day for wound care, changing a dressing on a wound on his foot that’s got MRSA in it. His doctor was there this morning to examine the healing and, as docs are wont to do, he took off the dressing, looked at the wound, and then slapped a piece of gauze on the wound and taped the heck out of it to keep it from oozing everywhere, knowing I’d be by later to do it up right.
She didn’t want me to come by today, because, “The doctor’s been here, but he didn’t do it like you do it.” Took me 10 minutes to reassure her that doctors do doctoring, and nurses do nursing, and it was okay for me to come and change it again, only this time clean it and debride it and use the prescribed packing and the gauze wrap technique that won’t come off if you look at it funny so he could actually walk on it. Because the doctor had touched the damn thing, she was sure his “new way” of dressing it was the way it should be done 'cause he’s the DOCTOR (all hail the DOCTOR!).
But, to her credit, once I got there, she was as warm and lovely as ever, and she let me do my job without interference.
Thanks for letting me vent here, y’all. It helps.
My mother-in-law is 79 and I could see her not knowing this. I’m going to try real hard to control myself here and stay on topic and off my WTF-is-wrong-with-her rant, but she seems to be completely ignorant of everything on and in her body, with a side order of false modesty and a whole plate of “don’t question anyone in authority” thrown in.
I’ve found that using terms like womb rather than uterus helps. Also, in my MIL’s case, she doesn’t hear too well, and won’t admit that. So when I hear “Yeah uh huh”, I know she doesn’t have a clue in the world what I just said or asked. Make sure your ladies are wearing their hearing aids and/or that you speak clearly and loudly. I also think you’re on the right track with the body language - gesturing to the part in question seems helpful.
I’m with you though - I am absolutely dumfounded that you’ve found not just one but 6 or 7 people in a short time who are either unsure of what a uterus is, or don’t know if it was removed (or hell, just went for a walk).
And lastly, I’m 58 and still have all my parts. But I really wanted to vote Squirrel!!
My uncle was hard-of-hearing. I found that he heard male voices better, so I used the lower registers when speaking to him and slowed down my usual 100 mph delivery, as well as speaking clearly and loudly. But YMMV.
To this day, my 60-yo mom isn’t 100% certain if she has her ovaries. She knows that she had a very sudden hysterectomy in response to some acute issues causing serious hemorrhage back in the late 70’s, but being rather overwhelmed by the blood pouring out of her, and having major surgery, and worrying about how to take care of two kids under the age of 6 with a belly incision, she didn’t think to ask a lot of questions. And to be entirely honest, I’m not sure she knew that the whole ovary thing was an option. It wasn’t until the early 90’s when she was changing primary care providers and the nurse doing her history asked which procedure she’d had that it really ever occurred to her she didn’t know, and by then the doctor who’d done her surgery was long since retired.
We think it was likely a partial hysterectomy, because every 4 weeks or so she would have mood swings, appetite and bowel changes, and breast tenderness. But we don’t know for sure.