I’m an RN on a med/surg unit in a hospital. Almost invariably, there’s at least one demented screamer keeping the other patients up all night. The alert and oriented patients, though they rarely say so, seem to think we’re not doing our jobs and we’re terrible people for allowing an innocent soul to suffer so.
The reality is there’s not always much we can do. And there’s a law of inverse proportions at work: the more demented and out-of-control the patient, the less effect medications have on them.
This is my first experience with Alzheimer’s patients this close to the finish line. I’m so naive that I don’t even have a Plan Z for it. It’s been a learning and growing experience for me.
More fun: Two loud bangs like doors slammed very hard followed by an alarm. Nurse closed my door. Cops came, but only one car. They left so it wasn’t gunplay. I’m due for my knockout drops, so will try to learn more.
I would. He has inflicted, and continues to inflict, a lot of suffering on a lot of people – not least through his continued assault on healthcare. I am deeply sorry that you have health problems and that the care you’re receiving is sometimes inadequate or questionable – but would you rather have that, or would you rather die at 57 from a treatable cancer that was neither detected nor treated because you didn’t have healthcare?
When is this nation going to grow up and start treating others as they want, or would want, to be treated?
And, to be clear: This is absolutely not an attack on you or others in this thread, all of whom seem to have compassion. It is a moment of complete fed-up-ed-ness, and complete frustration that the people in charge of policy are so insulated by money that they’re clueless with regard to the needs of those who aren’t loaded or who are – GASP – poor (because we all know that poverty represents a moral failing of the individual rather than flaws in an intractable system that keeps many poor).
Those w-o compassion magically develop a little when people they care about are in need (for ex., Jeb Bush’s less-draconian views on drug treatment, bc one of his children was a user), but it shouldn’t be that way – those are exactly the people who shouldn’t be able to affect public policy at all. The ability to understand the needs of others should be a prerequisite for holding office.
Anyway, I hope you’re feeling well or at least reasonably well.
Many years ago, I worked at a law firm that was right next door to a rest home. One day, I and another secretary were requested to accompany an estate planning attorney and his client to witness powers of attorney being signed by the client’s mother, and the signing was to take place at the rest home, as that’s where she lived.
I was in my mid-twenties and didn’t have much of an idea of what a rest home was. I think I thought it was just a restful place for retirees to live who maybe needed a bit of nursing care.
It was an Alzheimer’s ward, and the naive young me was frightened to death, because many of the inhabitants were screaming and gibbering. I remember one woman was standing on top of a dining table and singing The Battle Hymn Of The Republic at the top of her lungs.
I was shaken for days. I didn’t know what Alzheimer’s was before then.
I’m going to cut dropzone a little slack on posting the OP. I know that it seems heartless to complain about an Alzheimer’s patient (and it is kind of heartless) but I spent time in three different rehab centers and looking back I was pretty irritable about some petty things at times. When you don’t feel well and are totally dependent on others, you can become pretty self-centered and obnoxious.
Plus, it sounds like he’s on some pretty powerful antibiotics. I had a resistant infection and I was on some very powerful antibiotics which I think affected my mental status at times.
So if the OP comes off as obnoxious it may not be entirely his fault, any more than the screams are his neighbor’s fault.
When it comes down to it, I’d rather the OP vent here with whatever words he feels he needs than actually yell at the little old lady in the end stages of dementia.
The saints here are the CNAs, providing all these people care without hardly bitching. Especially mine. Y’see, I’m bedridden and can’t use a bedpan so I wear a BIGASS diaper and you can see where this is going. I put off going until I’m nauseated and in pain, but what goes in must come out. It may take a week…
When I worked at the big hospital, they occasionally ordered maggots for wound care, and one day when I rounded with some residents, they saw a patient who had some. They wouldn’t let me in the room in this case, but I would have liked to have seen it.
They also use specially bred medicinal leeches to promote blood flow after soft-tissue reattachments. I got to retrieve some, using shoulder-length gloves and a small aquarium fish net, when I was in school, because nobody else would do it. My roommate didn’t believe me, until I brought a blank label home.
p.s. At a previous hospital, there was a woman who I don’t think had dementia but she was not doing well, physically or mentally. She constantly moaned, “Oh, mercy me” all day long. One day, the social worker and I happened to cross paths in the hallway, and he pointed at her room and said, “If I ever have what she has, I hope somebody shoots me and puts me out of my misery before I get like that.”
^^when I was in rehab last month, we had a screamer like that. Would yell and carry on from 10:00 at night until 7:00 a.m. or so. I barely got sleep for the two weeks I was there.
When I first got there, he was my room mate but the staff quickly moved me the next morning.
