At my new job I see a range of health issues, physical and mental. It's hard to watch sometimes, but such is life for so many elderly people these days. I am grateful that they have a facility like mine to come to instead of wasting away at home alone, or being shut up in a nursing home setting when it's not necessary. Unfortunately, since my facility is the step between them, we have to make the difficult decision of when to move them to a more skilled facility/nursing home.
We have two residents right now that are on the cusp.
After only being here about a month, I've already grown close to one of them, and I will be so crushed to see her go. She's so sweet and funny, and never gives us trouble when we need to help her do things. Honestly, I want to keep her here as long as we can. I don't think she would last long in a nursing home type facility.
The other resident, however, is a totally different story. At first he was perfectly fine and coherent, but just in the last few days he's done a complete 180. It's hard to see them be a totally different person than you are used to. This man went from gentle, calm, and generally nice to frustrated, angry, and sometimes violent so suddenly due to his cancer. I think the worst part of the situation is that his family was in denial about how bad he had gotten. Last night was the last straw for us, he had an outburst in the middle of the night that was disturbing that entire half of the building. My boss had to call his family, who was not happy about the situation and though we were lying to them, and then call an ambulance for this resident. Needless to say, he can no longer live at our facility. We don't have the man power, nor the resources to care for him like he needs.
It breaks my heart to see people deteriorate like that and there isn't anything I can do to help them or their families.
What do you do? What do you say?
Seeing all of this makes me so grateful for my (relative) health, for Hubs health, and for my family's health. It makes me grateful for the days that I do have, the things I've been able to experience, and the people I've gotten to meet. I can't put into words how much good this job is doing for me, no matter how stressful it gets. This is the Lord's work.
What are you grateful for?
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