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Nursing

I often have a hard time explaining to people why I choose to work in an extended care facility. People often think of it as just a place where people shit on themelves and die. Needless to say, I can never find the right words to describe why I do what I do. It's true that the job is far from glorious, and the rewards can seem few and farbetween. When I need inspiration I buy books about nursing, stories of encouragement.It helps me to understand that I am not the only person in the world crazy enough to put up with the shit I put up with on a daily basis. Lately I have needed quite a bit of inspiration, and in my readings I came across something that made me laugh out loud. It explains perfectly what I can't. Here it is..... Bringing the cows home. When I was a teenager, I worked at a nursing home as a nursing assistant. Althought the hours were long and the duties not always pleasant, I developed an understanding, respect and love for the residents. Elmer, a patient with Alzheimer's disease was a favorite of mine. Elmer was transferred from a facility cited by the state for inadequate care. He had no relatives to watch out for him- no one to care. Faded blue eyes, glistening with the dew drops of old age, stared vacantly past the world around him. Inadequate care had left him bent at the hips and knees, renduring him unable to walk, or straighten his legs. The damage could not be erased. Although his arms remained strong as the mules he once drove, he could not concieve the limitations of his legs. We were forced to keep him in restraints. But Elmers mind, unencumbered by the confines of reality, remaind free to enjy the pleasures of his past. Elmer still smelled the sweet of the evening dew on the new mown clover. He stilled wiped the sweat from his favorite horse as they ploughed the frosty ground in the early spring. However ELmer no long combed the fields and swamps looking for his cows. Now that chore was mine. The first evening as I readied Elmer for the night, he asked, "Did ya bring the cows home?" "Yes," I replied, " I brought the cows home Elmer." " How many?" "Ten." " Well you missed three. Best go back and find them before nightfall. They won't be safe out there. The next night Elmer again asked about the cows. "Bring them home?" "Yes, Sir I did." "How many?" "Thirteen." "Gosh darn you girl, ya missed two. Go back to the swamp and get the others. They won't be safe out there." And so it went, night after night. I was rarely able to predict the number of cows that would bring the desired response- "Good girl." Sometimes I was sent to the neighbors to return a few cows because "They surely aren't ours." Sometimes I was told to wait out the storm before I went looking for a lost calf. Same time, same place, same station, but never the same number of cows. One night I arrived to find Elmers bed empty and unmade, not a good sign in a nursing home. I creid out, "Elmer." NO response. I ran down and asked if Elmer died. He hadn't. "Has he been moved?" "No, he hasn't." "He's not there," I worried out loud. "He has to be. He can't go anywhere; he tied in." Running back to his room, the nurse and I called out for him, again and again. Searching his room, I noticed his restraints were tied below the bed rails rather than through them. The crossed part, the part that should have been under the bed, was on top. I knelt to the floor and looked under the bed. There, suspended in his restraints was Elmer. "Get the cows home?" he asked patiently. Written by: Susan Townsend
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