I just practise at being one for eight hours a day.

The magic jack phone tells me that my favourite nurse, Aletha, called me at 6.20am this morn…Is she SWIVUN craaazy!!…Yeah. She was all out of luck in getting me at that hour on a day off.

Someone called in, so they were working short.

I fail to see how she thinks this should effect me. I work on shifts “short” all the time. It happens. Sadly, I find a few of my fellow workers to be bloody whingers. They waste time standing around bemoaning the fact and then expect you to assist in picking up their slack. Which you do, because this is just how it IS. Yerknow!

Change the “battle plan”. Wipe face, hands, front bums and arses on the ones who need only general care…[continent and perform a lot of their own daily living routines] and then concentrate on those that need more thorough care.

Suck it up and deal with it.

I half expect one of them to pass very shortly. Evelyn. She’s been taken off all [bar for her pain] meds. I am glad her family has decided to do so. Sometimes you just have to look at the other side of life, or as in this case, the life from someone else’s side.

The mom they once knew is long gone, she just looks relatively the same.

Relatively the same, except for when she is stuck in her hand gripping one rail, other crooked hand on it’s slow train to her mouth, nose, then hair, dance routine. A dance routine that she performs at least thirty times while you feed her. I am most jubilant when she eats something. I am ecstatic when she eats above fifty percent.

She is more comfortable in bed now, so she is basically bedridden and remembers no-one. Except perhaps her husband, Fred, who also resides on A-Wing, they share a room. When she feels fit enough, she constantly yells his name. Much to his irritation.

Evelyn came in first. Two years or so back. She has been with us twice. The first time she was a successful rehab-to-homer. Successful, until she fell again and broke the other hip.

I liked Evelyn.

She is no longer here.

The last time that she was. She made a snappy remark to one of the occupational therapists. While I was feeding her in her geri-chair, Tonya was checking out the circulation in her legs. The old Evelyn emerged long enough to grin and tell Tonya…“Aint them pretty legs”. All three of us burst out laughing at that one.

I also expect that Fred will not last long after her.

Our “chats” have become less frequent, his attention has become more focused on the oxygen tube giving him breath. It’s like he is just waiting for her to go on ahead. I don’t know if he thinks that after a lifetime together of sixty plus years he should stay on to witness and mark her passing. As Evelyn is not in any state to remember his.

I like Fred.

I hope he makes it until then.