Anyone out there?

I know at least two people read my blog. Does anyone else read it besides Kay and Sue?

Where had she been?

When I worked on a VA Alzheimer's unit, there was one woman there. I'm not sure she had Alzheimer's or some strange type of mental illness, but she had been in this condition for a long time. She was ambulatory but wouldn't speak. She seemed to understand directions. I had known her for several years and had never heard a peep out of her. She had been a nurse during, I believe, the Korean War. She was sitting in the solarium day room and I heard her say, "I know a good nurse when I see one and there aren't any around here." I alerted the others and one of the doctors came in with a recorder and sat with her for several hours. Her voice was very weak and raspy from not using it for so long and she was a little hard to understand at first. She spoke about being an Army nurse and other aspects of her life. She talked about things that had happened on that unit and mentioned some things she felt the nurses had done wrong. Then she quit talking and, as far as I know, never did it again. It about blows my mind every time I think about it. Where had she been and where did she go?

The eyes of the "unloveables"

Today was our church service at a local mental health care center. While Carl was speaking, I was looking at each person sitting there. All were listening carefully and respectfully. Because I also go there weekly to do a "Bible study", I know them all pretty well.
I saw in their eyes a soul and spirit that God had placed there. A spirit which has been beaten up by mental illness and the stigma that goes with it. In spite of that, most of them are friendly and as happy as they probably can be anywhere. I know that a lot of them had been basically turned away by their families because of years of mental illness, behavior problems, drugs, or alcohol. Many do have family members who are in contact. Many have schizophrenia or bipolar diagnoses and have probably been sick most of their lives. There are a few elderly but most are probably under 60, many in their 30s or 40s.

I was thinking... "who loves these people?" I do. They trust me and treat me very well. Some of the staff love them. Some have worked there for many years and consider the residents their own special family. Others can't take it for very long but it's just as well that they move on. It is a difficult place to work. Every staff member has to know all the behavior modifications for each resident, if there is a problem. Who else loves them? God, for sure. For some reason he allowed them to be affected by mental illness. Why, I don't know. But whenever someone treats them kindly, he is treating God's creation kindly, and He gets the glory.

Momma in a rowboat

When I was in junior high, my Mom had 3 or 4 heart attacks before they could get her to a doctor. She spent several weeks in a hospital in a town about 80 miles from us. While she was there she started hemorrhaging. The choices were to do a hysterectomy and chance her not surviving because of her heart, or let her bleed to death. She did fine with the surgery. When she came home she was bedbound. Our small town was only a couple of miles from the convergence of two rivers. It was expected that both rivers would crest at the same time and possibly flood our area. My brother and his family lived on a farm on the other side of one of the rivers. We drove my mother to the near side of the river and she was loaded on a rowboat and taken across the river where my brother got her and took her to his house. First of all, my mother couldn't swim and had never been in a rowboat on a river that was at flood stage (who has?). She was pretty helpless also. I don't remember ever feeling so forlorn as I did while standing there watching her cross that river (this sentence makes me feel a little weepy). I recall that night when the flood was predicted to happen. We lived a mile or two from the other river but I swore I could hear water lapping on the side of our house. As it turned out, one river crested before the other and only some land in the immediate area was flooded.

The doctors didn't think my Mom would survive that heart condition but she managed to do very well until age 95. We always leave God out of the equation, don't we?

Snake extinguisher

Years ago I worked as activities director on an Alzheimer's closed unit in a nursing home located pretty much on a prairie. The unit had a solarium with a door which led to an outside fenced yard. One morning I was glancing through the casual notes the nurses sometimes made. The latest entry said "Little rattlesnake found in solarium. Please note: fire extinguisher does not extinguish snakes."

WHAT!!???

Assisted-Suicide Advocates Target Mentally Ill


Can you believe this? I have been thinking about such a possibility for a long time, with all the talk about the "burden" on the taxpayers caused by the aging "Baby Boomers". I was thinking, now our govenment will allow all the old and damaged people to be "helped".



Jacob Appel, who teaches at Brown University in Providence, R.I., wrote in the May-June issue of the Hastings Center Report that the arguments used to defend assisted suicide for the terminally ill can be applied "in many cases of purely psychological disease," including "repeated bouts of severe depression."


For the full article go to http://www.citizenlink.com/ July 10th and look for the title as it is at the top of this posting.

Seven

I was tagged to write seven things about myself. I can't tag any other bloggers because I only know one and she's the one who tagged me.

1. I know how to snap a banana in half without a knife.
2. I am an overthinker, which usually gets me more frustration than information.
3. I don't actually hate anyone or anything except sin, satan and those who rape and kill little children.
4. I love my daughters and husband and actually also like them. Also my grandchildren and sons-in-law. There are no duplicates among them.
5. I tolerate bad cat behavior much more than I ever tolerated bad child behavior. Ask my daughters.
6. I have a special calling from God to love old people, disabled people, mentally ill people. I love Downs Syndrome people.
7. I hate housework, am a clutterer, and would much rather sit around and contemplate ideas. I do have lots of books on organizing but I can't find them.