Your Morning at a Nursing Home

Most the time you expect wake up at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning in a nursing home it doesn’t. It usually starts about 4:30 a.m. when somebody comes wheeling in a large dolly loaded with supplies for the nursing home that sounds very much like the old horse and wagon they used during the plague of the 14th century. The driver of this wagon used to rumble through town crying out, “Bring out your dead, bring out your dead.” That is how you wake up in the morning at about 4:30 from that time on there is always something going on and you will not get any more real sleep. Around five o’clock in the morning the aides and the nurse will appear for various tests and vital signs. This is another thing that will wake you up and it just goes on from there.

They start getting you ready for breakfast at about six o’clock in the morning, but even before that the cleaning people come to mop the floor and pick up anything that is lying around. The lights go on at about 6 a.m. by and this time at least a paper placemat is placed on your bedside table already for breakfast. It takes quite a while after that that you actually get breakfast and this is served in dribs and drabs. The first thing to come is a plastic cup full of ice water with a straw sticking out of the top of it. After that they deliver your drinks coffee, tea, milk and orange juice depending upon your choice. A little after that somebody else comes in and plops down a bowl of hot cereal whether you want it or not. Finally a bit after eight o’clock in the morning your breakfast actually arrives it is usually scrambled eggs and it has been scrambled eggs for 20 out of 21 days. Once in a great while you are apt to receive blueberry pancakes where the blueberries are so few and far between they must’ve hitchhiked to get to the pancakes. The pancakes are served with some kind of syrup that actually resembles crankcase drippings from the local lube shop, and are dried out so that they more resemble hockey pucks then pancakes.

Generally you have about a half hour to eat breakfast when if you are lucky one of the aides will come into your room with some towels and washcloths so you can wash up in the morning. More often than not to you have to go find these people if you are able to and have them bring the necessary stuff to your room to wash up.

Some of the people are actually bedridden and really don’t get up during the day at all unless it is to go to a doctor or some other kind of appointment they have a for instance the hospital, and they are usually taken there by van or ambulance. This is an added charge and you’re already large bill, and the nursing home manages to charge you extra for just about anything else you need.

I always thought cruise ships were bad for add-ons, but they are two-bit pikers compared to nursing homes!