Sunday, August 17, 2008

i saw 90-year-old balls

i thought that working in a nursing home would be fun. deen gave me the idea to work at one close to our apartment. i went in there to fill out an application and was told that the qualification of living in the area alone might just get me in the door. for some stupid reason i thought "great i'm in the door." it was also great that i was considering going back to school, once i finally finish this degree, and going into nursing.
after interviewing (barely) i was told to come in to shadow another worker to see if this is the type of job i'd be interested in. "yay" i thought. "i'll LOVE this job." at 7 a.m. i arrived (damn, i hate mornings) and met the woman i was to follow. as we arrived in the first woman's room to wake her, i saw her feet sticking from under the covers, and all i could think was "please god, don't let her be dead." i saw her feet kick slightly and i was happier than a stripper after young jeezy walks into the club. but then we went into the next room, a man's. and the woman i shadowed (taishon) lifted him, stripped him down, took off his diaper (EW!), and helped him into the shower. and he stood there all old and wrinkly, with balls as big as all out doors. there is absolutely NO COMING BACK from something that traumatic. this will be my job. dear lord.to be honest, after the short 4 hours i spent in this place i found myself wondering if nursing is really what i want to do. i mean seriously, i want a career, not a job. but i don't want to be on my feet for the next 30 or 40 years until i retire. so now i'm also rethinking the possibility of nursing. i've decided that i'm just going to watch how things go for me at this job to determine if nursing is something that i really want to do.
on top of all the other stuff, this job really brought out the notion of mortality. i found myself thinking about myself at their age, my own mother at their age, my grand parents who were in the same shape as these people when they died. would i want to be here one day? would i want my mother to be here? don't get me wrong, in all seriousness, these people were very well taken care of by the staff. its just the old man balls/EW!/please-don't-let-them-die-on-my-shift/mortality thing that kind of freaks me out. in short, all of it. initially, i had a decent amount that i'm expecting to receive for this job. when i talked taishon, she explained that they will try to pay me less than i expected. so all of this AND i'll get paid less than i wanted. ain't this a bitch?

1 comment:

Don said...

Yep, and it's also scary. LOL.