Saturday, July 23, 2011

True Comedy; Stupid Things I Have Said ~ Episode 1

Yes, I am changing things up here for today.  I just was reading a conversation on a message board about the really stupid things people have said or done. 

I'll share mine here because:
......1) I've said and done a LOT of stupid things.
......2) I think it would be fun to have a series of these things for you to read
......3) Yes, you should feel special that I'll share.

This very first incident happened to me when I was 20.  I was working as a Registered Nursing Assistant in my family-owned Adult Family Home.  An AFH is a small nursing facility in a home setting where you can have up to 6 elderly or disabled adults living.  Nursing care is provided up to very high levels of medical care and even until the patient dies, if requested.  The family of the residents are encouraged to come often and they did.

One particular patient had a son that I would often chat with, as over two years we saw him a lot.  I'll call him "Gruff".  Gruff liked dogs and did bird-dog training, so we had a lot in common.  We often chatted about dogs, training, gear and the like.

One hot summer afternoon Gruff came to see his Dad.  He walked in, I said my hello, had some small talk.  Normally what I would wear on the job didn't even matter, but for this story I'll tell you I had on jeans and a regular tee shirt.  I looked very normal that day.

About half an hour later Gruff came back out, and told me he was going to the Pharmacy to pick up some vitamins and such for his Dad.  He'd be back in a while.  Ok, see ya later. 

A few minutes later I did a round of checking the resident hall way, I went down, checking on everyone.  When I no sooner stepped into the hall when the smell hit me.  Ok, so being a caregiver I had cleaned up a lot of poop.  Lots and lots, and so not such a big deal to me.  I knocked on the offenders door, she was a cute old lady, but had some dementia issues.  This was to be the worse BM "accident" I had ever dealt with.  Poop was all over the bed, sheets, blankets and HER!  It took me over a half hour to clean everything up, strip her bed and get her into the bathroom so I could clean her hands and wrists.  Nasty.

I don't think I really need to tell you this, but I will anyway.  When you spend that much time in a closed room with poop, the smell gets into your sinuses and often takes half the day to leave completely.  That means, for the next several hours, no matter what you are smelling, poop is part and parcel of that experience.  Fun huh? 

...So when I kept smelling poop I didn't think too much of it, except when I went to go use the bathroom myself (No, just to pee), I saw a blob of poop on my jeans!!  No wonder the smell was so persistently following me! 

I raced down stairs to where my Mom lived, not as a resident -- she was half owner of the AFH-- her job was Care Manager and was the LPN on staff.  So she lived there.  I needed clean pants.  My dear Mother offers me some of her leggings. Hmmmm..at the time I wasn't fat, but my Mom is about three inches shorter and a lot more slightly built than I.  So her leggings fit me only because they were stretchy.  They were capri's on me, not on her, I stretched them out really bad.  I looked like what was just stuck to my jeans. Crap.  Plus I had a tee shirt on that didn't cover my butt, so I had black, stretchy, thin material covering my bootay, and the lovely panty lines to top off my look.  Being 20 this mattered a whole lot to me!!  But what could I do?  I had to wear them, it was my only option.

I went back upstairs, and by this time it was lunch and I was super busy.  I tried not to feel self conscious in my leggings, but I did.  After lunch I got all our residents back to their rooms for their naps, phone calls, toiletings and the normal stuff I did daily.

--Another side note into the life of any one in the medical field.  We have laws called HIPPA, in a nut-shell they are the laws that say you cannot talk about a patient with anyone, give any personal information such as names, birth dates, ect.  I knew these laws and tried hard to follow them.--

About the time I was supposed to be taking a break, Gruff came back from the Pharmacy with his dad's stuff.  It had been probably about an hour and half since he'd left.  To my horror he looked at me a little odd -- Yes he noticed my pants.  I'm sure my face was pretty red, but to his credit he didn't say anything.  I got slightly flustered.

Right about that time I got a call on our monitoring system that another resident needed some assistance.  I ended up following Gruff down the hall.  As we entered the hall way he goes, "Whoa!" and waves the air.  Yep that much time later the smell still lingered.  I always wanted to keep things clean at the AFH, and the smell and his reaction compounded my flustered feelings all the more.

My mind raced to find a good explanation to the unpleasant odor, as I felt like he would think I wasn't doing my job since it smelled bad.



"Someone had an accident, thats why I had to change my pants!". 

There!! I brilliantly not only explained the smell, but in one fell swoop I got to tell him why I was wearing these horrible pants.

Well..except his reaction and my own realization of what I said happened about the same time.  As he did an about-face, snapped around and looked at me, his head cocked to the side, with a clear expression of disgust.  Yeah at that same moment I realized he interpreted my comment like this:

"I crapped my pants and had to change them, so that's why it stinks in here."

And I thought I was flustered before.  I don't remember exactly what I managed to stammer out as, yet another, explanation. Something like, "umm...I didn't mean me, I meant, someone else...err..you know? I can't say who...but not me..really." 

Gruff didn't say a word, which made it worse.  He just turned around while I was in the middle of my stammering, red faced, inferno of embarrassment.  And he just walked away.

And my Brother-in-Law heard the whole thing on the monitor.  He yelled down the hall way: "Just shut-up Jamie before you make it worse!!"  Thank you Andrew.

3 comments:

Lindsay Artsy-Fartsy Mama said...

HAHA Best. Story. EVER! :)

Anonymous said...

LOL! Awesome!
Ellie

Carrie Ann said...

Oh my gosh I am loling so hard! You poor thing!! :-)