"Playground" Fun

It's been an interesting week at "The Playground." My dear friend has occasional bouts with severe hallucinations and such was the case this week. She'd been up all night calling out, keeping any nearby residents awake, and causing a general disturbance. This woman, who is typically short on conversation, talked all day Monday and slept very little. Yesterday she, along with several others, was totally exhausted. (No surprise there.) A bit of chaos reigned in the facility.

Monday evening's dinner found "Ricky" mis- behaving. He glared across the table at "Sandy Man". "Stop taking my stuff!" he growled. " Sandy Man" stared blankly back at "Ricky" who then reached across the table and started to take "Sandy Man's" glass of water. When the attending aide attempted to intervene, "Ricky" became combative. He subsequently won the fight for the glass of water which he then threw all over the unsuspecting aide.

Last night at supper "May" attempted to clear our table.  I stopped her from taking another resident's unfinished plate of food. (She doesn't appreciate that.) "Perhaps," I thought to myself, "she would take these plastic lids to the trash." I handed them to her and made the suggestion, but she only looked me coldly in the eye and replied, "You can drop dead." I laughed out loud at the response as well as the expression on the face of the other aide at our table.

Because I am not an employee of the facility in which I work, the best way I can help them is to be an extra set of listening ears and watching eyes. We were settled into the living room last evening, the evening news and Wheel of Fortune on the television. The residents, many of them still off from sleep deprivation thanks to my friend (who was now sleeping), were in "rare" form. (I use that term loosely as they are quite often in "rare" form...) I glanced sideways as "Addie" removed her sweater. "She's too warm," I thought to myself. I looked away toward the other residents and when I looked back again, "Addie" had removed her shirt! (She can't see and evidently thought she was alone in her room.) I jumped up to find the aide who does "crowd control" and she came running just in time to prevent an all out "showing." Ah yes! Life in the Memory Care Unit is never dull.