As I draw nearer to the end of my time in this nursing home, I find that my patience is ebbing even as my physical strength grows.
The phenomenon I've described is not unusual, people who work at the facility tell me. But it is a situation that leaves me somewhat disappointed in myself.
When I first arrived here, I used to have a lot more tolerance for the idiosyncrasies of the patients. Once upon a time, I could listen to an elderly woman babble incoherently for 45 minutes without complaint. Now I tend to cringe when I see her coming. It's the same with much of the other behavior I see around here. After listening to the same story 45 times in a row, after listening to the first two lines of Silent Night repeated over and over for the last year and watching all sorts of socially unacceptable behavior without comment now I can barely stop from screaming at these people.
Intellectually, I can remind myself that these are, after all, beloved children of God. But after spending hours every day leading them back to their rooms and preventing them from hurting themselves by vaulting out of their wheelchairs and by helping them find the assistance they need to resolve a crisis, real or imagined, I find myself suffering from near-constant fatigue.
Such caregivers fatigue is not unusual for family members who take care of someone with a disability. In my case I'm helping out people who are barely more than strangers to me. I realize that it is a Biblical imperative that we render assistance to those in need. But in a facility like this, it seems like very lonely work indeed.
Just the other night, I was rolling back to my room when I came upon a female resident pitched forward in her chair, her head less than six inches from the carpet. The alarm in her chair was beeping loudly and insistently, but the nurse at the nurse's station (a distance of maybe 20 feet) had become so used to the sound of alarms that she didn't even look up from her paperwork until I yelled at her. I had hooked my arm underneath the patient's shoulder and was trying to keep her from toppling when reinforcements finally arrived.
And that is just one day. Lately it seems that every day I experience a litany of other patients needs. I intercede on these patient's behalf so that the patients can get taken to the bathroom, taken out of the bathroom, diapers changed, get snacks, get food and get pills. The list never seems to end.
And so I find myself dreaming of the day when I get out of here. It's hard to imagine what it would be like not to be under scrutiny whenever I eat, sleep, shower or have a bowel movement. Peace and quiet sounds like heaven.
Is that wrong of me?