Being in long-term care is a calling. It is a thankless job with a lot of negativity involved in daily interactions. Families guilt for not being able to care for their loved one is a cause of this negativity. Along with pressure from government regulation and the hard work conditions make this a particularly hard vocation. The deck is always stacked against the employees and management of these facilities.

I have witnessed hardworking and good people break from these pressures. This is where the morbid sense of humor comes from during stressful times. The normal person would not understand that it takes humor in difficult times to make it work and to survive emotionally. There is so much that people witness dealing with the elderly outside of what was mentioned earlier. This is the heart of what we do. It is helping people who can not take care of themselves any longer and holding their hand through the final moments of their lives.

One of these stories I am fixing to talk about. This is not meant to be cruel or taken lightly. But I think a glimpse of what we go through would open your eyes to what is dealt with in this business. Remember that we are people with feelings just like you and we have to go through these moments. So do not judge; just read and think of the situation and the people involved.

There was a physician who called us one day right after the Covid crisis hit our facility. We had lost too many loved souls and really did not need any residents that would burden our staff further. The physician begged us to take a person who was brain dead after a bout with drug addition that he had lost. He had been in the hospital for months and they needed the bed to take care of another Covid infected patient. After some arguing we agreed to help the hospital.

What we were told about this person was they were brain dead and had laid in the bed for months without any interaction with the staff. He was coming to us to die peacefully in a less clinical environment. This was hard for us after all that we had been through over the last month or so. But we wanted to help with the situation the hospital was in.

The person came into our facility and was indeed unresponsive. The family came in and were grateful that we could help and just wanted their loved one to be comfortable. All was well. We made the resident as comfortable as possible and started the process of preparing for the person to pass on to glory. This was an extraordinarily tall man with a large frame and the staff struggled with positioning and turning him. The family members came and said their goodbyes as they also were expecting a quick death.

The day progressed and all was well. Myself and the management crew finished up our shift making sure the night crew had what they needed. We crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s. It had been such a hard several months we all needed a good night’s rest. But unbeknownst to us this would not be the case.

Around 11:30 that night I received a call from the nursing home. The nurse on the other end was frantic. She struggled to get out her thoughts about what was happening at that moment. I took time to calm her and she began telling me the situation. “Chris, this person has come alive and he has crawled out of bed taking off his gown. He is trying to hit anyone who tries to help him and is dragging himself down the hallway trying to get out saying he needs a hit!” To say I was in shock was an understatement.

After some conversation and some attempts to help this man who was supposed to be brain dead, we ended up having to call his family to help us get him calmed. Then we called the physician who became outraged at what had happened and talked him into giving us some medicine to help calm the person. We dealt with this for several days before he came to his senses. Then he was transferred to a more appropriate facility to help with his addiction.

I have always thought our care was excellent but to bring someone back from being braindead was a new high for me. This is just another example of the ridiculousness of the healthcare system. So the next time you think to yourself why nurses and CNA’s laugh at the most inappropriate times, think of this story and know this is just one out of thousands that could be told.