"Aw poor Betty, she was only 92.. may God rest her......... WHAT? She promised ME her hearing aid! GET AWAY FROM HER DRAWER! NURSE!! NNNUUUURRRSSSEE!"
Anyway, being so aware of the cost of hearing aids and the fact that if one were to get lost, that person may likely go the rest of his/her life without being able to hear; it's kind of a big deal if one goes missing during a hospital stay.
Enter a sweet 87 year old with a quick wit and a gummy smile save for a solitary tooth jutting from her middle lower gumline appearing to be approximately 2 inches long... and she calls it Old Faithful.
I mean, really how can you not love this lady? LOL
Anyway, she was discharged back to a local nursing home. I thought she had a hearing aid when I saw her the day before, but it wasn't in when the ambulance crew got there and I didn't see it listed anywhere on her belonging list. I thought maybe I was just imagining she had one and she was a little confused so when I asked her if she wears a hearing aid she said "I don't think so."
About 30 minutes after she was picked up, a cleaning lady came out of the room and asked me if I was "looking for this.." and she held out a hearing aid. I was SO HAPPY she found it because 1. the poor old lady wouldn't be able to hear a damn thing without it 2. Desperate Housewives was a new episode that night and she loves that show (we talked about it a lot lol) and 3. I'm usually not wrong about stuff like that, so it was reassuring that I wasn't losing my marbles.
Now, the next step, getting it to her. The nursing home was about 10 minutes from my house, so I called them and told them I was going to drop it off for her. The nursing home is HUGE. It's owned by the State and there's several buildings to the complex and one of the towers has like 9 floors or some shit. Nonetheless, I was there for nursing clinicals a few years ago, so I was relatively familiar with it and thought I wouldn't have too much trouble navigating my way around.
What I didn't take into account was the fact that it was a Sunday night and pretty much every entrance was locked and the building she was in was in a section that I was completely unfamiliar with. It was also an unseasonably warm, balmy March night and there were tons of vehicles filled with loud teenagers driving around in the lot. (not sure why they were hanging out at a nursing home..) I was a little on edge seeing as how it was dark, I had just worked 13 hours for the second day in a row and I was sore and tired. Also, the lighting wasn't very good , so while I was walking around looking for an entrance I could get into, I accidentally walked over this little bendy stripey pole thing that was poking out of the grass by a sidewalk and whacked myself in the lady station. Of course, I was so mortified that someone might have seen that, the pain was totally muted by my trying to remain composed during a feigned attempt in acting as though nothing at all happened.
Then I happened by an area with large windows and inside I saw a bunch of tables set up and a group of people in their 20s-50s sitting at tables and one person standing there dressed all in black and talking. "Oh great, I can't go in there, they are having an AA meeting.", I thought to myself. Finally, I broke down and called the lone receptionist lady and told her where I was and that I was standing outside the building where the meeting is going on with the big glass windows. She said "A meeting??" I said "Yeah, there's a whole bunch of people sitting at tables and there's a pastor talking to them. Looks like an AA meeting.." She said, "Okay, I will be right down and I will wave outside the door so you will see me. You can hand me the hearing aid out there." She came out a right by where I was and she said "Are you talking about those people over there?" and she pointed at the people sitting at the tables. I said "Yep! That's them!" She said "That's not an AA meeting, that's the CNAs taking a break!!" We both started cracking up and I said, "Well wait to break it to them that they look like a bunch of AA members until AFTER I pull away in the parking lot, OKAY?" lol
At least it was a good Desperate Housewives on that night. And I had frozen peas in the freezer and wine in the fridge.
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