THIS IS THE PRINCESS ...TERRY
I have been a nurse for the past 26 years. Over the course of that time I have worked with the elderly and some of the things they do are sometimes very funny. This is one of the stories that I found very funny over the years that happened late at night. The resident involved was a 105 year old man. He was never married, very determined to have his own way and a source of many a laugh over the years I took care of him. This is the story that made all the employees ask each other "Where in the world did he go?"
About 1 am as the nurses aides were makeing their rounds checking patients one of them came to me and asked if I had seen Frank. I told her "no". She said that when they had gone down the hall he had been in his bed but he was not there now. Of course I began to help them look. And look we did for the next ten minutes....everywhere we could think of to find him. One of the aides went outside (the alarm for the doors was on and he had a patient alert braclet on but she felt she had better look anyway) to look around and see if possibly he had somehow gotten out of the building. We continued to look inside knowing we would find him soon. Suddenly Margie came flying down the hall calling my name. When I reached her she said he was outside and was sitting on the swing in the gazebo. She was laughing the whole time she was telling me. Well it seems our buddy Frank had somehow gotten his alarm braclet off and had gone out to sit down, after all he was old and he got tired easily. He did not go far and he decided to rest. When I got to the gazebo I discovered what Margie had been laughing so hard about. Sitting on the swing was Frank.... he was naked and barefoot. He was very hard of hearing and I attempted to talk to him to get him to return to the building without wakeing the whole neighborhood up by hollering at him. I got real close to him and bent down to talk directly in his ear. I said "Frank aren't you cold out here? No answer. "Frank dont you want to come back in and go to bed and get warm?" to which I got still no answer. Once again i attempted to get him to hear me by speaking louder in his ear. "Frank want some cookies and milk, lets go in and getsome I am hungry." He just looked at me and smiled. I asked him two more times if he wanted to come in or was he hungry or cold to which I still got no reply. He just grunted like he was disguusted I had asked him. Finally I said " Frank lets go in its getting really cold out here and I am freezing to death. Now you don't want to see me freeze do you?" Finally I got an answer from him. He stood up and started to go back to the door mumbling the whole time. I asked him what he was saying and the reply I got was this. "You fool women ain't you got any better sense than to bother a man when he is trying to take a crap". I looked behind him on the swing where he had been sitting and sure enough I found the reason he had been outside to begin with all along. He had been looking for the OUTHOUSE and he thought he had found it. He walked to the door, went in walked directly down the hall and got back into bed as if nothing had ever happened. I helped him into a gown , covered him up and told him good night. As I was leaveing the room I heard him say to his roommate. "Now that is why I never had a wife.... The stupid fools can't even let a man take a crap without gettin all up in his face". Of course the staff got their laugh of the night and it made the night go a lot faster just laughing and thinking about what he must have thought when he saw me standing there. Sometimes working in a nursing home is one of the best places in the world for laughter.
