The Power of A Smile.

I thought I would write a cute slash semi funny blogpost. I know I'm kinda slacking on this, but I am really really busy with school. ANYWAYS... to my point. For my nursing courses we need to go to clinical for part of our grades. Sophomore year we go to either nursing homes or elderly care facilities. I was assigned to a nursing home in Trumbull, which I really liked a lot. We go for like a couple hours and have a task to do when we get there. One was feeding and another was teaching our patient about one of the drugs they take. It can be hard, but really rewarding. You either walk out of there feeling like a million bucks after having a few laughs with these people or you leave feeling horrible knowing that these people go to this place basically to end their lives. Either way, the people in these homes are awesome. Enough of this sadness, my story is about feeding our patient's their morning meals.

My patient, Carol, is a wonderful woman. She has dementia and some other things that you probably wouldn't know about, but the main point is the fact that she has dementia. For those of you who don't know what dementia is, it's the loss of brain function. It makes you lose a lot of speaking, cognitive, and motor skills. There are different stages, and poor Carol was probably in the worst. She couldn't feed herself, couldn't voluntarily move her limbs, and couldn't talk (making sense). My partner and I would continue to feed her, as we were told, while my instructor came in and out watching our work. Poor Carol had the worst food to eat too, kinda like disgusting cafeteria food from middle school. Super cereal (pureed cereal) was her favorite and the soggy french toast deffinitely was not. She had an array of drinks as well, but it was especially hard pouring a drink down her throat without a straw (people with serious dementia are not allowed to have straws). Carol mumble many words and suddenly would shout here and there, but you cannot really answer these people because you don't really know what they are saying in the fist place. "Just continue feeding and do your best" was what we were told each time my instructor came in the room, but I was still curious- are we just supposed to ignore what these people are saying, just because you don't know what they are talking about? I did ask my instructor and she told me that you just need to keep going about your business and tell them that they need to "complete the task at hand". I understand that, but if I was couped up in one room for the rest of my life, I would want someone there talking to me even if what I was saying was nonsense.

Anyways, as Carol sat there mumbling and in between taking sips of orange juice or chewing her soggy toast- she would suddenly smile. In between everything, her abrupt shouts and even awkward silences were interupted with a big laugh and smile- directly at me. I would spoon her some food and she would look right up at me and smile, and of course... I would smile back. Sometimes people do not realize how much the power of a smile really means to someone. One of the first things I learned as a nursing student is to smile at everyone you meet, because you never know how much that smile helped them out. This woman couldn't talk, she could barely move, but she could smile. And I smiled back and she would laugh.

Before I left her that day, I told her I would come back and visit her even if I wasn't at clinical. I'm sure she didn't know what I was talking about, but she still went from looking down at her lap, right up at my eyes, and smiled and nodded. This woman has dementia, and even in the worst stages, she understood and she WAS able to understand the effects of a smile. She didn't know what I was saying, but she did learn that someone cared.

(By the way, nursing homes aren't all sadness, some of the men and women who live in this particular home are pretty crafty and joke around with you. Especially the woman who yelled at me from her room to come bring her her breakfast RIGHT AWAY because she was hungry! Yeah, yeah, get off my back lady... I'm not your butler.)



Anyways, a smile goes a long way... smile on. :)