So I was pouring water down a man's feeding tube yesterday. He has neck cancer so he can't eat solid food and has what is called a PEG tube coming out of his bellybutton. Well, he is very noncompliant and doesn't do his feedings (to feed himself he pours a can of something like Ensure down the tube several times a day). And his labs showed that he was dehydrated... hence the pouring water down his tube. Okay so anyway, I was sitting there with a cup of water in one hand and the tube in the other, and I figure I might as well make conversation (I feel pretty close to him at this point). He said he lives in Country Town* (*name has been changed to protect the innocent), so I asked him what he did in Country Town. His response made me laugh: "My wife and I own the gay bar." As I said, I started laughing because I thought he was kidding. He was not. The end.
You may not think this a funny story. However, if you were to think about a small town in Mississippi having a gay bar, you may start laughing. As I did.
Hmmmm...thinking...thinking....
Got another one!!
Nursing homes have never really been my thing. Long-term care can be pretty depressing. The following story couldn't be any farther away from depressing...
I have been to the nursing home in Pontotoc, MS on three separate occasions during my Tupelo rotation, and there is this older (duh, they are old) couple that caught my eye each time. The wife appears to be much more frail than the husband, and they sit side by side, chairs touching, in the common area all day long (there isn't much to do when you live in a nursing home). So they sit. And while they sit, the husband is constantly leaned over the arm of his chair so that he can be touching the wife's arm/hand at all times. She looks at him and around at other things, but all the while he is looking at her. All day long. As he looks at her, he'll talk to her...to which he receives very little response from his wife (I'm telling you, she is the very definition of frail). Once I passed by and he was stroking his wife's hair back off of her face. Are you crying yet? Or at least reminded of how you cried when you watched The Notebook for the first time? That's pretty much my story about them, but what a powerful representation of the love between a husband and a wife. At the end of their years this couple still knows what it means to adore someone. Till death do them part.
Love and miss.
