You gotta realize that being a Nurse can be hugely frustrating, in the course of one 12 hour period, spent tending to an angry old man. Heck, no wonder he is angry. His body has betrayed him. He is but a whisper of a pale shadow of a previously virile young man. Now he is nearly blind and deaf. He wishes he died back in the glory days of W-W-II. Now all he can do is fight everybody and everything. No doubt even our ministrations to his wasted body are painful. He's so weak he can't even lift his old pistol to shoot himself. And now, I have to be his target for the next 12 hours. Don't call me callous, until you've been in a Nurses' shoes.


A Nasty Old Snot

Are you deaf?
Did he hear me
Most certainly not,
Are you blind?
Did he see me
Not likely, I thought,
Yet here I am screaming
And gesturing wildly,
My frustration boiling
And that’s putting it mildly,
I feel I’ve been chosen
Plucked out of the crowd,
To be the nurse for the night
That must scream very loud.

He won’t follow orders
He won’t use the bell,
He mumbles and hollers
“Won’t you all go to hell”,
I can’t shut his door
Or even close the curtain,
If I do that
He’ll climb out of bed
That’s for certain.

He’s a pain in the butt
And a nasty old snot,
It’s a wonder he hasn’t
Already been shot,
By some frustrated caretaker
Whose patience eroded,
Got the gun from the kitchen
That was already loaded,
Then blasted away
With hardly a miss,
Why, a life in prison
Would be better than this!

Fibril_late; 6/96