An Ode to Certified Nurse's Aides

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When I worked at a nursing home as a nurse's aide, I realized something that seemed so obvious yet I've never heard anyone talk about it. I realized that the basic functional unit of a nursing home is the nurse's aide, the certified nursing assistant. CNAs are why they build nursing homes. Sure, there are nurses, but their main job is med passing--being in charge of, say, thirty patients at once. That makes them more like ancillary staff, like the occupational therapists. The reason people go to (or, er, are put into) nursing homes to help with their activities of daily living, when they can't bathe, eat, or toilet themselves. It's not a glamorous job, but people in the United States typically don't want to do this themselves. Whatever. The point is, the basic unit of the nursing home is the certified nursing assistant. And your CNAs will, for better or worse (and trust me, there are worse!), have the most impact on your nursing home experience. I don't think people realize that, or care. That's probably a function of the throw-away nature of the nursing home: in general, people get disposed of there until they die.

I always wanted to write a book about my nursing home experiences. First of all, it's sort of like a prison. Some people go to stay as permanent inmates, and others (the post-hospital rehabilitation patients, if your nursing home has them) will get discharged. People are there for all sorts of reasons: permanent debilitation, temporary rehab, even simple reasons like IV medications. On the same day, in the same hallway, there would be some people sitting in wheelchairs, screaming and talking gibberish, and a young guy getting treatment for AIDS walking among them. The same room (two beds to a room, of course) would have a old long-term resident in Bed 1 who can't walk and needs two people to get him into the wheelchair or onto the commode, and a young construction worker with broken legs in Bed 2 who needs the same exact assistance.

I remember an older woman who loved seeing pictures of my baby (wow, I just said "baby" singular - I only had one at the time!). She was so friendly and perpetually sat in her wheelchair by the front door to greet people. Never saw her family...until she died, when they came out and filled the room and spilled out into the hallway. She was completely comatose and breathing agonally and some young kid was playing guitar for her. I'm like...she probably would've liked this back when, you know, she was conscious.

There are so many other stories. Someday I'll dig around in my brain and come up with all of them.

Also, Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe should visit a nursing home. But somehow I don't think even that show could go that far.