Personal Narrative: A Career As A Nursing Home

Juniors in high school are expected to have an idea of what they want to do with their lives. My plan for myself then was to become a physical therapist. I entered the Lewis and Clark nursing program in hopes of being one step ahead for achieving that goal. However, that dream was soon awakened with a reality check. While going through this program, I learned I still wanted to help people, only not physically. And so, my life plan that I once laid out for myself needed to be reconsidered. We began our clinical rotations in March and my teacher was already well aware of my desire to find a new focus. With that notion in her mind, she decided to place me in the memory care unit of a nursing home. This disposition would unveil the world of geriatric mental illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease. Many of the patients that surrounded me were

Many times I would walk in to catch her with a book in her hand and her small framed reading glasses on ; other times she was watching the news on television. She was still living her normal routine as if she wasn’t trapped inside a nursing home, but maybe that’s because she wasn’t aware. At first, I had not recognized that she had a mental illness. I thought maybe she was only in the unit because she couldn’t get along with patients in the regular components of the nursing home. Still, my first impression should never make me question what a person is going through. I would soon learn how much she was struggling. After the first week went by I began to pick up on the tendencies of my patients. While I was helping another patient eat she would ask me what day it was so she could look it up on her calendar. Once the calendar that sat alongside her plate was marked with her blue inked pen, it would be a few minutes before she asked again. I would have to repeat myself frequently, but I didn’t mind. I was there to help these patients with whatever they