I live in Marin County, California and with all the old wealthy people that live here, there were no beds available in a rehab/convalescent hospital or what the call a SNIF. I know SNIF stands for Skilled Nursing Facility but there are many smells that fragrant the air in these facilities that make you wonder about the chosen acronym! My family, my brother and brother-in-law live in the East Bay and San Francisco would be the closest so I chose a place called Tunnel Skilled Nursing & Rehabilitation Center on Pine St. One should know that when the term, Skilled Nursing comes before Rehabilitation, you should expect that it’s mostly an old age home with a lot of dementia, Alzheimer and just bat shit crazy elderly people. I love older people and I treat them with due respect but unfortunately I was put in a three bed room, in the middle bed, with a woman in her 60’s who was afraid of the dark and after two nights a elderly woman that clearly suffered from some type of dementia.
Lets start with the woman in her 60’s. She kept claiming that she had a buildup of wax in here ears so she needed people to speak up, and by speak up I mean scream whatever they needed to say her; not once but several times for every sentence they spoke to her. From what I overheard, Ear Wax lady or “Waxy” had some stitches in her toe and a bed sore on her butt. Apparently the bed sore gave her great discomfort and pain and made her scream out in agony if she was moved or the pillow was not placed under her bottom correctly. Also dropping her phone on the floor made her scream out like she was dying or if she couldn’t reach her water bottle. For some reason she was also afraid of the dark and demanded that her overhead light be kept on at all hours of the day and night on the highest setting. There are three settings, one being a dimmed setting but that was unacceptable to her. Did I mention that she basically slept 21 out of 24 hours per day? I had not slept but a few hours for the first two nights I was there. Between the light shining right into the opening of my top perforated curtain that looked like a SFO landing strip and her yelling directions at nurses and/or whoever she called on the phone and the pain in my leg, I started to get a bit grumpy. Would I ever sleep again? Doesn’t sleep aid in healing?
During the day I would listen to various patients yell for nurses. One guy, every three hours would yell “Hell-Low?!!!” three times and someone else in another room would yell “Shut the fuck up!” to match his Hell-Lows. There was a lot of noise from patients on the floor and I was next to the nursing station where they would laugh and talk and yell to each other all night. I would ask for the door to be closed but they would just open it again 10 min later. On Saturday, January 11th around 12:30 am an elderly woman was admitted to the bed closest to the door next to me. There was a lot of loud talking and settling her in but I was awake anyway so it didn’t really faze me. They finally got her all settled in and then they turned off her light. So her light is off, my light is off but Waxy’s light is full blast and I hear the curtains rustle on the new roommates side. I look down at the floor of her area and I see her feet on the ground pointed towards my cubicle. Before I even had time to figure out why her feet were pointing towards me, she stopped, dropped and rolled under the curtain and popped up, coming right at me. I am not kidding, this woman moved like a teenager and I could not move at all and she scared the hell out of me. She was like the Grandmother in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie The Visit. If you haven’t seen it, watch the part where the grandmother and the grandchildren are playing hide and seek under the house. This is exactly what this lady looked like coming right at me.
I yelled at her to get out of my area and she informed me that it was her office and that she was doing paperwork. The nurses came running in and she told them that I had called the police and that I was rude. They put her back into bed while she was muttering that she needed to leave and how romantic the male nurse was! After about five minutes, my heartbeat slowed to a normal rhythm when amazingly, she dropped and rolled under the curtain again!!!!! I’m not joking. I lost my mind. I was screaming at her to get out as she kept getting closer to me until the nurses and aides ran into the room again. I might have screamed out some new cuss words and then Waxy asked if I could be more quiet and thats when my head blew off my shoulders. I was screaming at her about what a selfish ass she is with the light and then I called my brother and asked him to steal a wheelchair and get me the hell out of this insane asylum immediately. I put the nurse on the phone with my brother, Waxy is yelling because she can’t hear me insulting her and Drop & Roll is saying she needs to play basketball!!!! The nurses moved dementia roller out of the room and then came back and moved me to the pod closest to the doorway, slightly away from Waxy’s landing strip lights. I made the nurses give me a higher dose of morphine so I could just pass out and pretend this was all a nightmare.
Ms. Glass 