I was pretty busy helping out at the nursing home today. We are short-staffed because the director Gennadiy is away for the weekend and two of the regular staff are sick. So today nurse Evhenia and I did all of the “downstairs” work together. “Downstairs work” means everything except food preparation. Downstairs work includes sanitation and hygiene for the residents, serving meals, spoon-feeding the residents who can’t feed themselves, washing laundry, mopping floors, cleaning toilets, taking out the trash and so on. In addition, I washed all the dirty eating utensils after lunch and Evhenia washed up after dinner. There was another volunteer here this morning who washed the dishes after breakfast. It’s a lot of work for three people, but I’m sure if I and my fellow volunteer hadn’t been here, Evhenia would have gotten it all done by herself – she’s super effective.
I started the morning before Evhenia arrived by checking quickly to see which bed-ridden residents needed to have their diapers changed before breakfast. I found two residents with leaky diapers who needed to have their bedding changed first thing. There was also a third man who usually doesn’t need diapers, but who had wet his bed during the night. I missed him when I was checking though, because I was only thinking about the really helpless, incapacitated people who are always in diapers. But I did find a fourth man, who is usually not bed-ridden, but didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. He started feeling uncomfortable yesterday, and this morning he had a terrible sore throat. He didn’t get out of bed today, and I think during the entire day he only ate half a sandwich and drank a little bit of tea.
Another one of the bed-ridden old ladies didn’t want to eat today either. Each time we sat her up, she just wanted to flop back down into her bed. In the end, we were able to feed her half a banana while she was lying down, but she didn’t drink anything.
Gennadiy and his wife were ill last week; now two of the other regular staff are too sick to work and several residents are also running fevers – I’m afraid we may be heading into a rough flu season here. I expect I’ll probably catch it too, any day now.
Despite the hectic morning, by afternoon things were under control and Evhenia and I actually had some free minutes to place some more pieces in the jigsaw puzzle we’ve laid out in the residential activity hall. While we were playing with the puzzle, one of the residents, Victor, rolled over in his wheelchair to chat. He wanted to tell me about his daughter in the United States. He’s dreaming about going to America too. Gennadiy had already told me something about Victor’s situation. There are some complications, for example his daughter is having difficulty getting a Ukrainian passport for him (perhaps because of wartime disruptions, I’m not sure) and also, because of health issues, Victor would need to be accompanied by a doctor during a flight to the United States. If there are any doctors in the audience who would be willing to consider coming to Ukraine to escort Victor to his daughter in Massachusetts, please feel free to contact me by email at [email protected].