Spilling the Beans

I try to keep up on some Ohio news, just so I can pretend to myself that I remember all those early years growing up along the Ohio River
,

I read in an Ohio news article that today is 

World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.

Old people are sometimes, nay, often,  mistreated.

Shocker.  Not even.



As a nurse, I can tell you, old people are not the easy ones to take care of.

And furthermore, now that I am old, I can go ahead and spill the beans on why we are...err....difficult:

We are slow.  At least slower than the young people who aren't on drugs.

We are opinionated, even if we are silent.  Nasty words, or silent powerful vibes, lambast those around us, even care-givers.

We are fetchin' tired of .....well, so many things.  You know.

We are sometimes so discouraged it occurs to us we would be better off dead.
And while in that mood,  we conduct ourselves accordingly: ( skip exercise, skip our medications, double up on our medication, pretend we followed orders when we didn't, eat forbidden food, smoke, do drugs, drink alcohol, do not answer the annoying phone or door bell, won't talk or answer questions, won't shut up, quit wearing our hearing aids, throw our little bowl of applesause at the nearest human, waste money, hide important things, ....)  You get the picture.

We are either poor and appropriately frightened because of our financial situation, or we have resources and we worry there are vultures circling.  We are far more paranoid than we used to be.  Heck, we may be old but we are not stupid!  Frankly, our paranoia is an intelligent response to reality.

Our brain is not as good as once it was (but we're not stupid!) and it lets us down from time to time, and we act.....old.

Our hormones are MEGA screwed up (the testosterone-estrogen thing)..............................................
 or have disappeared (the thyroid hormone, growth hormone, gastrin, insulin, pancreatic polypeptides, epineprine, melatonin...etc, etc thing).

Even if we have accomplished a lot, and many of us have, it is past tense and doesn't really cheer us up nor keep us from stubbing our freaking toe.


Of course we aren't the sweeties we try to be!



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My favorite scene from my nursing career was responding to screams from the men's ward and rushing in to find two old men strapped in wrecked overturned wheelchairs sprawled on the floor but close enough to still be slugging each other.  It was my job as a young nurse to stop the brawl, get these buggers out of their wheel chairs, lay the buggers onto the floor (far apart) so I could lift the wheelchairs into the upright position, and get these old buggers off the floor and back into their wheelchairs.

I was 23 years old.  How much understanding do you think I had?






As good old Mom always said, "Be careful.  What goes around comes around."



Aging gives most of us ample "object lessons"  to practice the art of forgiveness.
We gotta forgive the carelessly unthinking younger peoples.

Maybe even repent of how carelessly unthinking we used to be with some old folks.
Hard core repentance if we actually stole from them!!!!

I appreciate your visit to my blog,
Riverwatch