Humor in Home Health Nursing
Please Join Me!
Once upon a time, as all true stories go, I was a nurse for an insurance company.
It was my job to visit people in their homes who had been injured on the job and who were drawing Workman’s Compensation benefits.
Making sure that the ‘patient’ was receiving excellent medical care was my task as I visited ‘patients’ in their homes. If they received top quality care, they would be able to return to work as soon as humanly possible. Thus, that would save the insurance company money in the long run.
Even though I was part-time, my territory was huge. It was SW Michigan and northern Indiana. I would drop off my son at school in the morning, hit the road, visit my patients for the day and arrive back at the school in time to pick up my son. It was the perfect job!
Thankfully, I could set my own schedule — where I would go and whom I would see.
A couple of memories stand out in my travels.
One ‘patient’ kept me at their home as they talked, talked and talked. I could NOT leave in time to pick up my son and I was an hour away from home. You can imagine my driving that day along dusty, bumpy country roads. I made it!
On another day, I had a ‘patient’ give me directions to his house so that I could visit him. I followed his directions perfectly and could NOT find his home. Being in the days before GPS and cell phones, I had to stop and call him from a pay phone to verify where he lived. I tried finding him again. Nope, I could NOT find his street. I stopped at another pay phone…same scenario. I was getting frustrated with steam coming out of my ears.
I finally realized that the man was probably dyslexic and could NOT give me the correct directions even if he had done it 100 times. I finally climbed back in my car after telling him politely that I would contact him again by phone. I NEVER did try to visit him.
Another day, before LGBTQ was a thing (no disrespect intended), I scheduled Mary to be seen. When I arrived, out came a man dressed in pants and a man’s shirt, another person nearby wore a dress. My brain, as would yours, thought that the person in the dress was Mary. No, the person in the pants and shirt was Mary. Now I would immediately understand but then it was just plain confusing to me.
This one still makes me chuckle: I received directions from a person who lived in farming country. His directions were great. One detail was to ‘go past the stinky pond’ a mile and there would be his house.
Well, I hadn’t bargained for MANY ponds being along the way. How was I to know which one was the ‘stinky’ one???? Needless to say, I needed better directions for another day.
I really did enjoy that job! Especially I enjoyed the snow-less winter we had one year. I never had to worry about road conditions. All was good.
Yet, the next year the snow finally arrived and I knew I needed to be finished with the extensive driving. That light bulb moment came to me clearly during a white-out on a major highway when I had to follow a semi truck just to know where the road was. I needed a job which was closer to hom!
When I turned in my two weeks’ notice to leave my job, my boss expressed that he really enjoyed having me work there. I expressed my appreciation and said that I wish I’d known how positively he’d felt. He was always so gruff and had the second-in -command do my end of year evaluations. I had only seen him when he assigned a new patient.
His reply: Dawn, if I’d been dissatisfied with your work, I would have let you know. Since those were the days of no compliments allowed, I left, wishing I’d known.
He did make the best spaghetti for pot lucks, though.
Thank you for reading! If you want to read more from me, please subscribe.
If you want to be added or deleted from my list, please let me know.
Henery X John Shahidi Castlerandom Rosa Diaz-Casal Gab1930s SalmaFoda Block Wife OCTAVIA EVER AFTER Vicky Hughes Lori Motto Julie KingGood Sharon Meyers, Ed.D. Nikita Rayne Johnson Susie Winfield Susie Winfield Lu Skerdoo Paula Thomas Kathy Minicozzi Helen Gilmore Dixie Dodd Brooklyn shakespeare J.M. Troppello Trisha Faye Cheryl Wilding Grace Bianco Jenny Calvert Elizabeth Clark Adele Arbi
