Losing my sense of humor

Sometimes the stress level in the nursing center skyrockets. Yes, it's always high, but every so often we seem to go right off the top of the current charts.

We're there now.

No one seems to know why. It's not a full moon. The weather has been pretty good down here. The "pain index" according to weather.com has been a 3 or 4, which is low. We have a pretty good group of employees right now. At least they all seem to be coming in to work regularly and that had been a problem recently.

I don't know what the deal is, but everyone is losing their sense of humor.

For a long time, I would try to write down the funny things that my residents said, because someone says something funny every single day. I've forgotten to do that lately. I'm going to start up again. Sometimes that one laugh we get is all that gets us through the shift.

So, here's one from the other day:

Mrs. A has been one of our more animated residents lately. She has been yelling and talking a mile a minute for several days now. And loud. You can hear her clear to the ends of the hallways.

One of the Med Aides was outside her door trying to pull her pills. She kept yelling and trying to get them to come into her room. The Med Aide kept telling the resident they were going to be in with her in a moment, but she just kept going.

Finally, she tried another tactic. "Here, doggy, doggy, doggy." And then she started laughing. Actually, we all started laughing. Funny how the atmosphere changed immediately.

I really need to find my sense of humor again.