A Shower

Photo credit: Jean Scheijen

Editor’s note: If you are following along with Barbara and Melissa in their journey, this post is from writing done a couple of months ago with both Barbara and her daughter and caregiver Melissa recounting the impact that small things done with great love can make. 

Hello Nurse Buddies, I was in the hospital recently and made many new nurse buddies. My favorite was a tech who gave me a shower. I have not has a shower in 3 years, just baths given to me…This wonderful woman gave me an extra long hot bath, and even let me spray her with the spray nozzle.

She washed my hair and it was better than sex…ha ha…I love you nurses…and techs, and aides…you work so hard, and showed this old woman that sometimes, even at your job, you can have a little fun, and make an old woman’s day!!

Melissa writes: Today mom had a shower, a real hot long long shower. She has only had baths by me in the last 3 years…so today she in a chair in the hospital shower and a wonderful, wonderful, let me say one more time—wonderful tech took extra time and washed mom’s hair, gave her a 25-minute hot, hot shower. The tech was soaking wet because she gave mom the shower nozzle and mom sprayed her, not once but twice! Luckily she had extra scrubs to put on…

Mom was so happy. Isn’t it something that things we all take for granted, like a wonderful hot shower, means more to an 89 year-old woman than a vacation? She told the nurse she wanted to do a commercial for the hospital saying,  “I took my vacation at St Mary’s Medical Center, I had a shower!”

Today that tech earned her wings…When they were done she told me it was her best day at work ever.