Sweet, Sweet Success!

At work on a daily basis, I deal with people withdrawing from alcohol or drugs, Alzheimer's patients who scream incessantly, people so confused they barely know their own names, healthy people insisting on hospital stays for the sweet pain meds, angelic looking old ladies who will screech at you and try to claw your face off, accusations from dementia patients that their clothes are being stolen, folks calling the police on us and barracading themselves in their rooms, and suicidal or homicidal patients.  Did I mention that I do not work on a psych unit??  This is only the beginning of the many colors of the patient rainbow that keeps my job interesting. 

Yesterday, one of the sweetest looking old ladies was driving me so crazy that I was ready to throw either myself or her out the window.  The poor old thing barely sleeps, but lays there with her eyes closed, screaming.  She screams for help, she screams the name of people probably not even alive anymore, she screams to use the bathroom though she's gone six times in the last hour.   By the fourth day of dealing with her, something had to be done.

I went into her room, for the 500th time that night, and asked her to stop yelling because she was waking everyone up.  "I don't give a g-- d--- if I wake everyone up.  Heeeeellllp!!!!"

"You know what would be nice?" I asked her, "If you would sing instead of screaming.  Do you know any songs?"

"I don't know any songs I can't sing," she told me, her eyes still tightly closed.

"How about 'Silent Night'? Do you know that one?  Sing 'Silent Night'."  I told her.  

She immediately started to sing Silent Night.  She sang through two entire verses, then closed her mouth and kept it closed.  Ten minutes later, she was asleep.

Sweet, sweet success!! After three hours of screaming, she was finally asleep!!  Maybe the lyrics came out of her mouth and sunk into her subconscious.  I picked this song for a reason, you know!

It's the little things in life, folks!

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace