This is a bit long over due. Anyway, the university shut down for Christmas break and to make end’s meet I decided to put my CNA training to work by going to work for Glenn Bridge, the worst goddamned nursing home on Earth.

Nursing homes as a rule tend to suck. You are surrounded by human misery. From a guy who’s son told us not to let him call him at home any more, to a man fighting to get into a flu quarantined hall because he believes his dead wife is in it, to a man who fights and then sobs just from being transferred from wheelchair to bed, to people who are going through withdraw because the doctor does not give them the same amount of pills their families kept them doped up with. 

What really sucks about it is that in Raleigh, a CNA starts out at $14 and hour, but here in Boone you start out at $8.25 and stay there! On top of that, we are constantly running out of supplies and have to scrounge for basic things like gloves. The ventilation system is broken in two halls so its always 98 degrees and smells like shit. So for six days of wiping asses and dealing with every type of madness you could imagine I got $326. Fuck you, Glenn Bridge. No wonder everyone quits.

But on a high note, the night they gave me a hall to myself to patrol I got to handle a dead body. One of the residents died and I helped give him postmortem care and load him into the back of the mortician’s van ( they send a modified minivan instead of a hearse because they don’t want to scare the residents. 

It really didn’t bother me. I was surprised at my own lack of reaction to it. And then the next night my mom told me that mortuary science degrees are only two years at a community college. And that was before I told her about the body removal!

I’ve decided that I want to get my medication aide certification and them get certified as a pharmacy technician and become a pharmacist. And then maybe do the mortician thing. I had always wanted to be a mortician after seeing “Phantasm” as a child.