The Bowels of Hell Skilled Nursing Facility

Having moved from the Bowels of Hell skilled nursing facility where the nurses have to supply their own blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes, I got to spend one night in my newly rented room before reporting back to the hospital for another round of chemo. But let's backtrack before talking about our new home. That may be a while in coming. The Bowels of Hell skilled nursing facility deserves a lot of attention, so the new home may have to wait until next time.

I headed up to the Bowels of Hell after my last hospital stay and went there knowing nothing about the place. Talk about songs of innocence and songs of experience; old Mr. Blake ain't got nothing on me. "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright," my foot.

On my first night at the BOH, I was placed in a room with two bedridden men with whom I spent my entire time while incarcerated in this place. The one next to me asked an aide who happened to be in the room if he would empty his bedside urinal. From my bed, I was able to witness the emptying as the bathroom was straight across from me. The aide grabbed the urinal, walked it to the bathroom, held it over the toilet a little over waist high, emptied it into the toilet, returned to the man's bed without rinsing the urinal and hooked it on the man's bed rail. The aide then left without changing gloves, washing hands or any other of the things you might expect in a skilled nursing facility.

Because of my dressing changes, I am only able to shower at certain times; that is, just before a dressing change. These occur three times per week. The day finally came for my dressing change and I proceeded to the shower room but could not get in due to the fact that there were patient lifts parked in front of both shower stalls. So, I went on to the big shower room where there is only one stall but also a large bathtub for the non-ambulatory patients. Both shower rooms have in common the fact that they have no place to hang your clothes, place your soap or shampoo, or even to hang a towel. Makes it a bit of a challenge. What made it even more of a challenge for me was the fact that there was a large pool of brown water in front of the shower I was forced to use. It made me wonder if I really wanted to use the shower since it is a straight walk-in affair with no lip between the shower and the main floor. And no curtain, either. Somehow I managed and got out alive and uninfected.

The staff give a lot away by their conversation. For example, I learned, simply by sitting and listening, that management did not buy toilet brushes for cleaning, but got "scrapers" instead. There also seems to be a problem with maintaining a supply of trash bags and bags for soiled linen. I was paroled from this Devil's Island on a Wednesday, the day of an inspection. All day on the Tuesday before my release, there was massive cleaning going on. Early on, someone asked for bleach and was informed that the facility had no bleach. Imagine a skilled nursing facility with no bleach.

Back to the staff who were for the most part friendly and amiable. I must note however, that they seemed to always communicate by yelling, usually with all parties involved yelling at the same time. This was not necessarily angry yelling; it was simply a matter of volume. And then there was the frequency of the use of the f-word; it seemed to be in use in every four or five words or so. An indispensable part of their vocabulary, it could be used as noun, verb, adjective, you name it.

That is the most I can tell you about this place at this point. There are things I may have blocked from my mind. When I think of it, I can only remember Kurtz, from Heart of Darkness, and exclaim, "The horror! The horror!"