TeamAlzheimers.org - LOVE CAN DO WONDERS

The Human Touch

By Pam Kidd

Years ago, when I was a young woman, I had a job in a nursing home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was not easy work. Many of the patients were difficult, and some even scared me with their incoherent railings. One stormy night, as the wind howled and lightning streaked across the sky, I was in an elevator when the lights blinked and the elevator groaned to a stop. I held my breath, terrified. Then the elevator lurched upward, the lights came on, and I was safe on the next floor…

A few hours later, I was walking down the corridor with Frizell, the lady who ran the laundry department. Nearing the elevator, I turned and headed for the stairs. “No way I’m ever riding that again,” I said.

Frizell stopped and asked, “So are you always going to let fear be your master?”

She wasn’t talking about the elevator, and I knew it. Up on the third floor, I had been avoiding a woman who screamed all day. Now, Frizell had challenged me with a choice. Was I going to let fear of the unknown, the misunderstood, the unsure run my life?

I will never forget the startled look on Frizell’s face a few days later when I stepped into the elevator beside her. I had another surprise for her, too. “I sat with the patient in 301 last night. You know, the person who keeps everyone awake with her screams? Well, I prayed over her and wrapped my arms around her, rocking her. She calmed like a baby and slept all night.”

“Love can do a lot more than rock a person to sleep,” Frizell said. And she smiled at me as she said it.