sins and decisions

Gluttony. One of the seven deadlies. In my job, which has recently become bigger because my boss retired and the new boss isn't here yet, and the nurse, the second in command, is on vacations, so I am pretty much everybody, well, in my job, I meet people. They are typically in need, in crisis, at the end of their life or their rope or both, and I have to interview them for placement. Placement. What a word. In its wisdom, the Great State of Oregon has contrived a new language to make what I do a little more palatable. For example, folks are no longer admitted, they move in. They are never discharged, they (you guessed it) move out. They get move out notices, not evictions. But placement is still placement. There really isn't another word for it.


Jesus.


What I am getting at is not the language of long term care, but this fat fat woman I met today. I am working on placing her. And, as you might imagine, placing a 350 pound woman has its own set of concerns. You would want to consider, for example, where to place her, and on what? And for how long, and can she get up from there? And I was taking someone else's word for it, and I needed to see for myself that she could move because if she couldn't and we had to call the fire department because she was stuck, they'd get mad at us, and I hate that. But shit, sometimes, like a kitten in a tree, people have trouble getting out of places.


So I went to her house. "I need to see you move," I said.

She started struggling around with her robes and blankets and stuff, and I was a little concerned that she wasn't decent, so I just turned my head.

I asked her if she'd checked out the apartment she was going to be renting. I never go anywhere," she said. Never.

She has opted to eat rather than, well, anything else.

It made an impression is all.