Our next door neighbor was a welder for Standard Oil.
As a kid, I saw up close the aftermath of an accident in which someone was killed by falling steel.

It was the cleanest, best-maintained, most organized rig in the Sacramento Valley, and the roughnecks tended to have all their fingers and teeth. Cotton demanded discipline and good order, and his guys, while they worked hard painting (and doing all other maintenance – but they had time to paint because he never let mechanical maintenance get away from him), were in less danger and were more efficient in their skills than on any other rig I ever worked. They liked being Cotton’s hands; they fought to stay on his rig.

I figure that’s why one polishes brass.

(OT for this post but OnT for drilling, I just found this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxw03U0yLAQ) video of rig hands making pipe connections. Whew. Brings back memories… and makes me wonder anew how ANY of them kept their fingers.)

Dementia is a physical illness, too — a progressive, terminal disease that shuts down the body as it attacks the brain. The lack of understanding about the physical toll of dementia means that many patients near the end of life are subjected to aggressive treatments that would never be considered with another terminal illness.

I know of an autistic who as a child really benefited from video games.

If you follow the Milblogs you’ll run across reports of how the younger generations game control experience has made them deadly with the remote controls for military equipment: CROWS, UAVs, and field robots.

I rember that when they had the National Guard prep for riot duty in Dallas back in the old days, the Sgts had the troops sand off the Parkerizing on the bayonets and polish them up. When they did their crowd control drill with the bayonets thrusting on the step, it gave me the Huzz.

Have you seen the article NHS staff gets private care at ratepayer expense?!

Or since you are such a picker of nits, am I correct in thinking that you are a hot-headed young’un and don’t believe a female in her 80′s could make a rationale decision.

Because of the “sundown syndrome,” she was fighting everyone, especially late in the day: punching, kicking, biting. And doing this all night long.

I asked my (overwhelmed) dad if she were getting any sedatives, and he said he thought so: but she was only getting a one-fifth dose of dilaudid every two hours, which apparently the docs and nurses told him had a “sedative effect.”

Well, for cryin’ out loud. I took the charge nurse aside in the hallway and ascertained the foregoing, then asked her, “What has she got on the list as a SEDATIVE so she can get through the night peacefully?” The nurse said the docs had authorized Atavan.

Well, for cryin’ out loud. Let’s DO it, I said, and got Dad in the picture. He immediately agreed, emphatically and profanely. They gave Mom a shot, and she went off to sleep in five minutes flat. Had a quiet night, finally.

So I was trying to figure it out: Mom was in a hospice unit, with only seven patients and several nurses. Not understaffed, no big push on to save patients’ lives: so why didn’t it occur to anyone to give her atavan?

My only guess is that they inure themselves to suffering, and this sort of thing becomes routine to them, so they almost shrug it off; and unless someone prods them, they don’t take ANY initiative with the patient. Probably some hypercautiousness is part of it, too: they might figure that they could get sued by a distressed family if they were found responsible for keeping a dying person “drugged up” and out of it.

I dunno. But you have to be a real sheepdog in this situation. God help anyone who’s dying alone — no one else will. ((

“YOU HAVE BEEN SAT TO LONG HERE FOR ANY GOOD YOU HAVE BEEN DOING. DEPART, I SAY, AND LET US HAVE DONE WITH YOU. IN THE NAME OF GOD, GO!”

Oliver Cromwell Addressing the Rump Parliament, April 1653.