Today I had a patient in a wheelchair who was much heavier than I and very old. She was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s to boot. When the man who was with her offered to wheel her down the hall to my room, I was initially impressed by his devotion to her. But when I asked him to help me get her on the cot and assist in getting her pants off for the leg scan, he gasped, “Oh, I’m not going to stay for the disrobing of my mother!” He could plainly see that I am on the petite side, and the woman couldn’t stand up on her own, let alone take off her clothes.
Evidently, he believed he was being a good son for stepping out of the room so as not to see his elderly mom in her Depends undergarments. I don’t think it says in the Bible that you can’t see your mom in her Depends. This was plainly a cop out on his part. He was also unchivalrous as he left me to hoist a 200 lb woman by myself out of her chair, take her clothes off, take the wraps off her calves, and lift her swollen legs onto the bed, one at a time.
During the exam, she often grumbled, “Jiminy Christmas!” and “You’d better stop that!” I tried to explain what I was doing, but some Alzheimer’s patients have a short fuse. After the test, I packed her back into her clothes, slid her off the bed and into her chair, and wheeled her out to her son in the waiting room. I learned from the receptionist later that he had been telling a friend out there, “Get a load of this! She asked me to stay and help her take the pants off of my mother!”
The receptionist and I agreed that this dude needed to man up and assist his elderly mom just like she cared for him when he was young and helpless. When she saw his penis for the first time, did she exclaim to her husband, “You’re going to have to do all his diaper changes til he learns how to use the bathroom himself! I can’t be looking at that penis!” No, she put on her grown up panties and changed his diapers without thinking twice about it.
The whole exam would’ve been easier on the crochety old woman if she’d had her son there to expedite things with his physical strength and reassuring words. As it was, he bailed on her in the name of propriety. Like he’s really going to get bonus points at the gates of heaven someday for not looking at his mother’s flabby, swollen legs. Gimme a break.
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