My father was a reporter at a local newspaper
company. When he was around forty years old he became hearing-impaired. Then he
quit his job as a reporter and became a proofreader for the company, because
being hearing handicap does not affect proofreading.
Actually I heard he was an excellent
proofreader. His co-worker described my father as “A proofreader who has the
power of ten men”.
But his occupational disease made our nursing
care for him very difficult. He found it difficult to hear. So when I needed to
discuss something with him I had to communicate with him in writing. He was a
professional proofreader. When I made grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes, he
scolded me very severely. Every time I showed my writing to my father, I felt
very nervous, as if it was a test.
My father needed to go to hospital three times
a week because he needed kidney dialysis when he was sixty two years old. He
had continued dialysis for sixteen years.
One day a young nurse who worked at the
hospital called me. She needed to talk with me about my father. She said:
“Your father
doesn’t follow my advice. Recently he even refused to read a memo I wrote.”
She let me read
the memo my father refused to read. I understood why my father had refused to
read it.
We should not blame her. Nurses require
various abilities. They do not work at a newspaper company. Writing is not
their most important skill. If there were a nurse who was good at writing but
bad at giving injections, I would stay away from the nurse. If there were a
nurse who never made a spelling mistake but always made mistakes with
medication, I would run away from the hospital.
My father was a proofreader. Maybe he had
tried to educate the nurse to write a good memo. Tough love was the main
educational way of his generation.
I asked my father:
“Young people these
days are not familiar with tough love. Could you go a little easy on them?”
After that my
father became more corporative to the nurse.
In the future, the same things will happen to
us when we are in hospital or a facility for the elderly.
I am a kind of actor.
If young actors came to entertain us in my facility, I would get angry and
would say:
“I can’t watch
your terrible acting!”
If a cook were in
a nursing home, he or she would get angry and would say:
“I can’t eat this
terrible meal!”
If a carpenter were
in an elderly welfare facility he or she would get angry and would say:
“I can’t live in
this terrible housing!”
All of us have careers. All of us will have
occupational diseases when we get old. They could make nursing care for us
difficult.
Picture by patrykkosmider
