Stories of an ER Nurse.
She comes around the corner sitting up in the EMS stretcher looking like something from a horror movie. Blood matted throughout her hair and dripping down her face. “It’s Mrs. Smith, she fell again. She will be heading to your room,” the charge nurse says to me.
I follow EMS and Mrs Smith to my room and as I look at her I see the confused, scared look in her eyes. I know she has no idea where she is. This isn’t her first time here as Mrs. Smith has dementia and she falls frequently, hurting herself.
As I stand there holding pressure on her large, gapping laceration to her forehead she asks for the third time, “where am I, is Charlie here?” I reorientate Mrs. Smith again and tell her that her husband, Charlie, isn’t here. I don’t tell her that he passed away 10 years ago. Why put her through that grief over and over again?
An hour later the bleeding has stopped and the CT scan is back. Thankfully she didn’t break anything… this time. The doctor puts 4 staples in her head to close the wound and I start the long daunting process of getting the blood out of her hair. As I’m in the middle of this process and continually re-orientating Mrs. Smith I can’t help but wonder, “is this inevitable for everybody.”
In my 12 years of working as a nurse in the emergency room I unfortunately see this way too often and to too many elderly people.
According to recent statistics;
- Falls are the leading cause of fatal injuries and the most common cause of nonfatal trauma-related hospital admissions among older adults.
- Falls result in more than 2.8 million injuries treated in emergency departments annually, including over 800,000 hospitalizations and more than 27,000 deaths.
- An estimated 5.8 million Americans of all ages are living with Alzheimer’s dementia in 2019. This number includes an estimated 5.6 million people age 65 and older and approximately 200,000 individuals under age 65 who have younger-onset Alzheimer’s.
How can we prevent this for our future?
As I learn about how our primal ancestors lived it’s clear that they adapted to there environment of whole, unprocessed food that was available and the hunter- gatherer lifestyle of lifting, pulling, building, running and walking long distances.
Today our comfortable, high tech life and advent of civilization has brought us from lean, fit, strong and healthy to sedentary, obese, frail and riddled with diseases.
Can we change those statistics listed above?
let me help explain how changes in your lifestyle now can help you become healthier into your old age and avoid the fate that others seem to just accept as, “Im just getting old”
We can reprogram our genes in the direction of health by adhering to the 10 Primal Blueprint laws that drove human evolution;
- Eat plants and animals
- Avoid modern processed foods (including grains)
- Frequent low-level movement
- Brief, intense strength training
- Sprinting once in a while
- Get adequate sunlight
- Sleep
- Play
- Intellectual stimulation
- Avoid stupid mistakes.
MY MISSION:
To prevent what society has deemed “normal signs of aging” and to take as many people with me as possible.
Aging is inevitable but being weak, frail and loosing your memory isn’t.
Primal Coaching Programs Now Open!
Click here to start your journey with me.
references:
https://www.ncoa.org/news/resources-for-reporters/get-the-facts/falls-prevention-facts/
https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/facts-figures
disclaimer: name changed in story to protect privacy