Little Old Ladies

Imagine a world without little old ladies? Who would run our charity shops & hospital cafes? It would be chaos.


I was working on ITU today (that's the Intensive Care Unit for those of you who can't work it out...)

One old woman patient was so unwell that her illness had changed her completely from being bright, sweet & pleasant to absolutely impossible to handle.

It was quite sad, the poor thing was confused as anything, pulled out all her drips, wouldn't let anyone near her to look after her - a nursing nightmare. And when the senior consultant went to talk to her with the rest of us around, the patient was having none of it. Confusion does not respect status.

I'm cross with myself for not having the presence of mind to write down what the old lady said. Because despite being as mad as a box of frogs, this pensioner, God knows how, spontaneously spat out at my boss a tirade of the most perfectly crafted, imaginative, florid insults I have ever heard. In my life.

Imagine the kind of intentionally hurtful names you'd call someone (or be called*) when you were a little kid, mixed with words that you'd think someone's grandma would never have even heard, let alone use, separated by suggestions so overwhelmingly profane they would have been cut from The Exorcist, all aggressively machine-gunned at one undeserving victim.

Thirty seconds of pure, concise offensiveness; she was spectacularly insulting. And we all watched silently.

At first.

One by one, the multidisciplinary team started to crack. One nurse had to hide her face behind a clipboard because she couldn't stop shaking with laughter. Another dived for cover from out of the bedspace curtains because she could not hold it in. None of us made eye contact for fear of bursting.

Miraculously, I remained straight-faced; but my eyes probably betrayed that I was in awe of this lady's verbal capacity.

The consultant remained perfectly unfazed; she ignored it and got on with sorting her out.



That's professionalism.