The Nurses Who Become the Only Person Some Elderly Ever Have

[00:00:00]Did you know some nursing home residents go years without a single visitor? Not once, not ever. There's a woman in room 14. She's been there for 3 years. No birthday cards, [music] no Christmas calls, no one asking how she slept. So, her nurse learns how she takes her tea, remembers that she [music] used to love Frank Sinatra, sits with her during blood draws because the needle scares her, and there's no [music] family hand to hold. Nurses in aged care quietly become the only consistent human presence in some people's lives. They sing happy birthday [music] in a small room with no balloons. They hold a hand that no one else is holding. They say goodnight to someone who has [music] no one to say it back. And then one morning, that resident is gone. No funeral announcement comes to the ward.

[00:00:40][music] No flowers arrive. The nurse who washed her hair every Tuesday is often the only person who marks the moment at all. That weight doesn't have a name in any nursing textbook, but every aged care nurse [music] knows exactly what it feels like.