It sounds almost like a sitcom narrative:
Patient is dying and lethargic.
“Dad! Are you hungry?” the daughter raises a spoonful of cereal toward the man.
“At this stage your father can’t eat and probably won’t be able to,” the nurse pleads. “This is a normal process.”
Gives dad a spoonful anyway. Falls out of mouth on to chest.
“Come on dad! It’s your favorite!”
The nurse later scoops out caked-up oatmeal with a swab.
The above appeared on the social media outlet Reddit. The nurse who wrote it adds a comment: Or when they try and give them something to drink lying flat and lethargic then later on “why is my mom gurgling? She sounds so congested!”
“Hmmm. I wonder why,” the nurse muses in her post.
This account appears on Reddit discussion of nurses and their frustrating experiences. The story is penned by nrseratchet, an apparent facetious reference to the cold and heartless Nurse Ratched in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Image credit: Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Wikimedia. Psychedelic background: