"I've lived here all my life"

[Emergent, RN]

So, I've done four agency shifts in the local nursing home. I was on a different wing my last shift, and I struck up a conversation with one of the residents, a woman in her early sixties who is wheelchair bound. I asked her how long she has lived there. She said "Oh, all my life."

She said that she has cerebral palsy, and she was adopted as an infant by some local farmers. This is a fairly rural area and back in the 1960s it was even more so. I guess the local nursing home took in infants back then.

She told me "I'm pretty with it", referring to her cognitive ability. She must have picked up that term living there. She seemed quite cheerful and well adjusted. I know back in those days institutionalization of disabled babies and children was more the norm. Times have changed.