Megan Rego
Ethnography

Have you ever been able to identify what a place is or where you are just by smelling the air around you? If I was blind, as soon as I walked into The Highlander Rehabilitation Nursing Home I would know exactly where I was.
The first time I walked in there was about six or seven years ago. The second I walked in I instantly thought that when I get old I did not want to be put in a place like this just waiting to die. The first woman I saw came rocketing at me in her wheelchair with a fierce look in her eyes. She rammed into me and told me I had to escape with her and help her find a way out. This woman had Alzheimer’s and had no idea what was going on. In her mind she thought that someone was trying to hurt her. This made me feel so bad for this woman because this was so real to her. A nurse then came to my rescue and wheeled her away.
All of this started because I have a grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease. Her disease got so bad that she was not able to live on her own anymore and she moved into my house with my family of four. We had a set schedule and everything was going fine. My mother planned on taking care of my grandmother (her mother) for the rest of her life. Life doesn’t always happen the way you plan and everything soon completely changed. My grandmother had been acting different than usual and was brought to the doctor. That day she was diagnosed with CHF (Congestive Heart Failure). She was sent to get evaluated for two weeks and the ending result was something my mother did not want to hear. The doctors said that my grandmother was in no condition to be living somewhere where there was medical attention at hand for emergencies. They suggested a nursing home.
The first day there was awful for my mother. She did not expect the nurses and the CNAs to do everything there way and not listen to how my mother wanted things done. She was not going to stand for this and she signed my grandmother out that night and took her home. The nurses and CNAs didn’t want any problems so everyone compromised with my mother and they made a plan. My mother had to see every pill that was given to my grandmother before she took it and made sure that they fed her the proper things on time. She would pop in randomly to see if my grandmother was changed out of dirty clothes and showered every other day. Along the way, there were a few snappy nurses who thought she was telling them how to do their jobs and that giving medication was like a recipe, impossible to mess up. The day a nurse said that, she gave my grandmother the wrong medication and was never rude to my mother again.
One can look at a nursing home one of two ways. In a positive way or in a negative way. When I was adapting to this new place, I looked at it as negative and wanted nothing to do with it. I noticed a lot of interesting things. There were many people in the hallways sitting in wheel chairs; either wheeling around or laying there like vegetables. I noticed a few women holding baby dolls as if they were real babies; hugging, kissing, and cradling them. I also noticed many men playing with balloons or stress balls. Apparently these objects are very valued in nursing home all over America because they give the patient something to do instead of sitting there feeling worthless or keeping them out of trouble. The sounds I heard were of constant beeping from patients trying to get out of bed or their wheel chairs. There was yelling of random words put into a sentences and constant movement of feet, chairs, and paper work. The smell of the air is that of a doctor’s office and a hospital nursery room.
The reason I chose to write about a nursing home is to show that everyone is different and everyone has a different opinion on certain things. Not all nursing homes are like this one and some are exactly the same. As time went on, my outlook on nursing homes has changed and I’ve learned to accept the fact that my grandmother needs to there and cannot be with us at home. My mother has also adjusted and in six or seven years of her mother being there she continues to never miss a day of visiting and making sure that everyone is on point taking care of her every need.

Megan Rego
My personal essay

My life started in January of 1990. I was raised with two languages, English and Portuguese; speaking them fluently by age three. Speaking Portuguese was a way to communicate with my grandparents, along with a few of my aunts and uncles. Being the first generation born in America, it has been my responsibility to keep up with both languages because speaking another language is a great benefit in many things. I went to a preschool for bilingual children to learn how to distinguish when to speak the two different languages separately. After preschool I went on to a school called Saints Peter and Paul, which went from kindergarten to eighth grade. In my nine years of attending this school, I learned all I needed to know about grammar, literature, and creative writing for my age.
I then went on to high school where I learned even more about writing and was starting to learn different skills in improving my writing. On teacher there changed the way I looked at writing in many ways. His way of teaching inspired my writing to the best it had ever been. He made me want to write and improved a lot of my work. I learned great techniques to get the reader’s attention and keep throughout my story.
The best paper I ever wrote was a research paper on Alzheimer’s disease and how it affects the elderly and their loved ones. It was my first A+ I had ever gotten on an English paper and I saw it as a big accomplishment.

Questions about tanning beds.
· What are the bad things that UV rays can do to one’s skin?
· If you go tanning regularly, what are odds of one getting skin cancer?
· Are tanning beds good for someone who lacks vitamin D?
· What effects does tanning have on one’s eyes?
· Does tanning lotion decrease the cause of skin cancer?
· What is the recommended tanning time for your skin type?
· Is it safer to spray tan or to use self tanning creams?
· Can you Get Tanning Bed Allergies?
· What effects do tanning beds have on woman who are pregnant?

Here I am in english class writing this blog. I am trying to generate in my mind what to write.