Nursing Home Residents Enjoy Water Slide On A Summer Day

Nov 18, 2019 by apost team

It’s understandable that when living in a nursing home, days can seem to run together and life can feel monotonous or, well, just plain boring. Even the best nursing homes with the most wonderful caretakers can still have residents longing for the times of yesteryear. However, the staff at a nursing home in Zanesville, Ohio know how to spice life up and brought a little summer fun to their resident seniors.

The Oaks at NorthPointe put together a full-scale waterslide for the residents and the videos of the joyful seniors immediately went viral, as reported in the New Zealand Herald. In the end, 30 of the 98 residents at the nursing home were able to participate in the slip-and-slide day of fun.

The oldest participant was 94 years of age and the entire event was actually her idea.

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The nursing home held a sledding event for the residents last February and Millie, the 94-year-old spry resident, started wondering if the staff could hold a summer event. She described to them what they took to be a slip-and-slide event.

However, Millie was actually describing going parasailing! The staff immediately went to work to make one of Millie’s ideas come to life, regardless.

The staff’s first concern, of course, was the safety of their residents. They knew they could do the event but wanted to make sure it was entirely safe.

They decided to go with an inflatable duck as the vehicle to go down the slip and slide. They also had two straps hooked to the handles of the inflatable duck, both for the seniors to hold onto and for two staff members to hold on each side to control speed. The seniors were also harnessed in and a third staff member held the duck from behind during the entire slide.

The slip-and-side was such a big hit that the residents repeated it the following month. They posted a clip of Millie going down the slide and it received an incredible 8.6+ million views and over 123,000 shares. You can watch the video of delighted 94-year-old Millie going down the slide on Facebook.

How brilliant is the video of Millie going down the water slide? How incredible is it that the staff at NorthPointe went above-and-beyond to bring their residents some joy and a day of summer fun? Pass this story and Millie’s adorable video on to anyone who could use a smile today.