Geriatric ‘Houdini’ Amazes Nursing Staff

August 9, 2000

WANNETKA, IL—Do you believe in magic? The staff of the 6-West Geriatric Unit at Our Lady of Charity Medical Center certainly do.

Floor resident Noel Simonson has made even the most skeptical care-givers reconsider their belief in the supernatural.

Noel Simonson

Despite advanced senile dementia, the 102 year-old Simonson has repeatedly escaped from seemingly unslippable restraints, passed through doors proven to be locked from the outside, and, most remarkably of all, removed a Foley catheter with a fully inflated balloon from his bladder, despite the well-documented fact that his prostatic urethra is only 2 millimeters in diameter.

According to Angie Smithers, a charge nurse on the unit, Simonson's escapes are rapid and noiseless.

"The other night, we tucked Mr. Simonson in, said goodnight, and placed him in four-point restraints for his safety, as usual. Well, one of the nurses forgot her flashlight and, when she went back in to get it five minutes later, his bed was empty!"

According to Smithers, a search subsequently located Simonson in the hospital cafeteria. "I have no idea how he got there", she said. "It's, like, supernatural."

More legendary still is Simonson's catheter-removal trick. "Well, we're a Catholic institution, so we all know the proverb about the camel and the eye of the needle", said Father Fred Dennis, a hospital chaplain.

"I have to say, the repeated Foley catheter removal does strengthen my belief in a higher power".

Patient rights groups have expressed outrage at the hospital's tentative plans to host a series of Magic Theatres, featuring Simonson's escapades, for local schools and youth groups, along with the possibility of hiring the elderly man out for children's birthday parties.

"Look, we're a charity institution, and cash has been a problem lately", said hospital administrator Jack Nelson. When inquired as to why the hospital would ever even consider exploiting an elderly, demented man, Nelson suggested that such activities "are kinda like occupational therapy, depending on how you look at it."

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