Sick.

The Minnesota Department of Health findings of evidence that indicate verbal, sexual, and emotional abuse to 15 residents of the Albert Lea Good Samaritan nursing home by four teenage girls are at first shocking.

When the findings are looked at more closely a more apt word comes to mind:

Sick.

The allegations that these residents — some have since passed away and all suffered from different levels of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease — were fondled, taunted and sworn at makes you wonder what inhumane person would do something like this?

Sick.

These allegations make you want to yell at the top of your voice that something is wrong — but you can’t. You just cannot wrap your thoughts around this. This is beyond hazing, beyond a sick joke, beyond a mistake.

It is awful enough that these patients suffer from depriving diseases that at first attack your memory and then slowly your pride and self-assurance. It is a loss of the greatest gift a human being can possess — a mind. To have your dreams, your past, your families slip away while you are still alive and not understand it is life’s cruelest circumstances.

How do you even start to fathom what these teenage girls did? How do you explain to the families? How do you heal the hurt?