It can be heartbreaking to witness the cognitive dysfunction of a senior with dementia. Many people find it hard to figure out what will light them up again.

The man in this story figured that out, but not everyone agrees it was the right decision. Keep reading to see what happened.

AITA for bringing in a personal visitor to the nursing home I work at to compete at chess with one of the residents?

I work at an assisted living facility. One of the residents in the wing I work at is “Josh”, a 97 year old man who has pretty bad cognitive decay.

Most of the time, he doesn’t remember who I am, who he is, where he is, or what’s going on.

However, he’s a former national chess champion. I only know this because he his trophies and other awards in his room.

A friend of a friend is the the top player at some local chess association and he wanted to meet Josh.

What happened next was incredible. Medical researchers would want to see this.

We allow visitors, so I signed him in. Fortunately, it was on one of Josh’s good days.

They played for 6 hours straight.

Josh missed dinner, and I had to get into the canteen after hours and make him some scrambled eggs and toast just so he’d have something to eat.

I was with him for the dinner, and it was the most animated I’d seen him in…. ever, actually.

The positive effects of chess on Josh kept going after that day, but some folks didn’t see it that way.

He was actually talking how this ‘young punk’ came to challenge him and he had to show the kid how it’s done.

I thought I did a good thing, brightened up a very old, very sick man’s day.

But pretty much all of my co-workers have the opposite take, that disrupting his schedule and agitating him like that was a bad, *******ish thing to do, especially if it caused him to miss his regular dinner.

I’m pretty new at this job, so I do value their opinions, but I don’t think what I did was wrong. Am I the ******* here? Especially if I do it again?

Let’s check out the comments.

I agree! It sounds like it did him good in the long run, too.

A lot of people shared this opinion and I do, too.

To get permission for this kind of thing, you need help of management. They won’t want to cooperate with you if you try to circumvent their system.

It was heartwarming to see all the comments like this from people who work in long-term care.

Yes! You don’t need to go rogue.

That would be great!

Feeling warm and fuzzy and from this story and the comments.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.