Happy nurses’ week to all you hardworking, selfless, and compassionate nurses out there.
I was going through some old writings today and ran across a rather bleak journal entry from seven years ago, during my days as a travel nurse. At the time I was doing a three-month stint in a long-term acute care unit (LTAC), taking care of those patients with illnesses rendered terminal, hopeless, end-stage.
Here is the rather graphic entry, edited slightly for public consumption.
“… Nursing wears on me sometimes and I find that all too often nowadays I mutter and mumble under my breath at needy, whiny, and complaining patients. I walk the halls of hell, looking in at lives destroyed by drugs, by unexplained disasters, by bad choices, and worst of all, by circumstances they had little to no choice in: those assaults, gunshots, accidents, falls, and genetic mashups that leave people on ventilators, with mouths gaping, snot glopping from trach holes, gastrostomy tubes linked to bags of tan liquid, stained Foley catheters draining dark cloudy urine.
One patient lies there, mouth agape, breathing heavy, half naked, missing a leg, lost to infection, toes on the other gangrenous, black. He is on the call light again, a favorite pastime. Another patient, disoriented, disheveled, disgruntled, tries yet again to vacate the bed, setting off multiple alarms.
I feel bad for my feelings, the weight of despair weighing on me, my impatience like a cloud of guilty smog swirling around my head. I find myself tempted to be rough with the unfortunate post-seizure patient, impatient, upset at 3 in the morning when everything seems so dismal and dark, and my exhausted body tells me I should be sleeping.
Why in the world do I do this? I continue down this avenue of affliction, checking in on one beleaguered, unfortunate soul after the next, thinking thoughts of “this could be me, this could be me” and if it was then “please, please, just let me die!” One lady is already dead, brain dead at least. Her body is bloated, her cloudy, blood-rimmed eyes bulge from sockets leaking serous fluid and occasionally blood. Her stomach is distended and shiny, arms and legs flaccid and flabby, flopping over when we turn her, change her, continually clean her. Her family, two men, come in every evening to chant and pray, to shout at unseen spirits and the doctor’s clinical note states that “family expects a full recovery.” This poor misshapen piece of flesh, hardly human any longer, is still deemed “full code” and we will be obligated to perform CPR should her heart stop…”
That’s where the entry stops. I must have written this during break. Looking back, I am ashamed now for some of those thoughts, but the struggle was real.
And after all these years the question still remains for us. Why do we do this?
“Dear Lord, be with this gentleman…” The air is still as he hangs onto my words. His clammy fingers tighten on my arm in a desperate gesture of fear. The little flashing screens and intermittent bleeps fade into nothingness as two pleading souls lift anxious eyes heavenward. Imagine waking up with no limbs. Imagine not waking up at all. His haggard eyes match the emaciated gown hanging from the thin shoulders.
“Thank-you so much for taking the time to explain and help us understand…” Mom’s breathing is fading and the faces around the bed shine with memories while their fingers, an extension of love, stroke her pallid face. Trusting eyes turn and ask, “Do you think she’s comfortable, will it be long?”
Maybe this is why we do it. That sense of fulfillment, that blessing even, that comes from the honor of being present in a human’s most vulnerable times of life. From the glory and slippery joy of birth to the inevitable and absolute stillness of death and all the tragedies in-between.
When you stop to think about it, it is hard to fathom what a nurse does, how involved they get at every level of the human condition, things that most people cannot imagine. So, thanks to each of you who have chosen this career and may God bless your hands and hearts this nurses’ week.
BF
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