Part 3 of 3

So the new day has begun; it starts as every other day has this week with me rising from bed at 0515, downstairs at 0555 and in the car driving to the hospital for 0635. I park. I walk down the stairs, into the brisk May morning and up into the emergency waiting area to get to the main building.

I climb all 8 flights of stairs and get to the landing. I open the door, walk down the ward to the locker room, drop off my rucksack, straighten my scrubs and take my paperwork with me to the debrief room for pre-shift.

I sit. I listen. I take notes on my new patient. I fall into a gentle sleep.

I wake, rise from my chair and go to visit my new patient.

But that is where the routine ends; immediately things are so much better. His sister is the one staying with him and she helps him with many of his early morning ADLs (activities of daily living) and she is quick to involve me in his AM care.

He is awake, smiling and already making snarky comments despite his faded memory.

The gentleman is a farmer and had a bit of a nasty turn with the stairs as he fell down them to the concrete below, smacking his head on the cement. This caused a hematoma under his bone and the pressure was so great, they had to take a plate of his skull out so that it would not damage his brain. They waited until this pressure began to die down to put the bone flap back on, resulting in the scar that his grandchildren will undoubtably find as an interesting story. He lost movement in his left leg after the fall and most of his memory (all short term and a unfortunate and large portion of the long term), something that his family and close friends found very difficult to deal with. Anyways.

The day goes by in a blur, me attending to my dear patient on isolation while trying to cram in a quick coffee break, some bits of charting and a brief midterm review. What I did not anticipate during the day however was the moment with his sister in which she explained to me the routines of her brother as well as some of the fears she had been encountering during this lengthy process since her brother’s initial accident.

She was a wonderful woman, always putting her brother’s needs before her own, as she stays at the hospital at night, ensuring that he is safe and well, getting good ROM (range of motion) activities to stretch his cramped muscles, particularly in his left leg.

But as I sat with her, I encountered much of the pain and fear she had seen over the past 3-4 months. She began to cry, huge wracking sobs that shook her body, causing her to gasp for air.

I am not awkward with emotional people as I have experienced my fair share of such, so in addition to offering kleenex, I was able to further talk with her.

As she began to calm a bit, she opened her stark blue eyes and peered hard right into mine.

‘Do you know what he said to me this morning? When you first came in, helped him get his shorts on for the therapist and left for his medication, he turned to me and said

She’s a good one, isn’t she Tara?

‘I turned back to him and said, yes Carl. Yes, she she is.’

~~

So it can suck, having horrible people slug you around and lead you to believe you are helping them, but there are also the moments when you have to really try hard not to cry because of the goodness of others. You will experience your bad patients and you will have the good ones, both will make memories in your mind, leaving fingerprints on the glass of your recollections.

You may not want to be around some people. You will want to spend days and days with others.

Just remember that He puts them in your path for a reason; whether to touch their lives or make them realize that they do not indeed work well with student nurses. Life is an adventure, as cliche as it sounds. Might as well make the most of your road trip.