Mr. E. looked up at him and asked, “Doc, what do you think my chances are?”
The doctor looked earnestly at Mr. E. and replied, “Do you want me to be truthful?”
“I’m not sure I have time for you to be anything else,” Mr. E. returned.
“I don’t think you can survive your burn injuries.”
Mr. E. paused for a minute and then replied, “Put me back in the helicopter. I like their odds better.”
L. Sue Booth
[EDITORS’ NOTE: Mr. E. holds the record for surviving the highest percentage of burns and for leaving the burn unit successfully. Today, he lives independently in his own home, drives his own car, and is helping to raise his three children. He volunteers to meet with burned victims and their families, and talks to occupational and physical therapy students, nurses, and doctors about the care and psyche of burned patients. ]
Reprinted by permission of Mark Parisi and Off the Mark. © 1995 Mark Parisi.
A Necessary Change
Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
The early morning air powerfully penetrated the multiple layers I was wearing. The cold air stole my breath away. I quickly navigated the three blocks from home to work. As I hurried across the parking lot, I offered a quick, obligatory prayer asking God to help me care for my patients and families.
I finished getting report when the phone rang; my patient’s son wanted an update on his dad’s condition. I told him of Dick’s critical condition, trying my best to sound unhurried. I mentioned that if the family wanted to speak to the doctor, they would need to be here before eight o’clock that morning.
Another glance at my watch, and I hurriedly gathered my patient’s chart and headed for his room. Had I been too matter of fact? Was there compassion in my voice? I tried to dismiss the knot in my throat. The report I had received on Dick was grim. Dismissing the urge to pray, I focused my attention on thoroughly assessing him. The clock on the wall taunted me. I was behind my normal schedule. I completed Dick’s assessment and basic care, and hurried next door to my next patient.
I had barely begun my assessment when the charge nurse came to inform me that Dick’s wife was here. An hour behind. Taking a deep breath, I flung my charting aside and scuttled into Dick’s room. A short, blue-eyed, smiling woman greeted me. Her voice was soft like her fluffy white hair.
“Hello, I am Dick’s wife, Dianne.”
With a halfhearted smile, I gave my customary, “Hi, my name is Anne. I’ll be Dick’s nurse today.”
Before another word was spoken, more of Dick’s family walked in. Once again I updated them on his grave condition. I tried patiently to answer all their questions. It was the last comment by Dick’s daughter that blindsided me.
“How can you work in the intensive care unit and not go home every night crying?”
Her brown eyes questioned me; her words penetrated my bitter heart. Millions of thoughts darted through my head. I couldn’t tell her the truth, it would sound so callous: after six years in intensive care you get accustomed to death. Astoundingly, my mouth opened and my heart spoke for me.
“I couldn’t do this job without God,” I managed to say halfheartedly.
The corners of her lips rose for a brief moment, and then there was silence.
Without taking time to speak another word, I scurried out of the room with a troubled heart. When had I become so coldhearted? Am I really indifferent to death and suffering? I needed to talk to someone about this, but I didn’t have the time. I had to rid myself of this foreboding darkness pressing in on me.
I returned to the nurses’ station. As I sat charting, one of Dick’s doctors came into the ICU. I followed him down the hall toward Dick’s room.
“It doesn’t look good,” he muttered to me.
“His family is here to talk to you.”
“Nothing has changed. If the pneumonia doesn’t kill him, the cancer will. And with his bad heart and kidneys, he doesn’t stand a chance.”
“His family needs to know that.”
The doctor nodded.
I brought Dianne into Dick’s room and listened as she talked with the doctor.
My stomach churned as he spoke.
“Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do,” he said.
After such devastating news, I was astonished to see Dianne’s radiant smile. She is in denial, I thought.
Dianne stroked her husband’s hand.
A tear formed in my eye. It’s been years since I’ve cried at work. What on earth is happening to me?
I hustled out to continue my overwhelming assignment. Five hours into my shift the ventilator alarm sounded in Dick’s room. I rushed in to determine the cause. After a rapid assessment of Dick and the equipment, I hollered for the charge nurse to call the respiratory therapist. We failed at our endeavor to rectify the situation. Dick continued to struggle for air, even though he was on a respirator. My chest grew tight as I allowed myself to fully experience the severity of the situation. A bedside chest x-ray revealed a pocket of air in his chest, hindering his lung expansion and decreasing the air he received with each breath.
I rushed to the waiting room and ushered Dianne and her family into a small private conference room. I noticed Dianne’s eyes filling with tears as I stated plainly Dick’s condition.
She whispered, “So this is it?”
Like a melting iceberg, I felt my heart beginning to thaw. I swallowed hard trying to force the tears away. “Would you like to go see him?”
I helped her out of the chair and Dianne and I plodded toward Dick’s room. I had walked these halls many times that day, but my feet felt heavy and encumbered. With each step, I felt tremendous sorrow; I began envisioning what it would be like if I had to say good-bye to my husband. My heart beat rapidly in my chest, and my palms began to sweat.
Closing the door behind us, I watched Dianne take a deep breath, stand up tall, and march to the head of Dick’s bed. Leaning over she placed a gentle kiss on his forehead, “I love you, Dick. I always have. There won’t be a day goes by when I won’t miss you or think about you. But now it is time to go see your Savior. Jesus is here, Dick, and it is time for you to run into His arms.”
Tears flowed down my cheeks. I walked over to Dianne and put my arm around her. We said a prayer together. At her request, I went out and summoned the rest of the family. They gathered around his bed, and with heads bowed and tears flowing, they gave Dick back to his Lord.
As I helped Dianne and her family cope with the loss of their beloved, I experienced a revival in my spirit. Jesus forgave my indifference and renewed the compassion I needed to care for my patients and their families.
That night on my walk home I cried . . . for what Dianne lost . . . and I gained.
Anne Johnson
Catch of the Day
Laughter is higher than all pain.
Elbert Hubbard
A phone call.
A plane ride.
A race to the hospital.
I still shuddered at the thought. I had come so close to losing Kyle. Although he wasn’t out of the woods yet, at least he was stabilized. At least he was still alive.
In the mean time,my life settled into a routine of its own. A simple breakfast, a ninety-minute drive, and each day spent visiting the care unit to spend time with my twenty-two-year-old son—before the long drive home at night.
During the coma, pneumonia attacked his lungs, infections invaded his blood, and bedsores appeared in odd places. On the other hand, while he was asleep, his cracked ribs healed, his lungs reinflated, and his crushed leg accepted the titanium rod. Now that he was awake and alert, I fretted over the “wait-and-see” outcome of his severe head trauma.
Early on, I had hardly recognized my son. Kyle was like a voodoo doll. Needles, wires, and catheters pierced him. Hoses shackled him. Tubes and cords crisscrossed his bod
y like a fishing net. And it felt odd to see him prone, horizontal, still.
Before this hit-and-run biking accident, nothing about Kyle was still. He was as lively as one of the trout on his stringer—busy flipping and flopping between one activity and the next. Fishing was only one of his outdoor hobbies, like archery and camping. He roamed the foothills of Colorado’s Front Range and hunted the Rockies for signs of elk and deer, hoping for a glimpse of moose. And, of course, he tossed the occasional line into icy mountain rivers, looking for relaxation along with a mess of fish to cook over his campfire for supper.
Nevertheless, he was handling his hospitalization better than I was. Those first tenuous hours had melted into days and the days into weeks. Dark circles ringed my eyes, worry lines gridded my forehead, and clothes hung on my too-thin frame. I was exhausted. Utterly worn down. Kyle noticed, I could tell. Now he was worrying about me.
But today was different.
Even before the elevator doors slid fully open, I heard it. Laughter. Laughter?
Oh, it wasn’t the stilted laughter of awkward visitors. It wasn’t even the brittle laughter born of tension. It was real laughter. From the belly. And it was coming from Kyle’s room.
I paused at the threshold, hardly believing my ears . . . and eyes. The room pulsed with more than the beeps of monitors. It throbbed with the life that only laughter brings. And it was due to Liam, a new nurse.
His was a one-man comedy routine. He cast out snappy jokes, witty one-liners, and rib-tickling stories. Not only was Kyle actually grinning, so was the small crowd of staff that had collected to provide an avid audience and to egg Liam on—while he reeled in everyone with his nonsense.
My initial reaction was indignation. How dare he? Didn’t this cocky male nurse know the seriousness of Kyle’s condition? Didn’t he understand how to act in a hospital room?
As I paused in frustration, I looked toward my son—and witnessed a slow smile spread across his face. It widenened until it erupted into a full-fledged grin. His golden eyes were bright as they met mine. I could see his own quick wit itching to toss out a few quips of his own. I knew that, if it weren’t for the trach at the base of his throat, he would be matching Liam, joke for joke. Suddenly, for the first time in weeks, my own spirits lightened and lifted . . . with hope.
I, too, found myself responding to the gags and tales. It dawned on me that Liam’s vivaciousness, his optimism, and his contagious cheer weren’t an intrusion; they were antidotes. Good medicine. A clear reminder that life has its joyous moments, too.
And, thanks to Liam’s example, I learned a valuable lesson. I learned that humor heals. Hook, line, and sinker.
Carol McAdoo Rehme
Saving the Best Till Last
Miserable comforters are ye all.
Job 16:2
The clinic I worked at in a small rural town had a childhood immunization program. We often had only five clients on any given clinic day, except, that is, when it was time for school vaccinations. Then we could easily have twenty to thirty clients during our three-hour clinic.
One busy summer day a young lady, who would be entering seventh grade, came into our immunization clinic. As soon as she entered I knew this was going to take a while, as she immediately began to cry. I quietly closed the door and instructed her and her father to sit at the screener’s table. I reviewed her records and explained her need for tetanus,MMR, and a series of three hepatitis B vaccines. She cried even harder and tried to leave, but her dad talked her into sitting back down and continuing with the process.
I tried to comfort her, but to no avail. I began teaching about each vaccine and she interrupted. “Do I really need to take all three of those shots?”
I assured her she did, and she bawled harder. I proceeded with my injection routine, explaining everything as I did. When I attempted to give the tetanus booster, she jerked away and covered the injection site with her free hand. After much coaxing, she moved her hand away, received the injection, and melted into tears again.
This scene was repeated as I finally gave the hepatitis B vaccine and, thirty minutes later, the MMR. She clung to me afterward and finally ceased crying—until I reminded her to come back the next month for her second hepatitis B. Her dad assured me they’d return. I had my doubts.
The next month, they were indeed back. I had hoped she realized this was really no big deal, but she erupted into tears as soon as she entered my room again. We repeated her routine of protest, but I finally talked her into taking her second hepatitis B—this time in only ten minutes!
I was surprised to see her back five months later, but not surprised to see the deluge of tears. I tried to cheer her up by telling her, “This is the last hepatitis B vaccination I will ever give you. I promise! But you have to have this one because this is the one that makes the vaccine work.”
She looked at me with a shocked expression. “Well, why didn’t you give me this one first?”
Delores Treffer
“You’re giving me a flu shot? Shouldn’t you
be giving me an anti-flu shot?”
Reprinted by permission of Aaron Bacall. © 2007 Aaron Bacall.
Gang-Style
Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel.Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.
Niccolo Machiavelli
It was six o’clock Monday morning. My twelve-hour shift in the emergency room of a county hospital was about to come to a close, and I moved through the sterile rooms, silently grateful the weekend was over. These nights are the busiest of my workweek, when we see more accidents, more drunks, more stab and gunshot wounds. But, I thought, in one hour I can go home and climb into the security and comfort of my bed . . . an inviting thought.
Then, the emergency room front-door buzzer sounded. Glancing around, I realized I was alone in the ward. This was unusual, and it made me uncomfortable. I moved hesitantly toward the half-glass door that led to an outside ramp. In the pale light that dawned just over the horizon and split through the tall pine trees around the hospital, I could make out the figures of two young black men. They were dressed in grunge, their heads wrapped in do-rags. Neither of them appeared to be in distress, and I felt a chill run through me. If they were part of a gang, I surmised, they might be here to rob the narcotics cabinet. At ninety-five pounds, I would be no match for them. Still, I unlocked the door and pushed it open.
“Can I help you?” The question sounded meek, even to me.
“We’ve got a man out here we think is having a heart attack,” one of the young men answered.
That’s when I noticed an elderly white man leaning over the cab of an old pickup truck. My nursing instincts took over. I immediately called for help. The maintenance man, who happened to be close by, aided me in getting the man into a wheelchair as the two black men rattled off their story.
“The old man drove up to the service station. Said he was having chest pains and could we tell him where the nearest hospital is. That’s when we said, ‘We’ll take ya, man.’”
I marveled that, given their appearance, the old man had given them his keys.
We got the man into an examination room, leaving the two young men behind. As we began triage, the patient began to panic. “My dog’s in the truck!”
“That’s okay, sir,” I soothed. “We’ll have someone take care of your dog.”
“You don’t understand,” he continued. “Mutsy’s over twenty years old. She can’t take the heat.”
At his insistence, an orderly was sent to the truck to open the windows for the dog.
“All I have is Mutsy,” the old man told us. “It’s just Mutsy and me, traveling around the States.”
The orderly returned with a box of pill bottles he found on the front seat. I was stunned to see that none of the bottles had labels. One was filled with aspirin, a common prescription for heart patients.
“Sir, can you tell me how much aspirin you
take a day?” I asked.
Kind, watered-down eyes focused on the bottle in my hand. “Oh, that’s not mine,” he informed me. “That’s Mutsy’s.”
The respiratory therapist came in. “Carla, you’ve gotta see this dog! He’s Benji with an overbite!”
Once our patient was stabilized, the doctor on duty told him he would need to be kept for observation.
“What about Mutsy?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about Mutsy,” the R.T. said. “She’s going home with me.”
He thanked us. “By the way,” he added, “do you know who those two young men are?”
In the efficiency of my work, I had forgotten about them. “No, sir. I don’t.”
“They sure were nice,” he said.
A quick check of the emergency area proved the men were gone.
I chastised myself as I recalled my initial reaction seeing them standing on the other side of the ER door. I wish I had taken their names so we could thank them properly. But in my heart, I knew they didn’t come to the aid of the man for a pat on the back. They came because, underneath their gang-style clothing, pure hearts were beating.
Carla Tretheway
as told to Eva Marie Everson
100
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
Eleanor Roosevelt
As a clinical instructor of nursing, my favorite unit for working with students was an orthopedic unit at Williamsport Hospital. This unit had patients with total hip and knee replacements. Taking care of these people provided a challenging medical-surgical clinical experience. The patients all had intravenous fluids, dressing changes, injections, medications, physical therapy, and patient teaching needs. My students often commented that they couldn’t believe how old the patients were with most being in their seventies.
Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul: Second Dose Page 15