Finding Balance....

What do you say when someone looks up at you and says: “I don't want to die”? I wish I knew the answer to that question. I could have used it this morning.

I was standing in her bedroom, in the dark. Her sister woke her up and turned on the overhead light. The room is small and cramped. There is no closet, so her clothes hang on a rack at the end of her bed. And the bed was covered with a lovely, silken quilt in purples and greens. It has been washed so many times that it is threadbare.

On the wall, behind me, is her calendar. She always asks me to put my name on the date I am coming back to see her. She says it helps her remember things if people write them down for her.

And she is right: she is dying. Organ transplants have failed and been rejected. The row of medication bottles on the nightstand grows longer and longer. She spends less and less time out of bed. And she cries. A lot.

I didn't have a pat answer for her this morning. I could only hand her a kleenex to wipe away her tears. And stand there. Listening. Available. And she cried softly for a few minutes, then regained her composure and we finished our visit.

Those visits are hard on me. True, I am not the one who is dying, nor am I in pain. But it is painful to stand there and feel so helpless. So bereft of something to say to console her. As she pointed out, all her physicians keep telling her to “hang in there” and she hates hearing that. She doesn't know what that means.

Really, who does?

And tomorrow, I have another difficult patient to deal with. It's a completely different scenario, but it's still hard on my stomach. I seem to know how to deal with difficult patients but, I internalize my own feelings. And in turn, those feelings eat at my stomach.....

So, seeing my other patient today was a real treat. She is delightful, upbeat, and positive. She has a horrid wound on her scalp, in the back. Part of the wound care I did was to shampoo and condition her hair. In 33 years of practice as a registered nurse, this was my first time to shampoo a patient's hair.

As it turns out, she and I go to the same hairdresser. Podunk is a small town, you know. And she is going to tell our hairdresser what a good job I did, too. After washing her hair, and combing it out of the way, I was able to do the wound care. And we finished off her coif with a beanie made out of stockinette, to hold the wound gauze in place.

She was thrilled to have clean hair again....

It seems we also both knew a certain local physician. She worked for him, in his office; and I worked with him, in the operating room. He was known to all as Uncle Harry. No finer physician ever lived: he cared about his patients and he cared about the people who helped him in his medical practice. We both smiled and laughed as we regaled each other with some of his adventures. And we had to admit that we miss him, too.

Bitter and sweet. And bittersweet.

As I sat in the office, finishing my paperwork, I had to answer the phone when it rang. A patient's husband was concerned about her. Things are not getting better for her, with her new medication. He wondered what he should do. And I told him. It was simple, straightforward stuff: signs and symptoms to watch for and report to her physician, and when to take her to the Emergency Room, if things didn't improve.

You would have thought I told him the secrets of the Universe. He was so happy and so grateful just to be able to talk to a nurse on a Sunday. Without getting out of my chair, or saying anything particularly brilliant, I made his day better.

Balance.....