Taking Time

In the hospital and, I think, in general in life it’s easy to get annoyed with someone and then write that person of as hostile or demanding. However, if you make the extra effort to smile and be nice and ask about them and their day and if you have a little bit of patience, you will find that these people are not what they initially seemed. They, too, are somebody’s mother, sister, brother, or husband. They have a life somewhere else, and in that moment, when you first encounter each other, they may be grumpy, but we all get grumpy some times. It’s a lot easier to work with someone when the atmosphere is pleasant, and it only takes 30 seconds to set the tone for the rest of the day or evening. For instance, when a new nurse comes on shift, if she’s in a hurry and enters a patient’s room and he needs something and requests it in a demanding way, the nurse has a split second in which to decide if she will reply with kindness or animosity. And those 30 seconds will determine the rest of the day and the following days of care, because both parties will have decided that the other is kind or rude. People like it when they realize that you care. They really do. Maybe some people’s demeanors won’t completely change, because they are going through a bad time, but the relationship is different when it is based on care and respect. It doesn’t even take being hostile or rude to make a person feel bad. It can just be you in a hurry, not really listening to what the other is saying, not really caring how the other is feeling; it can just be you wanting to move on to your next task. That’s something that is so simple, but it’s really easy to get caught up in. Maybe I’m just young and idealistic… but if that is what it is, then I want to stay that way forever! A lot of us nursing students are that way. We notice different things we see in the hospital and it’s hard for us to understand how healthcare professionals can act the way they do sometimes. Surely at some point, they were also idealistic and truly cared about the people they worked with. I pray that my heart will not become calloused from years of service and that I will be able to (as Darcy says) look at people through my “Jesus goggles” and see them as the children of God that they are. Here’s a poem that I like that my boyfriend found and sent to me. I don’t know who it’s by, but the author of the chapter that the poem is found in is Richard C. Simmons, M.D. and the title of the chapter is “The Importance of Understanding Human Behavior to the Practicing Physician.”

What do you see nurses, what do you see?
Are you thinking when you are looking at me--
A crabby old woman, not very wise,
Uncertain of habit, with far-away eyes.
Who dribbles her food and makes no reply
When you say in a loud voice—“I do wish you’d try.”
Who seems not to notice the things that you do,
And forever is losing a stocking or shoe.
Who unresisting or not, lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding the long day to fill.
Is that what you are thinking—is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse, you’re not looking at me.
I’ll tell you who I am as I sit here so still;
As I do at you bidding, as I eat at your will,
I’m a small child of ten with a father and mother,
Brothers and sister, who love one another.
A young girl of sixteen with wings on her feet,
Dreaming that soon now a lover she’ll meet;
A bride soon at twenty—my heart gives a leap.
Remembering the vows that I promised to keep;
At twenty-five now I have young of my own,
Who need me to build a secure, happy home;
A woman of thirty, my young now grow fast,
Bound to each other with ties that should last;
At forty, my young sons have grown and are gone,
But my man’s beside me to see I don’t mourn.
At fifty, once more babies play round my knee.
Again we know children, my loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead,
I look at the future, I shudder with dread,
For my young are all rearing young of their own,
And I think of the years and the love that I’ve known.
I’m an old woman now and nature is cruel—
Tis her jest to make old age look like a fool.
The body it crumbles, grace and vigor depart,
There is now a stone where I once had a heart,
But inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells,
And now and again my battered heart swells,
I remember the joys, I remember the pain,
And I’m loving and living life over again.
I think of the years all too few—gone too fast,
And accept the stark fact the nothing can last.
So open your eyes, nurses, open and see
Not a crabby old woman, look closer, see me!

Hospital

Each week our professor assigns each of us a patient in the hospital that we have to do a careplan on. What's a careplan you might ask. Well, it's this handy dandy instrument they use to make us think through what we're doing so that one day it will all just pop into our heads in a matter of seconds but at the moment, it is a 22 page pain in the neck. So, the man that I was assigned to this week is such a lovely old man! He's just great. I didn't want this week's clinical days to be over because I wanted to continue taking care of him! The woman I had last week was really sweet too, but she wasn't quite as cognizant as this man, and so I didn't get into any big conversations with her. There was this other man that I had to help take care of too, and he has mild dimensia, but he just LOVED it whenever anyone came around (his family was often there visiting too) and would just go on and on about how pretty and nice everyone was. He was a hoot. So, I don't really have a point to this entry except that I just love taking care of these people!

New Language

I was studying for a test yesterday, and as I was reading it dawned on me that one of the sentences I had just read would have made NO sense to me 8 months ago. I mean, seriously, there were like 5 words connected together with words like "and," "is," and "or." And those 3 words would have been the ONLY words that I would have known the meaning to 8 months ago. It's amazing! I love it! It's a whole other language. Now I'm fluent in English and Spanish and pretty good at Medical too! Woowhoo!

Homeless

I think that the lecture I heard said that people that are of middle socioeconomic status are 2 events away from being homeless (maybe it was 3, but I’m pretty sure it was 2). It could be an illness and a lost job. I could be a death in the family and a natural disaster. Whatever it is, most people in the middle are unknowingly teetering precariously at such a status. That puts things in perspective a little more. It’s not impossible to become homeless—you don’t have to be a drug addict or teenage runaway to end up there. All that needs to happen is a series of unfortunate events.

A homeless man that went to Cross and Crown (an inner city ministry in Oklahoma City) a lot, got frostbite on his legs the other night and they had to amputate from about mid-calf down. So, the man was already homeless, and now he has to deal with losing his feet. How is he supposed to find a job in the midst of this?

A woman came into Cross and Crown to get a prescription filled for her husband (he was at work). They had become homeless the day before. We prayed for her and told her where to go to get the prescription filled for free and then gave her some food. There are special bags of food for the homeless there, full of food that doesn’t need to be cooked and cans that have tops that can be popped off.

I did an ER rotation in clinical last week, and it was interesting to see what the years of work had done to some of the people. Some of them were so cynical and didn’t seem to really care anymore. A lot of the people that came in were on Medicaid or had no insurance and one of the PA’s and a nurse really were upset that these people should receive care too. I understand where they’re coming from, I guess. They’ve been working there for years, and they see people come in that are not having an emergency but care is free at the ER and they can’t turn anyone away, and they see the taxes taken out of their paycheck every week after they have worked really hard and they don’t think that it’s fair. And it’s not. But it’s not fair for the person that’s on Medicaid either.

I know that some people on Medicaid aren’t trying to get off of it. I know that there are people that take advantage of the system. But I also know that there are people on Medicaid that are working hard just trying to make end’s meat. I know that there are people that have made bad financial decisions in their lives and have dug themselves into holes, but maybe they didn’t have a daddy teaching them all about that stuff as they grew up. Or maybe their dads taught them their bad habits. I’m sure that they would prefer not to be on Medicaid, if they too could have a nice job where they could make enough money to not have to choose between paying for electricity or medical insurance or food. But many don’t know how. They’ve never been taught. And so they live the only way they know how.