stories

We carry stories of people every day. Sometimes we share them and sometimes we keep them within ourselves. Earlier in the week I had taken care of a woman as she underwent some invasive procedures to confirm that the cancer had spread to her lungs. Her husband and son remained at her bedside for most of the day, sometimes crying, sometimes silently holding her hand, sometimes gently covering her feet with the blankets. I remember thinking that she exhibited such grace while going through such difficult times. Her son came up to me today to thank me for taking care of his mother. They had placed her on hospice care and the past few days had been hard for the family. When I mentioned to him that I thought his mother exhibited such grace, he smiled and said, “Yeah, she really is elegant isn’t she? But then again, she’s my mom.” I’m always grateful for the “thank you” from patients and families because it reminds me that it’s worth it to connect past the basic necessities of the job but I also realized that those are the “thank you”s that I wish I didn’t have to receive.

I was encouraged today when driving a coworker of mine back after work. It had been a discouraging day for me. I had caught myself several times during the day inadvertently spouting sarcastic or dry comments about patients and their illnesses. I felt disconnected, one half of myself truly enjoying the people who I was caring for yet the other half saying insensitive and insincere things that I did not really feel. While we were driving after work, my coworker started sharing all the stories of the people who she’s working with. And then she said the words that I had been battling with all day but was afraid to say, “I’m always afraid I’m going to become numb.” It was so freeing to be reminded that others go through that and that years of nursing doesn’t mean that I’ll fully understand or know what to make of the things I receive in the hospital.

Wheelies!

My favorite new thing to do in the city is ride my bicycle around. After hanging out with my co-worker who works two jobs, is in school and does marathons in her spare time, I decided it's about time I get off my lard booty and buy another bike [plus I got sick of driving 10 blocks and having to pay $6 at park-and-ride when I could spend that on delicious food]. It's been surprisingly fun! A few things I've especially enjoyed about my little bike [and yes, it is little...boo it was the only one that fit at the shop :P]

1. Scrub pants + bike = holy scrub pants. Scrub pants + little reflective velcro band on leg = nerdy looking but oh so lovely scrub pants
2. I really like it when you go down a hill and the wheels turn so fast that you pedal and it doesn't have any resistence. i have no idea why it's like that...you'd figure the faster you move your legs the faster the wheels turn. is biking down hills kinda like an activation energy...once you hit a certain point there's no turning back and your extra use of biking energy just doesn't do any more work?* i have nerdy friends, I'll ask them :D
3. biking in west philly is kind of like playing Frogger "don't die don't die don't die!"
4. sometimes the pedestrians are scarier than the cars [those crazy penn kids dancing in the street and flailing their arms can clothesline ya like that!]
5. biking in the cold and ears flapping in the wind is a bad combination. ouchie.

*even when I'm old and well, old...there will always be chemistry jokes! but even with all this biking I'll never be able to lose any of the fatty folds in my intestine because of the conservation of omentum...
ha. ha. ha. get it? :)

Humanity in the Hospital

Sometimes I wonder what happens to the heart when you have to bounce back from seeing losses in the hospital. There are times I feel like being a nurse feels like I'm acting in an absurd play, to know the right things to say and the right times to say it. Even on an oncology floor where death frequently occurs, the process of placing a patient on hospice and helping them die still feels slightly unnatural and out of place. Even with the compassionate and understanding friends I have on the floor, it still feels out of place to say "I'm sad" and grieve the loss of a patient. It often makes me wonder what it's like with the residents, who often don't have the benefit of time and space to process the things that they're seeing or the collectiveness of staying in one place to be able to recap moments shared with a patient who has died. Does it grow numb after a while or is it a mechanism of survival to turn off and keep going? This week, after a whole day of conversing with the wife of a dying thirty year old man, she looked at me and said, "It must take a lot of strength to keep working on this floor and see this everyday." Her comment made me wonder what strength looks like. Does strength look like the ability to keep going? Sometimes it seems like so little is talked about amongst staff about how patients affect us. A coworker of mine once told me that all we can do is just provide for the need and move on. Yet, we let individuals affect and change us every day, should it not apply to those that we care for? After watching my patient and his family grieve over their loss, I came home that night and for the first time in a long time, cried over what I saw. It felt good. I felt human.