I remember in grade 8 upon graduating into high school, I had a teacher who made a prediction about what career path each of the students would take. On the list I saw my name and scoffed at her prediction - nurse.
Me? A nurse? To be around the sick, the injured, the dying? While I felt great sympathy for people and would have in a moment reached out to help someone who was in those categories, to do that on a professional basis seemed too overwhelming. Granted, it is a noble career path and people who do become nurses can make a good money and travel anywhere in the world to pursue it, it just didn't seem fun.
At that stage in my life, I wanted the thrill of doing something like being a stewardess. My religion would discourage me from my other passion of becoming a professional writer, actress or singer. People like Michael Jackson were frowned upon in my circle because he chose a "worldly" path, but he made so much money that they would often look the other way.
My father is of the old fashioned and practical nature. For a girl, nursing would have been a perfect profession. Either that or teacher or secretary. He didn't seem to enthusiastic about me pursuing the high school technical program for computers or drafting because they were more suited for boys.
My mother went back to school when I was in third grade to become a nurse's aide in order to supplement our family's income. I remember pouring through her study books, memorizing everything I could, taking the sample tests and passing them by the time I was in grade four. It was interesting and fascinating, but I just could not see myself doing that for a living.
My mother ended up working for a company that worked mostly with burn victims to fit them with support hoses and garments to protect their skin. It seemed like it depressed her on some level to do this daily, but as time went on she seemed more immune to it.
Time went on and I graduated high school and floundered through one semester of college and a nervous breakdown where time seemed surreal. Half the time I really have no memory of what went on. Then I met my husband.
My father-in-law inherited a business from his mother. AAA Nurses Registry. My father-in-law was incompetent as all get out when it comes to business, so in his mind the logical thing was to put me on the corporate board and that way I could run most of it for him. I did not have a clue as to what I was doing either, but made the best of it.
The registry was a place where we had a list of names of nurses, home health care workers, CNAs, LPNs, and RNs were on call to take private duty cases. The problem was always a shortage of nurses to take the cases. After a quick training, I became a home health care worker able to go to homes, hospitals and nursing facilities to do one on one care with a patient with limited responsibilities. Basically a maid who could help with medication, change diapers, change bedding, bathing, take basic vitals and log them, follow orders prescribed by the doctor caring for the patient and being there as an all around companion.
There are certain cases most on the registry did not want to take. I ended up doing these. I worked with those in hospice care, burn victims, and terminals at home. The majority of the patients I would tend to would die on me.
The first one was the hardest. I had no idea what I was getting myself into with her medical background. All I knew is she was a recluse who has not chosen to leave her home in over 12 years. She had two sisters who did the shopping and helped pay bills for her. This poor woman would not even step outside her front door to get the mail. I was told she was a diabetic recluse who did not always take her medication.
When I arrived, her sisters were there showing me all that had to be done and I met her. I took one look at her legs which were three times the size they should be and were turning purple. I told them she needed to go to the ER now, but the patient complained she did not want to go. My father-in-law bit my head off over my call because it would mean we wouldn't get paid that day. However, I pleaded with her sisters that she needed to go. They listened and she was rushed into the hospital for 4 days. They drained the fluid and put her on medication. She was suffering from heart failure and would not live much longer, but had she not gone she would have expired that night.
Of course my father-in-law had to eat humble pie because when she was released her sisters insisted that I would be the only one to tend to her. At that point, no one told me she was dying, but it did cross my mind. Many times when someone has legs that looked like that, it usually means there is something wrong with a vital organ such as the heart or kidneys. I really hoped she was going to live. It wasn't until a few weeks later that her sisters started to argue over who would get what from her property that I was clued in her days were numbered. They told me not to tell her she was dying.
What do you do in that situation when you are told not to tell the person who is dying they are not dying when they ask you point blank if they are? I told her as long as she has hope and keep fighting, she would live. I also encouraged her to at least go outside and see the pretty garden and spend some time in the fresh air. She laughed. She said one day she just might do that.
I had the night off and another nurse took my place. She died that night. That nurse told me one of the last things she did was to eat her last meal outside in the garden. I cried. I still cry when I think about it. There was nothing I could really do to stop it. The only thing I can take comfort in is the fact that I tried my best to make her last days not so lonely and stressful.
Shortly after that one, I had the home patient from hell. We had a name we called her behind her back because she was so hard on all of us, Ms Dildo. I know that's mean, but boy was she one tough cookie. She was a former teacher who also was very active in playing sports. She volunteered and spent lots of time with her family. Then she was stricken with the worst form of crippling arthritis. It was so bad she was bedridden. You could not move her without her feeling extreme pain. It made her a very bitter and demanding person.
She resented the fact that she could not live a normal life. She resented strangers in her home having to take care of things she wanted to take care of herself. Anything could set her off in a torrent of verbal abuse. Even a mild sneeze could have her calling you every name in the book. Nothing anyone cooked for her was good enough and at times would have you do it over and over again as she would berate you in the process.
I don't think she really wanted to be mean to anyone. I think she was just upset that she has lost all independence. It was clear she wanted to die. She asked me a few times to kill her and chewed me out for not agreeing to it. If ever there was a case for Doctor Jack Kevorkian, this would be a textbook example for euthanasia. If it were not for her arthritis, she would have a long and quality life. As there were no cures for her condition and it would only get worse and there was no way she would ever be able to live a day without pain, there was no quality to her otherwise long lifespan. She did the only thing she could and refused to eat. She starved herself to death. I was not in a position to force feed her, but only to report it to her family and they did not want to force her with a feeding tube, but it did eventually come to that. By that time it was too late and the damage done was permanent. She died of heart failure.
I remember my father-in-law had this knack of befriending strangers. That is the one good thing I could say about the man. He would give the shirt off his back to people in need. One man he did befriend and invited him over a few times ended up in my care against my wishes. He showed up one day just as I was getting off my other job in a mall. He told a story of how he was so depressed he wanted to kill himself, so he took a shotgun and shot himself. It missed and hit his shoulder.
As this was a critical situation, I did not want to question him about this incident that did not add up. He refused to go to the hospital because he said he did not want to be committed to the mental hospital. The problem I had with his story is I know for a fact a gun shot would have been reported to the police and this guy was not exactly an upstanding citizen (busted a few times for burglary). The gunshot wound also did not look point blank. It was made from a distance. Also, this guy had short and stubby arms, how on earth could he use a shotgun and point it to his head?
Whatever the story, I was presented with the task of taking the bullet out of him. He was bleeding all over the place and I was not given much of a choice. I didn't have proper medical equipment to handle it, but had to wing it with a standard first aid kit and lots of Jack Daniels. He survived and I swore I would never do ER duty if I had to come across more like that.
People with third degree burns are hard to deal with. It is understandable. The top layers of skin is completely ruined and has to be scraped off and it aggravates the exposed raw nerves beneath. It leaves them permanently disfigured in the form of a permanent scar or all the way to amputation. It takes a saint to deal with those who have fresh burns and to deal with the care in the weeks after. I did attend a private duty case with a patient with 3rd degree burns on his chest, but he died almost as soon as I got there. They were in the middle of scraping him and I can still remember the screams and he then flat-lined. It was a shame as this was a 30 something fire fighter.
Hard still are those going into a nursing home. A nursing home can be a depressing place depending on the ethics of the facility. Some are actually striving to make it a comfortable environment while others have half-dead patients sitting like zombies in wheelchairs where they are neglected most of the day. It was heartbreaking for me that a home case turned into a nursing home case because the daughter-in-law had a personal axe to grind against her mother-in-law. There was not much wrong with the patient except she was in the beginning phase of alzheimer's disease. She was still mentally there, but would forget things from time to time. Having her mother-in-law in the basement of her home was too much stress causing lots of arguments we could hear from the couple upstairs. When they told me they were going to send her to a nursing home, they had me help her move in. The poor woman cried, but I had to be strong for her. I left her on the floor of a ward where the patients wandered mindlessly or were confined to wheelchairs. She begged me not to leave her there. Tearfully I had to go. I could not face her. I could not look back. I could not go back. She died two weeks later.
I stopped working so much with the patients as I took to working two full time jobs while I was pregnant with my daughter. I gave birth three months early as I went into labour on the job and I was the only one there. I spent two days in the hospital and my girl was fine. My father-in-law picked me up and told me there was a case that had to be filled and there was no one to take it. So I took it. BIG MISTAKE!!! I reasoned it would be better for me to take it than to hear him complain no one wants to work, besides it was in the same hospital as my daughter so I could visit her at the end of my 12 hour shift. I worked a few cases at the hospital for the next week and ended up as a patient myself.
The last case I ever took was of a man with terminal cancer who was in a coma. They just removed his feeding tube. No questions, he was going to die. My job was to make him comfortable and clean him up during the overnight shift. I talked with him even though he was in a coma. I read to him. I would fluff his pillows and turn him and give him a refreshing mouth sponge to ease the cracking tongue. Two weeks later he died.
Out of all of the people I had to tend to, only two would go on to survive. Working with dying people is a necessary career and it takes a special person to do it. Imagine yourself about ready to die. I'm sure you would not want to die alone. Sometimes you do have to call it quits for your own sanity.
