I have not had time to blog this week so far. No one tells you what nursing school is going to be like (have I said this before?). Here is my favorite example from this week. After an exam Monday, a cluster of us were chatting; it came to light that about 80% of us have partners who refuse to sleep with us. Yes, they sleep on the couch. Why? Because we wake them up tossing and turning or waking up with an “AGH” intake of breath from anxiety dreams regarding how many things have to be fit into so few hours. Nope. No one tells you stuff like this.
But I still think that nurses are superheroes, and this post supports my point further. Hospice nurses REALLY rock. They don’t do many technical things, but oh boy do they make a difference to folks. I shadowed one last week and was really awed by her.
Tomorrow is my last clinical for the semester, and I cannot believe how fast it has gone. I’m panting with anticipation of having an extra 20 hours for other things during the week, but I will sort of miss some of the residents. I get attached to people after I care for them for more than about 5 minutes. I’m not sure whether that’s an asset or not.
My boyfriend has always been dubious about my desire to be a nurse because he says I am too soft-hearted and won’t be able to withstand the emotional pressures of having patients die and so on. This is a valid point, but I also don’t see the point in being a nurse who is stone-hearted. I don’t know how to find that happy medium. Recently I was taking vitals on an actively dying patient while staff were filing in to say good-bye, and some of them were crying. When I see someone crying, I start to cry. I did the thing were you don’t blink so no one can tell, but it didn’t totally work. I thought, “For crying out loud, I can’t be a nurse who cries anytime anyone else does!” Jeez. I imagine I’ll get inured to it after a while, but right now it seems as if every time I walk in to a clinical situation there is an elderly person who is actively dying and I am sent in to do something. When they are just about to die they get that haunting peaceful look sometimes that just does something to me. Still, I’m starting to feel like the angel of death. “For heaven’s sake, you don’t want me to take that patient’s vitals. Trust me. Every time I interact with someone lately, they die!” Spurious logic when you are dealing solely with extremly elderly hospice patients, but still…
I have been practising for 10 years now, and have not become desensitized to death. What I have realised, is that I can be more of a help offering support to the family (who, in a way, become our patients as well), and also, make that person comfortable. No one should die alone, scared, or in pain is my credo.
Keep on truckin’….