Choose Love and Waterproof Mascara

I’ve never seen anyone with Stevens Johnson before. It’s horrible. Any RN who’s ever had a patient with it knows what I’m saying. It’s the saddest, scariest, most traumatic thing I’ve ever encountered outside a burn unit. It made me feel like a horrible nurse. (non-medical peeps, don’t google that. Seriously. you don’t want to)

Damn, I was tired when I got home last night. It was Valentines Day and I worked. The heaviness of the prior days settled over me like a mantle of sadness, and I once again wondered why I had chosen such a hard profession.  I could have gone back to school to be anything. Anything at all... and I chose THIS? On PURPOSE? 

Then I pictured myself doing anything else, and I could not. In every imaginable reality I can conjure, I wear waterproof mascara and a stethoscope, and I work with people who cannot talk for themselves.

I wonder ~ do I work for them, or with them?, I thought as I popped the cork off a bottle of red.

I filled my glass past the point of convention, and then added a bit more. My first gulp was too big. It was not satisfying and it burned all the way down to my stomach. The warmth does nothing to quench my thirst, nor does it satisfy my need for mindlessness. It would take far more than a few glasses of wine to erase the pain of this weekend.

Not that I want to forget. Exactly. But the pain part of this weekend was that harsh raw pain that leaves a scar.

This weekend was a celebration of love and pain. And that shit wore me the fuck out. Not in the way I prefer.

I recently came to the conclusion that falling in love is something that happens to us. Being in love is something we choose.

So love is a choice. Choosing to look at the person beside you every day for 365 days, or 19,710 days in a row, and say to yourself, “I choose this person” is what it takes to BE in love. From my point of view, love is about acceptance, understanding, and grace.

And if Love looks like a choice, well Grace probably looks like something different to every person who wields it. It is a shield to protect your love, a sword to defend it, a pen to write it a letter, an offering in sacrifice, a song to celebrate it, a poem to express it, or maybe, just maybe, it’s much simpler than that.

Maybe, sometimes, grace looks like a three word question. This weekend I watched a dying man ask his wife, “are you OK?”

She turned around, surprised that he’d said anything. He’d been quiet for days. He had no strength for words, no air for them.

She said “yeah. Yeah, Matt. I’m OK.”

She was across the room, and I was at the bedside. He turned to me slightly and I asked if he was in pain, and he whispered yes.  The strength of his speech was fading. I offered him morphine, and he mouthed yes.

If you’ve ever seen a patient suffering from this illness, then you know that asking if he was in pain was the most redundant question in the world. No one could be in anything less than excruciating pain when in this condition. (again, non medical peeps, don’t google it)

And I knew. So I said, “later – if you can’t talk – can you show me if you have pain and want more morphine?”

And he reached up, searching for something, with his left hand. I took his palm in mine. His fingers were cool, puffy, and tight. My little fingers were dwarfed by the size of his. I felt a squeeze, and I looked in his pain-laden eyes and nodded. We had a plan. If he wanted morphine, and was in his right mind, he would find my hand and squeeze it.

Nothing I did could really help though. It was a gruesome sight. I did anything I could to offer comfort, but nothing I did could possibly help. And that haunted me.

The day went slow.

It dragged on.

Click. Click. Click. Went the minutes on the clock.

And suddenly it sped up. We were running out of time. Hurry, Hurry! Places everyone!

She was laying across his body sobbing and he knew he had to go. He couldn’t stay with her any longer. I felt a little helpless for her and a little hopeful for him that it would be quick. Please, I prayed to my God, please let it be quick for his man who suffers so much.

Please, I prayed, Let her forgive us all for telling her it’s OK to let him go.

And then, her ragged breathing was the only sound in the room. The muffled whir of the oxygen bubbling faded away and we realized he wasn’t straining for air anymore. He was quiet and at peace, with his love stretched over his body.

There would be no more searching gestures, no more hand squeezes and no more three word questions for his wife.

“He left me”, she turned on me with a broken angry voice.

“He waited until you said you were ok”, I replied in my most confident tone. “It was his choice. Don’t take that from him. He chose when. He chose and he waited for you to be 'ok'.”

Silence came over the room. I felt the gaze of all the family settle on me, though I did not break from looking at her. 

I watched her face crumble as understanding dawned...

Hers.

Theirs.

Mine.

Love is a choice. You get to choose to keep it, or let it go, and it is a choice you make for you. No one can choose for another.

Love is a choice.

And after it was over and the tears, the accusations, and the anger began to fade from the room, the great love this couple shared began to fill it. It filled it so full that I could see there wasn’t room for anyone else to squeeze in, and at the same time, I wanted to press myself inside the walls and soak in it a little. Forgiveness was offered, hugs were exchanged, and compliments were made.

“You were a godsend, I’m so glad you were our Nurse. You showed us such compassion, even when we were angry.”

And to that I said, and meant, “I think you all were put here in my path to show me something, too.”

Today I am less raw. I drank. I slept. I cried. 

I look at this couple, this family, and I wonder if they could ever possibly know how their love and pain brought understanding to this nurse on Valentine’s Day.

waterproof mascara

I never heard anyone warn me about what it would be like as a nurse. I think they talked a bit, but I didn’t hear what they were saying.

Maybe if I’d read more, or studied harder in school, I would have known...?

Or

Maybe if I’d asked more nurses what I was getting into...?

Or more carefully picked my job...?

I never remember hearing anyone say that some days you will walk on air and own the universe.  Or that some days you will be part of the care team and other days you will feel like the only member of the care team.

I remember seasoned nurses talk about that deeply satisfying moment of being part of the team, or the bone crushing frustration of looking at a completely detached physician as he treats the patient like a pile of symptoms. But I didn’t hear them.

No one ever managed to communicate that sometimes the unit would be so full of total care patients that the Patient Care Techs would be running ragged and no nurses would be able to help each other. And certainly no one ever said that those are always the days where one of your patients will start circling the drain at 5 pm. Or that when you have 4 patients and one of them has a Lumbar Drain that needs draining Q1hr and it’s like watching GRASS GROW as it drips into the bag BUT YOU HAVE TO PAY EXTREMELY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THAT GRASS or YOU WILL KILL THE PATIENT that it would be excruciatingly frustrating to watch all your other patient’s meds get behind. But there are days like that.

In my entire time in nursing school, no one ever verbalized what it would feel like to be a nurse. That the emotions would sometimes be more draining than the 12 miles of walking and 2 tons of lifting that sometimes happens on a day at the Office. The emotional weight drags you into a black hole.

My professors were remiss. They never said that FROM NOW ON you must wear waterproof mascara, because you NEVER KNOW what will happen on your shift. There’s no telling which days will be regular days, and which days will be days where you hold the hand of your favorite patient while the MD tells her that the weakness in her body is cancer.  That there will be a moment in that conversation when she realizes what he is saying. She is leaving her husband. She doesn’t have much time. That they don’t know. That she needs to plan for what will happen after she is dead. That she is sick. They can’t. They can’t tell you what it will feel like when that patient grabs yours arms desperately and wraps them around her body while he continues to talk, or what her bones will feel like through her skin.

There is no way to warn you that her tears will make your uniform salty or that she will shake and shake with shame and fear after he leaves. That the words will stick in your throat when she gasps out the question, "But GBA...What does this mean?"

No one ever told me that there would be days when I would leave a patients room with mascara dripping down my cheeks.

They never warned me.  And while I wish I could tell the new nurses entering this field that the shared pain and suffering will be OK and WORTH IT and that the good days will outnumber the hard, and that IT IS OK TO CRY.... I can’t.

I can’t tell you, and even if I could, you wouldn’t hear me.

Just as I never could hear them.

Until now.

I think I'll go for a run.

~ respect the distance ~

Speed Work:Work Day

Training and being a nurse requires creativity. I’m coming to appreciate that more and more. This week though, I’m worried I may have crossed a threshold between Creativity and CraZy.

At least once a week I get up at 0425 to go catch a run down town. I run with a pack of badass mother (runn)ers who charge through the city like they’re being  chased by a bear.

But really they’re just being chased by me, because I am dead ass last.  Which is really a little cruel because I was running a 7something the other day and still f’ing dead ass last.

That said, I’m getting faster and part of that I attribute to my creativity in training.

~hypoxia – the birthplace of innovation and creativity ~

Y’all know that I started using the stairs exclusively in December of last year in an effort to strengthen my glutes? Well, some of my coworkers are also embracing the stairs...  only my “one to two flights a day” and sometimes “a random timed sprint” wasn’t enough for them. They started skipping lunches, or taking about 3 minutes every hour (it’s literally three minutes total) to walk down to Ground level and do lunges up to level 6.

Over this weekend we went up another level, and found that we were huffing about 4 - 6 flights in the course of a day.  It’s reasonably easy to leave your patients in the care of another nurse for 3 minutes so you can hit the stairs at the top of the hour, and my coworkers are a bunch of  badasses who think that’s a genius idea.

Add those stairs to the 5-7 miles of walking during our regular job, and you quickly realize that these intervals are becoming a legit workout.

So let me clarify that the bada**es I work with are FREAKING galactic.

And late in this week... “the ante” was severely “upped”.

One of my corworkers in particular, The Gazelle, took the pride I expressed in my badass time of 57.3 seconds for 12 flights of stairs as a challenge. She is literally one of the most graceful people I've met. 

Me next to her is like...

Me.

My Co-Workers on the stairs

well. 

basically...

imagine a footrace between a Gazelle versus Barney Rubble?

That's us.

“Gauntlet Down”, she said.

And so, the 6 foot tall beauty I work with set about kicking my a**.

And she did. She beat my personal best by 4 seconds.

FOUR.

I did not imagine shaving off four seconds, but because I am an idiot who can be baited into almost anything athletic, especially by a younger hotter woman, I went ahead and asked her to sprint with me.  I knew I could not beat her, but I hoped like hell that if I used her for a rabbit I would run faster.

And I imagined that if she had me chasing her, she would run faster too.

So... at the beginning of our lunch break we walked down to the ground floor and waited until we heard no one else on the stairs.

It was quiet. We were giggling a little at our ridiculousness. Because let’s be clear. This was level 10 ridiculousness.

And it was epic.

On your mark... that was the longest 12 flights of stairs in my life... I wanted to die. When I got to the top my legs were shaking and I leaned against a wall. And then sat on the stairs. And saw spots...

We made some CODE BLUE jokes.

And I chuckled because I have never felt closer to having a Code called on me than I did in that moment... or I would have chuckled, but I couldn’t breath. Or move. Or think.

But aside from all that, it was wicked fun. ~craZy~

I did not take off 4 seconds. I took off 7.3 seconds. 

Of course, what happened next is exactly what you’re all imagining. I was still gasping (with pleasure?) from an intense 50 seconds when I rounded on my patients... And a family member wanted a complete explanation of Acute Kidney Failure... or something like that...  

uh

“Well...(gasp).... the physiology (breathe Ginny breathe) of the Kidney (*air*) is built around (omg) the idea ...” and so on and so forth. Eventually my heart rate normalized and I wasn’t shaking anymore and I was able to give him a solid answer.

And he didn’t seem bothered at all that his family member’s nurse was a bit, shall we say, breathy?

For the record let me be clear – my companions smoked me and ran it in :42...

And you know what I’m thinking?  I’m thinking that my work day speed work is a legit.  Yes, it’s 4 minutes of intense cardio in 13 hours, but it’s a well needed mental break, a blast of endorphins, and if nothing else, my HR is elevated for 10 minutes an hour for 4 hours a day.

50 seconds is going to be hard to beat. I will have to work hard to get a new PR.  And I WILL work hard to get a new PR, even though I know that when I’m racing the Gazelle I will STILL be dead ass last.

~savor the run~

The Holder

I felt the strain on my knee and leg as her bony foot struck me.  It was not a good kick, but it was strategically aimed.  Crunch!  My knee, which was already a little wonky from the marathon, was suddenly in agony.

“Ah!” I yelped.  But I stayed put, pressing my gloved hand firmly into her neck.

There was blood oozing through my fingers.  I could hear sneakered feet and voices coming down the hall, it was only a minute before I would have help.  I looked down into the sweet cornflower blue eyes that looked up at me.

“Stop trying to kill me!” she spat through gritted teeth.

I adored her.  

I smiled and said in my most reassuring voice, “I’m a nurse.  I’m not here to hurt you.  Mrs (Smith), just relax.  You are safe.”

Sadly, I don't think she was reassured.  She narrowed her eyes and dug her nails into my arm.  They were long and sharp, painted an orangy red color and she triumphantly grinned as got one of them into the skin.  A trickle of my blood dripped down into her bed.

And I continued to hold pressure on the open wound on her neck.

I continued to reassure her.

The rest of the nurses descended on us, and I moved from “emergency pressure holder” to “hand holder”.

By hand holder I really mean, “I continued to allow that poor woman to try to rip the skin off my arm so that other nurses could apply bandages to her bleeding jugular.”

These are my people.  Sweet confused people who are so ill that they think that I, the nurse, am not who I say I am.  Patient’s who call me Morris.  

Or John.  

Patients who believe that I am people from their past who’ve come to call on them.  Or haunt them.

These are my people.  And I really do love them.

Regardless of how truly fond I am of my confused patients, when I got up the next morning my leg couldn’t bear weight at 100%.  Holy WHAT?  I was limping for much of the day because it just felt so uncomfortable.  Thankfully, I totally panicked and reached out to TMB before most people are even awake spoke rationally to a friend who recommended I head to see the Witch Dr.  

At least The Witch Dr could evaluate my situation.

And thankfully, after he treated me for a solid 20 minutes with some medieval torture devices and his thumb, he pronounced me “probably ok” with a promise to “re-evaluate next week if I wasn’t 100%”.

So there you go.  Walking into a patient’s room is far more dangerous for my knees than running a marathon.

And you know what I’m going to do again in a few days?  Walk into that “same” patient’s room.  Even if it’s a different patient.

~savor the run~