Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul (9 page)

Since I lived seventy miles away, I couldn’t visit with Dad every day. I called, however, to check on him and Mom every night. I thought I was prepared for the storms that lay ahead of me. I did pretty well, until the holidays and other special occasions crept up on us. Mostly I really dreaded my mother’s birthday. I knew how hard it would be for her, and how hard it would be for me to fulfill that favor for my dad. I bought her a present from Daddy, but I knew things still wouldn’t be the same for her when her birthday came.

A couple of weeks before her birthday, I began to notice my mother’s downcast mood when we talked on the phone. We never mentioned it, however. I didn’t know what to say.

Daddy had resided in a nursing home for the previous year. Fortunately, the nurses there loved both Daddy and Mom. Since my mother spent almost every day in Daddy’s room, all of the nurses and their assistants knew her well.

Tina, one of Daddy’s nurses, sensed my mother’s lack of joy and enthusiasm. Somehow, she found out that my mother’s birthday was drawing close. I was ever grateful for her, as she went way beyond the call of duty to lift Mom’s spirits on her special day. Tina bought a small picture frame and put Daddy’s picture inside it. It had a little tape player at the bottom, which would hold a brief message. Daddy still had the capability to speak in a faint whisper, with a great deal of coaxing, if he was coherent. For two solid weeks, after my mother left the nursing home for the day, Tina went into his room and begged Daddy to speak into the microphone.

On her birthday, Mom went to the nursing home just as she did every other day. Through her swollen eyes, she was surprised to see birthday balloons adorning every corner of the room. Sitting on Daddy’s lap was a beautifully wrapped box. Tina and some of the other employees slipped into his room right behind my mother. Mom opened her present and pushed the tiny button. Daddy’s voice softly spoke. “Happy Birthday, Grace.”

The tone of my mother’s voice as she told me the story convinced me that we were surely going to make it through the trying days ahead. And it was all because of a nurse who took time from her busy schedule to care about the love between a sick man, his wife and an important birthday.

Nancy B. Gibbs

In the Arms of an Angel

T
o do the useful thing, to say the courageous
thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing, that is
enough for one man’s life.

T. S. Eliot

I glanced at the clock on the musty green hospital wall. Almost midnight. Had it really been only twenty-one hours since the ringing phone startled me from sleep, spinning my life out of control? Panicked, I had grabbed the receiver, fearing something had happened to my mother. But it was
her
voice I heard on the other end. Rondi, my younger sister . . . brain aneurysm . . . coma . . . surgery . . . could I fly to New York right away?

Before I knew it, I was pacing in an intensive care unit waiting room. The walls, supposedly painted to look soft and welcoming, instead felt cold and threatening. Random chairs sat scattered, while others formed small circles of comfort for families. This room was like no place else on earth. Time stood still here. I walked to the window and gazed from the eighth floor at the people below. I wanted to scream, “How dare you have the audacity to carry on normal lives! Don’t you have any idea what’s happening up here?”

Yes, my world had definitely stopped.

On one side of the waiting room, where we’d “made camp,” friends and relatives congregated to pray, help, cry, ask “why” and bring food. It felt like we should be gathering for a party, not pleading for Rondi to make it through the night.

Family members were allowed in her room only one or two at a time. We “took shifts” around the clock so she’d never be alone. I walked in, startled by the incongruity of seeing Rondi, peacefully “asleep,” quiet, no movement amidst the chaotic activity around her. I counted the rhythmic sounds from monitors and machines—the eerie whoosh of the ventilator—and the steady beep-beeps proving she was still alive.

Nurses, dressed in blue, bustled around, checking lines, gauges and tubing, as if Rondi were the only patient in the whole hospital. I retreated to the background, hesitant to sit in a chair that would be in the way or ask bothersome questions. Then I noticed. All these nurses’ faces reflected knowledge, determination and purpose, yet in their eyes I saw softness and patience. I marveled at the realization that Rondi’s very life rested in the hands of these souls and God.

I had the midnight to 4:00 A.M. shift. It was 1:56 A.M. Things in the room became quieter as only one nurse cared for Rondi. Through misty eyes I read her name: Linda Plano. The flurry calmed as she dimmed the lights, and the machines echoed their discordant beats. Now, I had time to think. And feel—helpless—with no control. I could do nothing to make my sister better. With tubes and wires all over her, I didn’t even know where it was safe to touch her. And how I yearned to touch her, so she’d know I was there, wanting to help. I would do anything, anything, but I had no idea what that should be. If all the medicine, machines and beeping couldn’t save her, then what on earth could I do? The frustration welled up inside me as the tears finally let go. I felt so alone.

I gleaned a bit of comfort as I watched the nurse check Rondi’s monitor connections with the gentlest touch. Sure, she was performing the tasks necessary to save a life, but there was more. She smiled at Rondi while she worked and talked softly to her even though she was in a coma. How I wished I could connect with Rondi in such an intimate way. Suddenly, I noticed the nurse was talking to me, too. Carefully lifting sections of Rondi’s hair, she commented on how sad it was that bed rest caused it to become so mercilessly matted.

Then, out of the blue she looked at me. “Do you have a brush?” Numbly, I retrieved one from my purse. She motioned me to the head of the bed and gently showed me how to brush out small sections of Rondi’s hair and lay them on the pillow without disturbing any tubes or wires. My little sister’s hair felt so light in my hand as I touched her for the first time. I was helping—actually doing something to care for her. The nurse dimmed the lights and quietly slipped out of the room, but not before she smiled again, this time at
me
.

I felt like Rondi and I were the only two people in the world during the hour I brushed her hair. That precious time meant more to me than any other hour we had ever spent together. With the lights lowered, I talked to her, hoping in an odd way that she would open her eyes and tell me she was going to be fine. But I knew she couldn’t do that. If only I could know she was safe and not feeling any pain. As I brushed, I lamented about where people “went” during comas.

As if to answer my questions, a new sound emerged past the hospital noises. Music. It must have been playing in the background all the time, but I hadn’t heard it. I caught some of the words, “ . . . you’re in the arms of the angels . . . find some comfort there. . . . ”

In the arms of the angels—yes! I knew at that moment where Rondi was. She
was
safe, not in pain, being cared for by angels until it was time for her to return to us here in this room.

It’s hard to describe the power and beauty of the moment Rondi’s nurse insightfully created for us that night. Did she know? After all, she ministers to patients every day, nonstop, during her shifts. It’s her job, and this could be just an everyday activity for her, but it meant the world to me. I’m in awe to think that if only one person a week is the recipient of her gift, imagine how many lives she has changed in her twenty-plus years “on the job.”

That night, at 1:56 A.M., there was a great deal of healing needing to take place in that room. This wise, wonderful nurse saw that and nurtured it. Rondi was in the arms of more than one angel that night. We both were.

Elaine Gray Dumler

The Greatest of These
Is Love

Though I articulate the contemporary jargon of nursing,

If I have not understanding that touches the heartbeat of my patients,

I only generate chatter.

Though I boast of diplomas, awards and publications, and my skills reflect the wonderment of technology,

If I have not mastered the gift of compassion,

My endeavors are hollow.

Though I impress my colleagues with my intellectual prowess and lofty idealism,

If I offer not the instrument of self,

I serve my patients with mere activity.

Though I devote my very life to the profession of nursing and forfeit personal desires,

If I become cynical, detached and fatigued to the point of indifference,

My energy is expended in futility.

Though I integrate the art and science of nursing, translate research into clinical practice, and achieve professional notoriety,

If I do not notice wounded hearts and broken dreams,

My mission is not fulfilled.

I may be competent, dependable, efficient, but if I fail to communicate the language of love,

I practice nursing in vain.

Faith, hope and love—these are all craving of the human spirit—but

The greatest of these is love.

Roberta L. Messner
Submitted by Lisa Riha Strazzullo

You Held My Hand

A
bsence is to love what wind is to fire; it
extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

Roger de Bussy-Rabutin

Excruciating, searing pain gripped his stomach and woke Nick from an uneasy sleep. He staggered from underneath his mosquito net, felt for his sandals and, bent double, hurried to the toilets behind the barrack room. He spent the rest of the night there, unable to move, and when the first of the early risers came into the toilet block, he called for help. Two of his friends summoned an ambulance that carried Nick to the British Military Hospital on the outskirts of Poona in India.

The bliss of clean sheets, ceiling fans and quietude was something Nick had not enjoyed for many months. As a trooper in an armoured regiment, he’d known only coarse blankets and barracks full of soldiers.

“So, Soldier, how are you feeling now?’’ A cool hand took his wrist, and he saw a nurse at his bedside. No ordinary nurse but an army nurse, wearing a crisp white uniform with a belt and a badge carrying the insignia of the QAMNS.

“Not good, Miss,” he replied.

“Sister to you. Sister Nichols,” she said with a smile. “Doctor will be along to see you soon. We’ll know then what to do with you.”

About an hour later, an RAMC officer came swinging a stethoscope. He asked a few questions, kneaded Nick’s stomach and said, “Dysentery. We’ll do a test or two and find out which one. Sister, give him plenty of fluids and a chicken diet.”

“Right, Sir,” she said, as she straightened the bed.

Within a few days, Nick was feeling better. It was the bacillary dysentery, not the dreaded amoebic, and the medicine dispensed four times a day by Sister Nichols soon eased his discomfort. While he sat on the verandah, shaded from the sun, he watched Sister Nichols, always busy, moving briskly about the ward in her starched uniform. She never failed to stop for a word of encouragement or reassurance to her patients.

“Where are you from, Sister?” asked Nick one day.

“Aldershot,” she said with a smile. “We all come from Aldershot.”

“No,” laughed Nick. “Come on, where’s home?”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she replied, “but Lincolnshire, near Caistor.”

“I’m from Spalding. Country cousins almost, aren’t we?”

Sister Nichols smiled and moved on to the next bed.

Nick looked out for her each morning as she busied herself around the ward. She was good to look at: dark-haired beneath her cap, deep brown eyes that crinkled with a ready smile and a neat figure.