Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul Read online

  By the next morning Lori was on dialysis. We all continued to hope her kidneys would begin to recover, but each hour of no urine output was devastating. Lori became puffy as the fluid accumulated in her body and stressed her heart and lungs. She slept more. Her spunkiness faded.

  Over the next couple of days her condition continued to decline. How unfair it seemed that now, with a repaired heart, Lori had the pinkest lips ever, but the rest of her organs suffered in the process.

  Her unfinished afghan stood out as a reminder of her unfinished life.

  Still, her parents stood faithfully by. Her mother was five months pregnant, very tired and so devoted. She told us of Lori’s biggest wish—to hold her baby sister. She was so sure it was going to be a girl, Lori had named this Christmastime baby Mary Christine.

  But Lori continued to fade. The helplessness we felt was overwhelming. On a beautiful sunny August day, we all said our good-byes and Lori died. As her parents left the hospital, I tearfully handed them Lori’s belongings and the unfinished afghan.

  The next spring, as I walked down the hall, I saw Lori’s mom. Joyfully I blurted, “How is the new baby?” I was heartbroken to learn four-month-old Mary Christine also had congenital heart disease. On Friday of that week, Good Friday, Mary had surgery on her weak and poorly formed heart. Sadly, she followed a course so like Lori’s— persistent postoperative bleeding, failure of her kidneys and so on. On Easter Sunday morning the outlook for Mary was bleak. I went with her parents to the chapel.

  As we sat quietly there, a butterfly glided silently around us. I was mystified. This chapel had no access to the outdoors. Where could this butterfly have come from? The mother smiled through her tears and said, “Lori is here.” She paused, then went on. “Last summer, at the cemetery following Lori’s funeral, a butterfly landed on my shoulder and stayed right with me and I felt Lori’s presence. Then, when we brought Mary home from the hospital on a cold wintry Christmas Day in Indiana, a butterfly entered the house with us! Again, we knew Lori was there. And now, she is here for Mary!”

  As they faced the death of another daughter, these parents looked through their sorrow and found peace, knowing their two girls would now be together. We returned to Mary’s bedside and within minutes, she slipped away.

  Lori’s wish had come true. She was holding her baby sister.

  Gwen Fosse

  By Accident

  Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

  Confucius

  The instant my horse bucked, I knew I was going to die. As the reins were wrenched from my fingers, I felt myself thrown violently over his head and onto the ground. With sickening clarity, I heard my bones break. I thought of Christopher Reeve.

  “Help me,” I cried. “Please, someone help me.” Searing pain in my chest and back strangled my words into a whisper. I’m alone, I thought. No one heard me. I raised my head, and the movement sent an electric shock coursing down my right arm. And then the arm went numb.

  In a daze, I struggled to my feet and crawled through the arena fence. You are strong, I told myself, and you can do this. Pain contorted my posture, but I forced myself to walk the distance back to the ranch house. Doctors told me later that I’d done all of this with seven broken ribs, a fractured spine, a bleeding lung and a broken neck.

  “Mary, I fell off ‘Nate,’” I groaned into the phone. “I think it’s bad. I can’t feel my right arm anymore.” I’d called my coworkers at the hospital, knowing they would be my lifelines.

  An hour later, I lay strapped in the CT scanner with a stiff foam collar around my neck and oxygen tubing in my nostrils. I was no longer a nurse; I was a patient in my own emergency department. An unexpected wave of fear washed over me. Confusion compounded the pain—fear? Hadn’t I conquered fear? Buoyed by morphine, I let my memory drift back some four weeks.

  “Okay, just roll out,” Duke commanded. As I crouched in the doorway of the plane, the wind whipped against my face. I squinted down at the ground, thirteen thousand feet below. Today I would prove how strong I was. Today I would be a skydiver, not a cast-off wife and an empty-nest mother.

  “Let’s do it!” I shouted back from the plane’s open doorway. I gave my instructor the “thumbs up” and I jumped.

  The jolting stop of the CT scanner table interrupted my memory. I let the medical team, my friends, do their jobs while I was forced to do my own personal evaluation: Why did this have to happen to me? In the past eighteen months I’d survived the loss of a twenty-four-year marriage to infidelity, and the ravages of a flood that had threatened to take my home. Was this some sort of cosmic triple play to make me prove how strong I could be? Or three strikes and I’m out? Again, that shadowy fear surrounded my heart. What was I afraid of?

  I took inventory: I was a single mother, a veteran emergency-room nurse, and a sturdy ranch woman who could haul a horse trailer, stack hay and deliver a foal. The misfortunes of the past two years had required me to stand taller, to be more assertive and, when necessary, to take it on the chin.

  And now that chin was tucked into a foam collar, and there were whispers of “spinal cord injury, permanent weakness.” I began to realize what that icy, nameless fear was—I was losing control. A strong woman stays in control and doesn’t have to fully trust anyone. After all, I’d trusted my husband, and he left; I’d trusted the security of my home, and the floodwaters came. I had to ask myself the big question now: Did I trust God? I prayed to him, I worshipped him, but did I really allow myself to depend on him? A little card on my dresser mirror read, “Let Go and Let God,” yet how desperately I’d fought to keep life’s reins in my own hands. Now those reins had been yanked from me.

  In the following months, as I worked in physical therapy to regain the full use of my arms, I had time to ponder and to pray. I wondered about my need to feel strong. Was it simply armor to ward off other unimaginable hurts? My cavalier leap from the skydiving plane certainly hadn’t left fear far enough behind. I began to set new priorities, to evaluate success and survival in different ways. With great relief, I let God take the burdens from my sore shoulders; I began to trust again.

  I hadn’t been alone that day in my riding arena, and someone had heard me when I cried out. The accident stopped me from being strong, long enough to find my strength.

  Months later, I returned to work at the hospital to find I’d become a local legend. The story was told and retold. “She walked into the hospital with a broken neck,” they’d say. One day a new employee heard the story—heard that I’d been alone in the riding arena—and he asked me, incredulously, “Who picked you up off the ground out there, after you fell?”

  I felt myself take a deep breath—it was warm and alive in my chest. “Who picked me up?” A knowing smile spread across my face. “Think big,” I told him, “really big.”

  Candace L. Calvert

  CPR

  Blessed is he who carries within himself a God and an ideal and who obeys it—an ideal of art, science or gospel virtues. Therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions.

  Louis Pasteur

  One Sunday morning I heard my minister say if you want result from prayer, pray for thirty days without ceasing. I didn’t know why it was thirty days, but I was willing to give it a try. The following became my daily prayer:

  I am available Lord to be used by you each day.

  Guide me, precious Lord, and lead me in what I say and do.

  May my words and actions be a witness that you are living in me.

  To the one that is lonely, may I be a friend.

  To those with heavy burdens, help me to meet their needs.

  Lord I do not want fame or fortune.

  My prayer is that you will use me to glorify your name.

  I know I don’t have much to offer, but I will give you my all.

  Guide me to be what you want me to be.

  Amen.

  On the twenty-first day of this prayer, CPR took on a
new meaning for me.

  I was working an extremely busy twelve-hour night shift in labor and delivery. I had just sat down for my first break when a phone call came from my friend working in the emergency room. I barely recognized her urgent voice. An eighteen-year-old boy had been brought to the ER for alcohol and drug overdose. The young man was very close to death, and they had done all they could do to help him. The father of this boy was requesting a priest or minister, and they were having difficulty locating one that could come to the ER quickly. My friend stated, “We know you’re a Christian, and we need you to come and try to comfort this father. Please help.”

  Reluctantly, I said I would come down. As I waited for the elevator, my thoughts became very judgmental and frustration welled up inside me. Then I remembered the prayer I’d been praying. I walked into the ER and approached the father. Taking his hand, I silently led him to the chapel. Before I could even say, “I am not a minister,” this six-foot, 220-pound man sank into the chair and became a brokenhearted child.

  Through his nonstop sobbing he spoke, “Christian, pray for Raymond. I remember the first time I held my boy. I felt so proud, and I just kept saying, ‘I have a son.’ As the years passed, those tiny feet became bigger and walked away from his family’s love and entered a strange, hardened and destructive world. Tonight too much alcohol and an overdose of drugs are taking his life. It’s as though he wants to rebel against everything his family stood for. He knew what he was doing was wrong. Sometimes he seemed so afraid, but he wouldn’t stop. Now it is too late. Christian, you have to pray for Raymond.”

  Those large hands trembled in mine and, as I looked into his eyes, I mourned with him. Silence fell between us, as I searched for the words that would comfort this crumbling tower of a man. I felt so inadequate. I wanted to scream, “Lord, it has only been twenty-one days since I began that prayer! I am not ready for this!”

  Time was running out, and I knew I couldn’t stall any longer. I clutched his hands, now wet with tears, and began to pray. The words came easily, much to my surprise.

  I finished praying with him and went to Raymond’s bedside. I took his cold, lifeless hand, and once again began to pray. “Lord, I am asking for a miracle, and I know you can do it.”

  I stayed with them both until Raymond was taken to intensive care. I visited Raymond on a daily basis and continued to pray for him. Eight days passed with little improvement. On the ninth day, I entered the ICU and a miracle had taken place. Raymond was awake and talking with his father.

  CPR had taken on a new meaning for me: Christian Pray for Raymond. As I left the ICU with tears falling down my face, I realized, Today is the thirtieth day of my prayer.

  Now, I not only believe in miracles, I depend on them.

  Johnnie Dowdy

  Voice in the Night

  Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

  Emily Dickinson

  When I was nineteen years old, my friend Hanneke Boogaard was studying to become a nurse at Beatrix Hospital in The Netherlands. There, nursing students work during their study, the same as regular personnel. During her work on the night shift, Hanneke was strangely drawn to one patient in particular, a forty-year-old woman in a coma. Because Mrs. Groensma never had visitors, Hanneke remained at her bedside longer than the others. At first she tried not to admit it, since for her all patients should mean the same. But this woman fascinated her.

  When Hanneke heard the patient had no living relatives, she spent even more time with her. She’d learned that people in comas could sometimes hear when they were spoken to. This woman had no one to do that for her, so Hanneke talked softly to her every night. Since she didn’t know her, she didn’t know what to talk about, so she told Mrs. Groensma all about herself. She explained how her parents had died in a car crash when she was young. For hours she shared her many memories of them. That’s all she had to cling to now. How she wished she had a specific personal item to remember them by—the golden four-leaf-clover locket her mother always wore. It was lost during the accident and never found, even though relatives searched the crash sight and nearby ditch. Night after night, she talked and talked and grew more and more attached to Mrs. Groensma.

  She would likely never come out of the coma, and she had no one in the world to care for her. Therefore, the time came for her to be transferred to a nursing home where she would eventually die. When Hanneke objected, she was heavily reprimanded for losing touch with her professional attitude and forbidden to contact the patient in the nursing home. Hanneke saw the logic of her supervisors but could not help thinking about Mrs. Groensma often.

  Time went by, and Hanneke became a nurse and found a job in the Beatrix Hospital. One day at work, she was instructing a patient when a lady who was questioning another nurse turned and deliberately walked towards her. It was Mrs. Groensma! They found an empty room where they could speak privately, and Mrs. Groensma explained what she was doing there.

  She recalled having been in a dark and lonely place, all alone, until the voice of what she thought must have been an angel started speaking, drawing her attention. Later when that voice stopped talking to her, she longed for the sound so much that she started struggling to get to the place where the voice had come from. She came out of the coma and took a long time to recover. Meanwhile she had questioned the nursing home staff. They eventually told her they had instructions to keep away a certain nurse who had made the mistake of getting too attached to her.

  As soon as Mrs. Groensma was able, she came to the hospital to find that nurse. When she heard Hanneke talk to the patient, she recognized the voice that had spoken to her during her coma.

  Mrs. Groensma took Hanneke’s hand. “I have something I want to give you to thank you. I found it fifteen years ago in a ditch and originally wanted to put pictures of my late husband and me in it and give it to my daughter. When she died I was all alone and wanted to throw it away, but I never got to it. I now want you to have it.”

  Mrs. Groensma handed Hanneke a small box. Inside, sparkling in the sunlight, lay a golden four-leaf-clover locket. With a pounding heart Hanneke opened it to see her parents’ photos.

  Hanneke now wears the locket day and night and visits Mrs. Groensma whenever she wants.

  And they talk and talk and grow more and more attached.

  Carin Klabbers

  7

  A MATTER OF

  PERSPECTIVE

  He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.

  Confucius

  Impacting the Process

  Early in my nursing career, I worked in an intensive-care unit alongside a social worker of quiet faith. In response to client situations of overwhelming tragedy or senseless accidents, she reminded the nursing team that while only God controlled the outcome of each patient’s situation, we could powerfully impact the process through the nursing care we provide. I was privileged to work among nurses who role-modeled this kind of nursing care.

  Mr. Nolan was a patient in the intensive-care unit at our regional medical center. I loved my job and enjoyed implementing his challenging, complex treatment regimen. His large extended family was a joy to know: so supportive of him, so appreciative of his care, even as they faced each new hurdle in his declining situation. Mr. Nolan exuded a quiet dignity that confirmed his family’s report that he was a treasured husband, father, grandfather, friend and truly a man of excellence.

  A recently retired bank executive, he’d had a heart attack while awaiting a coronary bypass procedure. He recovered adequately to undergo the bypass surgery and was admitted as a “routine” case to our ICU. But complications commenced soon after his arrival in the unit.

  An extended period of low blood pressure resulted in kidney failure, and he subsequently required hourly peritoneal dialysis. To survive, additional coronary surgery was needed, and eventually a balloon pump was inserted to support his heart function. The balloon pump catheter was threaded through a groin access. Desp
ite every effort to reposition the catheter, circulation to his right leg was compromised and gangrene developed in some of his toes. Finally, the balloon pump was removed, but not before the entire right foot was cold and black.

  Each shift brought greater challenges in maintaining Mr. Nolan’s stability. While all agreed he was a “lousy” surgical risk, we knew he couldn’t survive long without the required foot amputation. In the OR, the doctors found the gangrene had spread internally through the entire leg. Though stunned to receive him back from the OR with a total right-leg amputation, it was heartening to see how rapidly his vital parameters improved once the toxic impact of the gangrene was gone.

  Mr. Nolan stabilized somewhat over the next week, yet the numerous medical complications and operations had taken a devastating toll. It became clear to medical personnel, Mr. Nolan and his family that he was failing and wouldn’t survive. I came up with a plan that would give a lasting memory to the devastated family and dignity to Mr. Nolan.

  When the family called earlier in the shift, I told them to be prepared to wait a little longer to see him when they came to visit that afternoon. Meantime, on top of the demanding nursing care regimen, I set out to accomplish the hygiene care reserved for quieter night shifts. I gave Mr. Nolan a wash, shampoo and shave, and trimmed and styled his hair to look like it had in a picture the family had shown me. I coordinated care to give him extra rest, hoping he’d be more alert when they came. Meantime I got a team of staff and necessary supplies ready to respond on cue.