Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul Read online

  Miss White wheeled me out to the nurses’ station and parked the wagon by the desk. I watched as she sat and wrote, and every once in awhile she’d look over at me and smile. “Want something to drink now?” she asked. I nodded and sipped the apple juice she brought, and soon I drifted off to sleep. Early in the morning she rolled me back to my bed, and I was so tired that I hardly noticed when she told me good-bye.

  My mother did come to see me later that day, and the next night was not quite as hard to bear. I had to stay in the hospital for only a few days before my brief ordeal was over. But I never forgot how terrified I felt, and I never forgot Miss White’s kindness to a desperately lonely and scared little girl.

  This incident ran quickly through my mind, and I thought for a moment before I answered the dean’s question. Why did I want to be a nurse? I straightened up in my chair and lifted my chin and said, “Being a patient in a hospital is a frightening thing, for anyone. Some people conceal it better than others, but all patients are afraid. I remember being a frightened child in a hospital when I was only six, and there was a nurse there who was very kind to me. She was the one who made my stay bearable.”

  The room was quiet as I went on. “I have always remembered her, and I want to be the kind of nurse she was. I want to be the one who cheers up a frightened child, holds the hand of a lonely older person, soothes the anxiety of a nervous patient.”

  I was accepted to the nursing program and worked hard to learn the skills and techniques necessary to provide the best care for my patients. On graduation night as I stepped up to the stage to accept my diploma, I thought of Miss White and smiled. She would never know what a profound influence she’d had on me. She taught me the most important lessons in nursing. She taught me the significance of empathy for the patient and his or her plight, of compassion in easing the difficulty of another. What she gave to me was now my own to give, the gentle touch of kindness that makes the difference to our patients and to our world.

  Tricia Caliguire

  THE FAMILY CIRCUS

  By Bill Keane

  “I can’t sleep in here very good ’cause I can’t hear Daddy watchin’ TV or Mommy doing the dishes or Barfy barking or PJ crying . . .”

  Reprinted with permission from Bil Keane.

  A Part of the Team

  A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influences stop.

  Henry Adams

  In the summer of 1945, my father directed a camp for inner-city children and teens. He hired two young women to be the nurses for that camping season. They allowed me to be their shadow, and I watched everything they did and listened to everything they said. I sat quietly in a corner of the infirmary each morning as campers came through for treatment of sore throats, cuts and bruises, poison ivy, mosquito bites and homesickness. Some days they even let me help clean up the infirmary after sick call. If I was really good, they took me with them on cabin visits to check on the sick campers.

  My father was alone one morning when he drove a truckload of garbage to burn at the dump. When the trash was emptied from the truck, he lit a match and threw it onto the pile of rubble. He stepped back, expecting the garbage to slowly burn. He waited. No flame; nothing was burning. Dad bent over and lit another match.

  An explosion wrapped him in flames.

  He rolled alone on the ground to put out the flames, got into the truck and sped back to the campgrounds. He drove up the road toward the dining hall, blasting the horn. People came running from everywhere. Orders were shouted to those around. I watched, frightened and confused, hardly able to believe what was happening around me.

  Suddenly, a station wagon came to a screeching halt right behind the garbage truck. The doors flew open and out jumped the two camp nurses. They guided my father into the back seat of the station wagon, got in the car and sat on either side of him, and wrapped his arms in wet towels. The car sped off to the nearest hospital emergency room where he was treated for several days.

  When he returned to the camp, he resembled a mummy. His arms, hands, neck and head were covered with large white bandages, with only his mouth and eyes showing. His bed was moved into the living room of the family cottage where the two nurses and my mother cared for him day and night. Each day they removed the large white bandages from his arms and neck, treated the areas and applied fresh dressings to the wounds. Dad groaned with pain but never complained. When they finished this routine, he was always able to rest. That was the only time he could tolerate anyone touching him.

  On the day he came home, I stood in the shadows of the room watching as they cared for him. I heard my name. One of the nurses was calling me. She told me they were giving me the responsibility of seeing that he had plenty to drink. I was also to feed him the meals the camp cook sent down to the cottage for him. So each day I sat at his bedside, ready to get whatever he needed. Sometimes he would have me read to him as he rested. Mother and the nurses praised me for being part of the team. Every day they told me my father was getting better because I gave him such “good nursing care.” I felt pride and satisfaction in being able to do something for someone hurting.

  Those feelings stayed with me forever. I wonder if those camp nurses knew how they influenced the life of an eight-year-old child. I wonder if they ever imagined the impact they had in molding my forty-year career in nursing—forty years as a member of healing teams.

  Viola Ruelke Gommer

  THE FAMILY CIRCUS

  By Bill Keane

  “I wanna be a nurse, Mommy!

  So when I grow up, can I go to nursery school?”

  Reprinted with permission from Bil Keane.

  To Care for Them

  Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  It’s funny how the most unexpected circumstances can change our lives forever. In April of 1991, my friend Jason was diagnosed with leukemia; we were in the seventh grade. I went to visit him a few times at the Miami Children’s Hospital, and the first time I went there, I noticed something. Jason’s room was filled with balloons and flowers; cards and pictures were scattered everywhere. People called him and visited him and wrote him letters. Something was always going on in his room; someone was always there for him. We came from a small town in the Florida Keys, and everyone was wonderful when it came to Jason. People who didn’t even know him got together and sent get-well baskets. The town held blood drives in his honor. The support was endless.

  Jason’s room was at the end of the hall and visiting him meant walking by all the other rooms where the walls were bare. The televisions were turned off and the children lay quietly in their beds, alone, facing what I’m sure was the most frightening experience of their lives. Not all those children had what Jason had. That’s where my uncle’s idea came from.

  When we got home after that visit, the two of us went to work. My uncle called on some people from our community for help, and he phoned the oncology ward of the hospital and got every child’s name who was staying there. The next time the two of us went to visit Jason, we stepped on to that floor pushing a cart of buckets filled with candy, magazines, hats and games. The two of us wore multicolored beanie caps with propellers on them that spun around like the props to a helicopter as we walked.

  We said hello to Jason and then made a procession down the hallway, stopping at every child’s room, delivering the gifts that my uncle and the rest of our little community had donated. In each child’s room, we hung a banner with his or her name on it, wishing each child a speedy recovery. The expressions on their faces were priceless.

  We walked in, acknowledging the child by name, and at first they had no idea what we were doing in their room wearing those silly hats. When we started decorating their rooms and handing them their buckets of candy and toys, the smiles that spread across their faces were the biggest I’ve ever seen. To have interaction with someone, to know that someone cared about them, to know that they weren’t alone, seemed to really make a differenc
e to those children.

  The last patient we planned to visit was in isolation, so my uncle and I were not allowed inside. A caring nurse donned the necessary garb and brought in the gifts we had for the little boy. The boy came to the door, looked out the window of it with a huge smile, and mouthed “thank you.” It was a moment in my life that I will never forget.

  My past experiences have led me to the place I currently find myself—finishing my first year as a nursing student. It has been exciting to learn about medicine and machines, how things work, and what to do when they don’t work. Learning how to create a sterile field, change dressings, set up IV lines and administer meds are all so exciting to someone who is just starting off. Only, this is not the reason I decided to become a nurse.

  There is more to our profession than beeps and clicks, procedures and results. We may not have the ability to “fix” everyone, but we definitely have the capability and responsibility to have compassion for them, to make them comfortable, to be their advocate, and to be the person who comes into their room and makes them feel like a human being.

  I decided to become a nurse so that I would have the chance to feel the same as I did that day when I saw the life spring back into all those children when some attention was paid to them. A little smile, some small talk or a pat on the hand may be all our patients need to lift their spirits. I may be inexperienced and naive, but I do know that those children lit up when we came into their rooms. I also saw that the nurses who made them laugh, or took a minute to play with them, got the same reaction that we got from giving candy and games.

  We need to bear in mind that while our patients need procedures done, they also need a warm touch. They may need tests run, but a soothing voice may be just as important to them.

  When I graduate from school next year and enter the white-scrubbed and gloved world of medicine, I vow to remember that as a nurse, I will not only have the ability to give care to my patients, but also to care for them.

  Christine Ehlers

  In memory of Jason McGraw (1978–1991)

  The Hip in 46B

  The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.

  Victor Hugo

  As medical caregivers in hospitals and nursing homes, we sometimes become a bit callous in how we identify our patients. I mean, after all, we do see lots of them. And over the years they seem to blur together a bit. How could we remember each name?

  I learned how when I was a physical therapist starting a small private practice in a skilled nursing facility. We had minimal equipment, funding, personnel and space, but we were inspired by the rehabilitation possibilities in the elderly.

  One day I asked my aide, Bobby, to go and get “the hip in 46B” because he had a repaired hip fracture and needed to walk in the parallel bars. She went off to retrieve him in his wheelchair.

  Momentarily, Bobby returned and stated that “the hip in 46B” did not want therapy today. I said, “Well, he has to become weight bearing. We need to work on his balance, and we need him down here in the parallel bars to do that. Please go ask him again.”

  A second time she went to convince him. Soon she returned stating, “He says he is not getting out of bed and is not coming to therapy today.”

  “Okay, I’ll go down and talk to him,” I said.

  I will never forget walking into that lovely gentleman’s room and suddenly seeing the man. The person. Next to him, on his nightstand, was a magazine my father used to receive, The Nebraska Rancher and Farmer. A book title read, Who’s Who in Hotel and Restaurant Management. I picked it up to see his name honored there. He had been more important in his life than I would probably ever be in mine. And now he was confined to a bed in a room where all his choices had been taken from him: when to go to the bathroom, when and where to go to meals, when to go anywhere— including therapy. He had been stripped not only of his belongings, but also of his independence and self-worth. And now all he wanted to do was assert some sense of control over his own body; make a choice or two on his own time.

  I took his hand. “Good morning, Mr. Carlson. What time would you like to go to therapy today?”

  Linda McNeil

  I Baptize You . . .

  Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may bloom forth.

  Douglas Jerrold

  Years ago I attended a Catholic nursing school, but no one in our class was Catholic. This posed a problem with some of the church doctrines. In our first year, the entire class almost missed being “capped” because we refused to do a procedure: baptize a fetus or person after death. Since we were all Baptist or Pentecostal, this was contrary to our religious beliefs.

  As president of the class, I took the brunt of the lecture from Sister James Cecilia. “Miss Sanefsky, you knew this was a Catholic school when you applied. You should also have known that you would have to adhere to our teachings.” I wasn’t convinced, but I wanted my cap as much as my twenty-three other classmates did, so we compromised. We agreed to learn it if we could be assured we would never have to take part in this procedure.

  Years went by. I married Harley and moved to Ohio where I worked in a small eighty-bed hospital. There were many Catholics employed there, so I never worried about having to perform last rites or baptisms until one stormy night.

  The rain came down in buckets and lightning flashed as I worked second shift in the nursery. A woman came in and delivered two months prematurely, giving birth to a baby weighing two pounds and one ounce. We knew this little person had little chance of surviving. Our nursery was primitive. We had no neonatologists; only incubators, oxygen and prayer.

  As the tempest raged, we worked to clear this little guy’s lungs. All we knew to do to keep him alive was to keep the incubator at 98 degrees.

  I took him to see his mother and her first words were, “I want him baptized.” When I phoned her priest to come, he told me he had no transportation on this stormy night. He would be there first thing in the morning.

  This gave us cause to panic. We knew this baby had a slim chance of surviving the night. I went back to the mother and let her know what the priest had said. She was devastated as she repeated the doctor’s prediction that her baby may not be alive in the morning. Desperately, she begged me to baptize him. I paged my Catholic supervisor. She was off. I called all over the hospital. Not one single Catholic was on duty. It was falling back on me. I prayed, “Oh no, God, you know how I feel about this. I can’t do it.”

  After talking to the mother once more and seeing her desperation, I conceded. I would baptize him “conditionally” as I was taught years before. I explained that I was not Catholic and how my faith viewed infant baptism. I told her I would do it if she really wanted me to, or we could pray that the baby live until the priest came in the morning. Adamantly, she insisted she wanted it done right then. So I proceeded to the nursery and the task I felt unprepared to do.

  I prayed as I got a sterile medicine cup, sterile water and sterile cotton balls. Gently, I lifted this precious baby’s head in the palm of my hand. With my other hand, I poured the sterile water over his head. “Joseph Sanchez, I baptize you, conditionally, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” With tears running down my face, I wiped this angelic little head with the sterile cotton, changed the wet towel beneath him and took him back to his mother.

  Overwhelmed, she cradled this tiny gift of God in her arms. I knew then I had done the right thing. I brought peace to this young mother so she could give him back to God, if that was in the scheme of things.

  The story doesn’t end there. Over the months that followed, this baby became “Little Joe” to us in the nursery. Each day we prayed he would live through our shift, then we gave the responsibility to the next.

  One afternoon, I was met in our staffing room with, “Little Joe had a bad day, and he may not live through the night.” I prayed, “Please Lord, don’t take him on my watch.” I made rounds
on all the babies in the nursery and came to the incubator. The temperature gauge read 80 degrees. The temperature had to be at a constant 98 degrees or he would die! I went around to the back of the incubator, and I found the electrical plug lying on the floor. I quickly plugged it back in, called the doctor and then my pastor. I asked him to pray. We worked frantically to bring Joey’s temperature back up, placing warm towels on his body. Prayers went up to heaven for him. He lived through the night.

  I was off for three days. When I came back, he was gone. He had reached five pounds and was sent home at three months of age. After having cared for him all those months, I was crushed I didn’t get to say good-bye.

  The Bible says, “Some plant, some water and then some harvest.” I prayed that this little boy would grow and be nurtured in the love of God for he was indeed a miracle baby.

  But the story doesn’t end there, either. Years went by and then one night, my husband, Harley, came home from a men’s church dinner. “Wait ’til you see what I have for you.” In his hand was a picture of a young boy. On the back was this message:

  Dear Ms. Houseman,

  My name is Joseph Sanchez. I am fourteen years old and weigh 140 pounds. Thank you for taking care of me when I was born.