“I don’t have pain anymore,” he responded, then he talked calmly and openly about the reality of his condition.
He walked comfortably beside Nancy back to his bed. She felt he would have a good night’s sleep.
A little later, the nurse at his bedside called Nancy in. “He’s dead.”
Surprised, Nancy looked at him. He did not appear dead. Further investigation confirmed, however, that he was without vital signs. The most unusual thing she noticed was the beautiful smile on his calm, peaceful face. While observing him, Nancy felt peace and quietness come over her.
She reflected that David’s death was not at all like that of the “nefarious” man who had died like he lived, with a curse on his lips and a contorted expression on his face. David’s death was more like the majority of her patients who, in their last moments, saw beautiful gardens, long-dead relatives, white light, angel-like beings, a long passageway with someone at the end. Others heard conversations, music, or someone inviting them to “Come.” Others talked about going home or to work, or having to do something, or get something straight.
Nancy and Julia agreed that David in his suffering had experienced a mysterious intervention. He had been taken somewhere and seen something wonderful.
“And best of all,” added Nancy, “he came back to show us that he was all right and no longer afraid.”
Through her tears, Julia took Nancy’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you.”
Nancy’s heart spilled over.
What she received from patients nearing death, she gave to others facing life.
Margaret Lang with Nancy Madson
Laura’s Story
Every believer is God’s miracle.
Gamaliel Bailey
I stood in the middle of the living room waiting to meet Laura for the first time. My eyes rested on a framed photo atop the television set. In it lived a beguiling young woman with soft curly auburn hair, a winsome smile, and large azure eyes peeking beneath dark arched brows. I wondered at the joyous spirit reflected in Laura’s face but soon learned that the spark radiating from her eyes was not a trick of the camera.
Though congenital hydrocephalus, cerebral palsy, numerous surgeries, and rigorous medical regimens had taken a physical toll, those trials never dampened Laura’s spirit. In spite of her weakened condition, Laura still projected the smiling innocence and radiant energy reflected in the photo.
This twenty-year-old who remained an ingratiating woman-child captivated me, her hospice nurse. Laura had never met a stranger, never learned about evil or enemies. I witnessed her grab and kiss the hand of friends—new or old—and pour forth the blessing of her smiling, unconditional love. Her spontaneous questions and dauntless curiosity endeared many hearts, including mine.
One day during my routine visit, Laura said, “I’m going to be a secretary someday,” and proceeded to tell me her dreams for the future. She had also shared this dream with her doctor, and soon he and his staff helped Laura “be a secretary.” Because her weakened condition prevented her from visiting the doctor’s office, the doctor’s office came to Laura. Photos taped to the wall around her bed documented her in her bedroom, surrounded by telephone and typewriter, smiling valiantly and proficiently, carrying out her secretarial duties, realizing her dream.
Caring for Laura was a family affair. She was especially close to her beloved grandfather, who devoted many hours of loving attention to accommodating Laura’s disabilities. He built a special cart in which she rode as he pulled her around the neighborhood, meeting and greeting neighbors, stopping for occasional friendly chats.
One day during a reflective moment at the kitchen table, Laura’s mom, Roseanna, shared that Laura had been one of triplets born prematurely. Laura’s two sisters, Libby and Chrissy, died shortly after birth, a fact that had never been discussed with Laura.
Soon after hearing this story, I was summoned to Laura’s home. Her condition had worsened. Roseanna met me at the door and, in spite of her fatigue and grief, I sensed an air of expectancy. After ensuring that Laura was comfortable, Roseanna invited me once again to rest a moment at the kitchen table, sharing yet another story.
Two nights before, Laura had been restless and Roseanna crawled into bed with her, lying “spoon fashion” to comfort her daughter. In the morning Laura awakened and whispered to her mom, “I’m tired and I’m ready.” Roseanna lay still beside Laura, her quiet presence encouraging her to reveal more. “Besides,” Laura added softly, “my sisters are waiting for me. I saw them standing in the doorway to my room.”
Stunned by Laura’s revelation, but soothed by her acceptance and readiness for death, Roseanna comforted Laura, giving her permission to go, reassuring her that those left behind would be fine. More peaceful now, Laura returned to sleep.
Roseanna then lifted herself gently from the bed and wandered to the front door of the house. Still contemplating Laura’s words, she struggled to understand how Laura could know about her sisters, wondering what or who Laura had really seen. As she opened the front door, sunshine and crisp morning air greeted her, momentarily easing her grief. Only a large, shady ash tree stood at attention in the center of a bare green lawn. Roseanna had so little time to care for a yard and always promised herself that one day she would make time to plant some flowers. As her eyes scanned the yard, a colorful spot under Laura’s bedroom window captured her attention. Closer inspection revealed three pink rain lilies, lazily intertwined. These flowers had not been there the day before. In fact, she had never seen them before in the many years they’d lived there.
And now, here I sat the next day, rising from the kitchen chair as Roseanna led me outside to the front lawn. Pointing to a spot under Laura’s bedroom window, I saw the once colorful lilies, now muted, their gray stems loosely blended into the soil that once sustained them.
As I left Laura’s home on the day she died, I lingered on the front lawn. The spot below her window was barren now with no visible sign of the earlier visitors.
Yet I knew their legacy remained.
Patricia J. Gardner
The Infant
It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
Abraham Lincoln
As my eight-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son climbed into our car, I drew in the crisp December air and smiled. I had a few days off from the hectic nursing pace of a cardiac step-down unit. My mind raced with things to do—holiday cookies to bake, stockings to fill. We had enjoyed a visit with relatives in a neighboring town. The day was topped off with a bag of hand-me-downs. As a single mother, I was pleased to receive the gently used clothing for the children.
We drove home on the country road, talking and laughing as we approached the intersection near an old church. The wind increased, and I slowed the car as I anticipated slippery conditions from blowing snow. Ahead, I could see an eerie haze. As we got closer, I realized it was radiator steam from cars involved in a collision.
Parking next to the church, I grabbed the first-aid kit and ordered my wide-eyed children to remain in the car. I hurried toward the accident, careful not to slip on the packed snow. I was the first responder. No one was in the first car. The scene at the other car was surreal. A man sat on the ground. A dazed woman sat behind the steering wheel. Two small children looked up at me from under the dashboard.My nursing experience, infused with adrenalin, kicked into high gear.
A driver from a delivery service appeared at my side. “I was a paramedic once,” he shouted.
“Assess any passengers in the backseat while I assess the front.”
A group of gawkers was forming. I looked at a nearby burly guy, “Sit by the man on the ground and hold his hand.”
He snorted. “I’m not holding his hand.”
“I am in charge of the crash you have stopped to look at,” I retorted. “Sit down and hold his hand or drive away.”
He knelt next to the man and spoke softly as he took his ha
nd.
Two LPNs stopped. I put them in charge of the children under the dashboard. Someone opened the church, and they took the children inside. I sent another bystander to my car for the bag of clothing to be used as bandages for the youngsters.
As I leaned toward the woman behind the steering wheel, the former paramedic tapped my shoulder.
“How are you with babies?” he asked.
“A baby?” I hadn’t heard crying! The paramedic and I switched places. I carefully pulled the child carrier out of the backseat and gazed into the sweet face of a still infant swaddled in a gray blanket. Since I didn’t know the extent of trauma, I left the baby in the car seat and quickly walked to the open door of the delivery van. With the carrier seat as my backboard and the van floor as my flat surface, I started CPR. Two fingers across the tiny chest, puffs of air into the lungs. As I puffed, I could smell the sweet baby scent.With each puff, I begged God.With each compression, I whispered, “Come on, baby, cry! Please don’t die. I’m giving you all I’ve got. Lord, help us.”
An air ambulance landed. As the crew scrambled to assess the injured, one member looked over my shoulder. “Keep doing CPR,” he said. “You’re doing great. We’ll get set up and take over.”
Within minutes, he carried the baby aboard the helicopter. Other members of the family were transported via air and ground to a local trauma center.
I took a deep breath and walked to my car as wreckers hoisted twisted metal onto flatbeds.
“What happened, Mommy?” my children pleaded. We prayed for the family, with the infant’s face and sweet scent firmly planted in my senses. I pondered my recent CPR instructor training class when I had drawn the card with the words Infant CPR. To earn instructor status, I studied the technique well. I also thought of the bag of clothing used as bandages. It was all part of God’s plan.
After we got home, I went outside to breathe crisp air, to cry, and to pray. As I opened my eyes, I saw through tears a small grayish blue creature watching me. It meowed. A kitten out in the cold! I called to it, but it didn’t move.
“You must be hungry,” I said. “Wait here.”
I hurried back with an opened can of tuna fish, but the kitten was gone. I looked for paw prints in the snow, ready to follow the tracks. But nothing. How could there be a kitten and snow, but no paw prints?
It hit me. The kitten was the same gray as the blanket and clothing the sweet baby had worn. In that moment, I knew: the baby was in the arms of God. The kitten had come to tell me, “You tried really hard. You did all you could.”
I wiped away more tears and went inside to call the hospital where the family had been transported. When I was connected with the pediatric ICU, I explained my interest in the baby. The nurse drew in a breath, clearly struggling whether to reveal information to me.
Finally, she said, “The baby is brain-dead. They’re transporting his mother over to discontinue life support. They are donating his organs. You gave him every chance by doing CPR. Now another child will be saved because of your efforts to save this one.”
Her voice trailed off as we both cried.
I learned a new lesson that day. As nurses our degrees and certifications have trained us well. However, even with all those initials behind our names, we must remember we are lacking three: G-O-D.
We do our part, but the outcome is up to Him.
Thea Picklesimer
as told to Sandra P. Aldrich
I See Glory
There are only two kinds of people in the end:those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”
C. S. Lewis
Ms. Sally was a frail woman with totally white coarse hair. Her skin was so ebony it appeared a deep hue of blue. Her tiny frame was curled in the fetal position. She didn’t respond to painful stimuli or loving gestures. It was difficult to position her body using pillows with all her muscles contractured. It didn’t keep me from trying to make her comfortable. She looked like someone’s grandma lying there, but no one was at her bedside. I checked her chart and learned she was a patient from the local nursing home. She had one son who lived in Arizona. She was alone.
I worked the midnight shift, 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM. I was a new nurse and very unsure of myself, but that was a good thing as far as the patients were concerned. I made extra rounds every night to make sure my patients were comfortable, IVs were running on time, and to catch any potential problems early.
If the night was quiet, I gave a couple of baths in the early mornings to the patients who were already awake, or the ones whose condition was such that a warm bath would only make them feel better. Ms. Sally, the little granny, was one patient that I paid the extra attention to. Her living ninety-three years only to be dying alone tugged at my heartstrings. I bathed her with warm soapy water and tried to be careful and keep her modesty as to maintain her dignity in her last days. I turned her and lotioned her and sang old hymns quietly the entire time. Both of my grannies loved hymns and I assumed all elderly people did. She quickly became my favorite patient.
In the ten days she was in the hospital, she never spoke a word. She never acknowledged my presence. She never even moaned when I faithfully turned her every two hours. One night I was humming “Amazing Grace” and actually thought I saw the corners of her mouth turn up. Maybe a smile? No, that couldn’t be possible. The doctors had assured me she was truly comatose.
One day when I came on my shift I immediately went to Ms. Sally’s room. She had been in my dreams during my sleep that day. I opened the door and saw her covered with perspiration. Her eyes were open and glassy. As I put my stethoscope to her back, it sounded as if her lungs were full of water. I immediately called the doctor and after much encouragement from me, he ordered IV antibiotics. I made my other rounds and everyone else was status quo. I knew, if possible, I’d spend the biggest part of my shift in her room. I did not want this little woman to die alone. I called her son in Arizona and discussed her condition. He knew she was in the hospital, but had no idea she was dying. The man was also elderly, in very poor health, and unable to travel. I couldn’t help myself, and before we hung up I asked him, “Does your mother love the Lord?”
“She is the closest thing to a saint I’ve ever known.”
My instincts were right.
When Ms. Sally’s pulse began to get very irregular, I called the doctor again. By this time it was 3:30 AM and he wasn’t happy with me. “The woman is old and dying, Sue!”
Reluctantly, he ordered the EKG I’d requested.
The tech was in the room with me when Ms. Sally’s respirations grew very shallow and nearly absent. She still had the EKG tabs attached to her when all of a sudden, she slowly straightened herself and sat up in the bed! She stretched her skinny withered arms toward the heavens. Her eyes were no longer glassy but she didn’t appear to see anything around her in the room either.
She spoke in a crackly voice just above a whisper, “I see Glory . . . it’s so beau-ti-ful!” She fell back on the pillow and the EKG machine blasted a siren. Her heart had stopped beating. She was in the glory of heaven where all faithful saints spend eternity.
Sue Henley
Our Daily Bread
Duty is ours, results are God’s.
John Quincy Adams
Working as the camp nurse for multihandicapped children brings an array of joys—and frustrations. Many of the children can’t talk or communicate in any way. Days with these kids are “conversations” of crude hand gestures on the kids’ parts, and educated guesses for the adults, as campers use sign language to indicate they need to go to the bathroom, want something to eat, or are feeling pain.
Stan, a senior counselor, and I were in the infirmary one night after most of our happy campers were fast asleep. In walked two discouraged junior counselors with Tony, an autistic sixteen-year-old, who was obviously hurting and signing that he was in pain.
“Please take a look at him,” one counselor begged. ??
?Something’s really bothering him. He keeps signing ‘pain’ but we can’t find anything wrong.”
“It’s okay, Tony,” I comforted, while Stan and I got him onto a cot. “I’ll fix you up.” But I failed. I did the usual exam: no fever, red throat, or excessive bug bites. Tony, with a tortured expression and soft moans, signed over and over, counting on me to relieve his hurt.
After one more unsuccessful attempt to diagnose, I ruled out anything serious. I stroked Tony’s head. “I’m sorry, fella, I just don’t see the culprit. I wish you could tell me more.” But I knew from within his private world that was impossible.
Stan took one arm and I took the other to support Tony’s unsteady gait, as we stepped out into a glorious night to take him back to his cabin.
Struggling to deal with Tony’s upset and my own feelings of ineptness, I suggested the only thing I could think of.
“I know, guys, let’s pray while we walk.”
Stan started off in a booming voice, “Our Father . . . ”
Immediately, Tony stopped. He placed his fingers, palm to palm, like praying hands, and his indistinguishable sounds became a singsong pattern resembling, “Who art in heaven . . . ”
“Stan, he knows the Lord’s Prayer. He knows! That’s right, Tony, we’ll pray the Lord’s Prayer.”
There under the brilliance of His stars, Stan and I repeated the Lord’s Prayer. Tony’s soft moans changed to a rhythmic monotone, the only way he could pray along.
When we said, “Give us this day our daily bread,” I silently added, Please Lord, you know what we need. And as we arrived at “Amen,” Tony unfolded his hands and reached down to his right heel.
By the glow of the moon, I removed Tony’s brand-new tennis shoe to reveal a huge, raw blister.We took him back to the infirmary, where I applied soothing cream and a big fluffy bandage to ease his discomfort.