When I finished ranting, he sternly informed me, “You will not quit your job. Any other time, and for any other reason I would back you up 100 percent—but not today. You need to be there for that family and minister to them as you would have wanted somebody to minister to you last year, if you had known that your father was only going to live a couple more days.”
Ugh, I thought wryly, I hate when he’s right.
During my breakdown in the nurses’ lounge, the attending physician had noticed the obvious rift and segregation among family members in the waiting area. He ordered a meeting of the staff and family—including grandparents, uncles, and aunts—to be held in the mother’s room.
When the tight gathering convened, the doctor, with obvious difficulty, began, “I have sad news to share but please listen to what I have to say and then I will take questions.”
He turned to the teenage couple, “You two are so young to be in this situation. Your parents may not understand, but they were trying to protect and guide you, and now, you’re faced with any parent’s worst nightmare. Your baby will probably not survive this weekend.”
There was a uniform gasp, followed by rapt silence.
He went on to explain more in depth the infant’s condition. The family begged that something be done. No, the doctor assured, it was medically impossible.
Then he continued, now facing the relatives. “Let me set some ground rules right now. I don’t want anyone to criticize, condemn, or judge these young parents. What they need right now is your unconditional love and support. No fighting, no gossiping, no blaming. Just accept this child and your kids. This is hard enough as it is.”
After his speech the room was still, save for the tears falling down broken faces. The doctor hugged the parents and left the room.
I followed him out and tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m so proud of how you handled that. You look like you could use a hug too.”
He gratefully accepted as his eyes welled up, and through quivering lips managed, “Thanks . . . thank you.”
I returned to the ICN with a renewed purpose. Together with the family we took locks of the baby’s hair, made footprints, took pictures, and created all the precious memories that families of newborns cherish. It was a special time for all, but I suspect, mainly for me. I didn’t want to be there that day, but that is precisely where God wanted me.
I discovered a few things that Easter. That sometimes in the midst of great sorrow, tragedy even, people are knit together in a dramatic way. And one doctor, unable to mend that tiny body, was able to miraculously repair a devastating scenario.
Best of all, I found out that ministering hope to others going through a bad time can be the best medicine for a hurting heart.
Sylvia Martinez
as told to Barbara Cueto
A Peaceful Day
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.
John 14:27
It was dark outside when I climbed into my car with a cup of coffee in one hand and my bag in the other. My clogs were covered with mud from sloshing in the swamp that used to be my lawn. Before I could slam the car’s door shut, a mosquito flew in and buzzed at my face.
As I backed out of the driveway, my view of the street was obstructed by silhouettes of tree trunks stacked on the curb. Two weeks ago the hurricane had hit and the neighborhood still looked like a war zone. The windshield wiper screeched as it wiped the muggy mist off the glass. I turned the radio on. The Christian music usually relaxed me.
Not today.
I turned the radio off.
Keeping my eye on the road, I brought the cup of coffee to my lips just as the mosquito attacked my eyelid. I slammed the coffee cup in the holder, suppressing a painful scream from my burned lips. The mosquito buzzed past my face again, and with my peripheral vision I saw it land on the window. My wedding band hit the glass so hard, my finger stung. I couldn’t resist looking at the carcass flattened on the glass. Smiling, I looked back up to see a red traffic light. In a panic, I hit the brakes. My bag flipped, spilling all of its contents on the floor.
My self-control now gone, I choked the steering wheel. I took a deep breath. God, please give me peace today. I needed it to face a twelve-hour shift in the operating room where I worked as a surgical nurse. “Please, God, give me peace,” I repeated.
I turned the radio back on. The song’s lyric said, “He will hold you in His arms.”
“I hope so,” I muttered.
Pulling into the last parking space in the garage, I sipped the cold coffee and gathered the spilled contents back into my bag. Flipping the visor mirror, I scratched the welt above my eye and flicked the mosquito off the window. As I reached the garage elevators, the metal doors shut in my face just before I could step in.
My footsteps echoed in the stairwell as I ran down the stairs. I pushed open the garage door to a sunny day as other stragglers in scrubs raced toward the time clock. The massive hospital building appeared farther away than usual.
Once inside, my destination was still a long way off. I wove in and out between people in the hallways. As I sprinted around a corner, a familiar picture on the wall caught my eye. I rushed past it every day and never took notice of its message. Today, I slowed down enough to read the caption under a painting of Jesus: “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
“I hope so,” I muttered, “and I’m still waiting for peace.”
In the OR, the assignment board had every grid filled with rooms, procedures, and names of surgeons, nurses, techs, and anesthesia personnel. I searched for my name. I was assigned to pediatric surgery, which was scheduled to start at 8:30 instead of the usual 7:30.
The charge nurse approached me, took one look at my face, put his arms over my shoulders, and said, “Get your room ready and then get yourself a coffee break.”
The verse came back to me, “ . . . and I will give you rest.”
In OR 21, I checked the surgical supplies, drugs, and equipment while the anesthesiologist checked the anesthesia machine and added drops of bubble-gum scent to the plastic breathing mask. After a short break, I made my way to the pre-op holding area to check on my patient. I pushed the button on the wall and the doors swished open. Dozens of patients lay on stretchers, separated by striped curtains, anxiously awaiting their turn for surgery. Doctors and nurses checked charts and vital signs while monitors beeped and alarmed, and IV fluids dripped rhythmically.
Before I could locate my patient, a blond-haired toddler ran out of the pediatric holding area toward me. His blue eyes matched his pajamas. He giggled. As his parents called out, “Matthew, come back!” he ran to me at full speed. I caught him as he jumped, locking my neck in a tight embrace.
He cuddled his face to mine, squeezing his little legs around my waist. I felt his heart pound against my chest and rocked him back and forth. His parents apologized as they tried to pry Matthew off me.
I had a difficult time letting go, and said, “Thank you, Matthew, you made it worthwhile coming in to work today.” The words to the song came back to me, “He will hold you in His arms.”
To my surprise, Matthew was my patient. I interviewed his parents regarding his surgery, allergies, and other medical questions. I could see the anxiety in their eyes and attempted to soothe their fears with words of encouragement, but I knew that their relief would only come when they saw Matthew safe and sound in the recovery area.
The surgeon approached me, and with a smile said, “Open your hand.”
He placed a gold-colored coin on my palm. “Someone gave this to me this morning and asked me to pass it on. Now I give it to you to pass on.”
The inscription on the coin read, “Peace I give you.”
I turned to my patient’s mother and placed the coin in her clammy hand.
She reluctantly handed Matthew back into my arms.
I walked toward OR 21 with Matthew hugging my neck softly.
My prayer was answered. It was a
peaceful day after all.
Ivani Greppi
Chimes in the Snow
Music has charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
William Congreve
“That boy’s going to die and he knows it,” said one of the other nurses. “Look at his eyes. Why can’t they do something?”
I’d been looking into those eyes for days. Twelve-year-old John had a ruptured appendix with major complications, not something we expected to kill a child with the kind of antibiotics available. But he continued to deteriorate, gangrene set in, and the smell of death crept in, in spite of all our efforts.
I glanced out of the ICU window. All I saw was a strange, gray world with little color except the narrow houses smashed next to other tall, narrow houses perched on the edge of steep hills. The houses looked as if they’d tumble down with the slightest wind from a passing cardinal’s wing. Clouds stretched across the sky like dirty rags.
It was the late 1970s and my husband, Karl, had taken a new job as a respiratory therapist in Butler, Pennsylvania. We moved ourselves and children across the country from the north Texas prairie to a small industrial steel town, and I went to work in the local hospital.
At first I loved the hills, being from flat land, and the tree colors during Indian summer made me want to get out paints and capture everything on canvas. But snow came in October, and it never left. Streets turned black and gray as the city sprinkled coal dust on the snow for traction. I missed the wide-open, warm Texas skies.
And I dreaded going to work.
Tension laced through the ICU like we’d all been caught in a net. Our young patient’s parents and physician had the same glazed looks of disbelief that said, “How can this be happening? Why is this happening?” and the unspoken question, “How can God not help him?” We had strict visiting rules in the ICU at that time, but we broke them all, letting his parents stay around the clock.
The entire staff of the ICU took turns staying with John and his parents so that a nurse was at his bedside, touching his hand at all times. John’s parents looked at us with eyes that asked, “What can we do? What did we do wrong?”
Every time I looked at John, I saw my son, Jeff, almost the same age. I pictured Jeff sick and me helpless. I could hardly stand it.
Other nurses felt the same way. We tried not to get too involved with our patients; the emotional toll could be too great. But detachment didn’t always work.
“I’ll come in early; I can’t sleep anyway.”
“Tom has to work this evening, I can stay late with John.” Some nurses volunteered to work past their time to leave and others came in early. We couldn’t stand the idea of leaving him alone and we were frustrated by our inability to change the situation.
John didn’t make it, in spite of our efforts. He died at 5:00 PM and I worked the rest of my shift on autopilot. The normal back-and-forth bantering that keeps the ICU tension at bay died with John. All of us worked, doing what we had to do, saying little.
As medical professionals we knew we couldn’t save all of our patients. But death should have exceptions. It should never come for children.
I can’t keep doing this, I thought. The ICU is too hard. It’s like I watch my own children die over and over.
I walked home that night, seeing a gray world, trapped hundreds of miles from family, smothered by hills that closed in more tightly each day.
Just as I reached our little blue house, music rang out from the small church across the street. That seemed strange. The chimes never played at night. I turned around when I reached the top of the stairs to the porch. Just as I looked at the church, a full moon slipped from behind the ragged clouds and lit the snow with a blinding glow. The light glinted from the stained-glass windows and shone off the cross on the steeple. Stars winked between the clouds.
I wasn’t deserted and neither was John or his family. God was with them and with me. I had to accept life as it was, full of hope and of mystery, things we’d never understand. I’d found new eyes by which to view my world.
Gazing around, I saw the beauty in the snow, the hills, and in God’s plan. It’s there if we look for it . . . in the flash of a bird’s wing, the smile of a child, and in the sound of a chime.
Over the next forty years of nursing, when my sight got clouded again—and it did—I simply listened for the chimes in the snow and my vision became clear.
Carol Shenold
The Lifeline
Words have a longer life than deeds.
Pindar
Michelle baffled the doctors. Her symptoms were vague and subjective—weakness, fatigue, tingling, dizziness. They could indicate any number of disease processes. Or none. “Most likely it’s psychosomatic,” her internist said, but he admitted her to the hospital for tests and observation anyway.
Michelle had been raped a year earlier and had just found out she would soon have to testify in her rapist’s trial. That’s when the symptoms had begun. After her tests came back negative, her doctor prepared to discharge her from the hospital.
Then Michelle stopped breathing.
The resuscitation team intubated the young woman and rushed her to intensive care. Her limbs lay limp and useless on the bed. She was dependent on the ventilator to fill her lungs with life-sustaining oxygen. At first, Michelle was able to nod and shake her head when the nurses asked her questions. By the time I was assigned to care for her, she could only blink her eyes—twice for yes, once for no.
“It could be Reye’s syndrome,” conjectured her neurologist, but at twenty-six, Michelle was well beyond the usual age range for that malady. More than once, the doctors rejected a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome, but when further tests proved inconclusive, they finally settled on that diagnosis. The pulmonary doctor inserted a tracheostomy tube. Michelle would be on the ventilator for a long time.
I worked as a straight 11–7 nurse, and our shift was usually quiet. This gave me extra time to spend with Michelle, and we quickly developed our routine. Each night I asked, “Would you like me to swab your mouth?” Blink, blink. “Do you want an extra pillow under your head?” Blink. “Would you like to turn on your side?” Blink, blink. As I washed her face or combed her hair, I told Michelle about the weather outside her windowless room or gave updates on the antics of my new puppy. Without a word on her part, we formed a bond, Michelle and I.
All too soon came the terrible night when the blinking stopped. “She can’t move her eyes at all,” the evening nurse said. “I’m afraid we’re losing her.”
After report, I inserted drops and taped her eyelids shut to protect her precious corneas. Michelle was now completely trapped inside a body that would not respond to the simplest command. Her lifeline was gone.
Days stretched into weeks, and Michelle’s condition remained the same. I talked to her in hopes that she could still hear me and performed range of motion exercises to keep her joints from stiffening into permanent contractures.
In December, Michelle’s parents decorated her room in a festive atmosphere, and we allowed them to stay beyond regular visiting hours to celebrate with her. Christmas came and went. Still no response.
After the holidays, Michelle developed a urinary tract infection and pneumonia. We battled all the familiar foes that attack a comatose patient, even one as young as Michelle. Once her body overcame the infections, her heart rate began to soar, and she perspired profusely. I had seen those same signs in patients with severe brain damage.
“I don’t think she’ll ever wake up,” I quietly confessed to another nurse during shift change one morning. “It’s been eleven weeks now.”
“I know,” she replied. “I’ve never seen a patient stay in ICU so long.”
That morning I left with a heavy heart. The thought that Michelle would not recover and the fact that she was so near my age haunted me. Even the prospect of a two-week vacation did nothing to cheer me as images of Michelle’s taped eyes and motionless body fl
ickered across my mind.
When I returned from my much-needed break, things were hopping in my assigned unit. Lisa, the 3–11 nurse, was snowed under with two patients in crisis at once, so I pitched in and began taking vital signs and doing neuro checks. As I sat at the desk completing my nurse’s notes on one patient, I heard a gravelly voice call, “Tracy?”
“What?” I asked, still busy charting.
“Tracy?” the voice called again. It sounded as if it came from the hall outside our unit. Someone must be playing a trick on me, I thought. I don’t have time for games.
“What is it?” I asked, a bit more irritated this time, and stepped into the hall.
“Tracy!” That’s when I realized the disembodied voice came from Michelle’s room. I ran to her side.
“You’re awake!” I cried, always the perceptive one.
Michelle smiled. “They took my trach out today. The doctor said I probably wouldn’t be able to talk for a while, but I needed help. Could you please turn me on my side?”
“Sure thing,” I said and moved her emaciated body, tucking pillows behind her back. “But how did you know I was here?”
“Lisa told me you were coming on,” Michelle replied, “and I heard you talking to the patient in the next room. I remembered your voice.”
Though she did not remember much from the weeks she was paralyzed, Michelle remembered my voice. When her body forsook her and she was unable even to blink an eye, I thought her lifeline was gone. But Michelle latched on to the thread that had formed between us, a thread that became stronger the more I talked to her.
Michelle recovered over the next few weeks, slowly regaining use of her long-forgotten muscles. Eventually, she resumed a normal life.
My transformation took place more quickly as I realized the power of the spoken word and the lifeline those words can create.
Tracy Crump