Leave it to Mary to shine an optimistic light on the challenges ahead.
More nurses like Mary take care of me throughout my rehabilitation. They are all a blessing, but Mary is special. She chased away the darkness with a ray of hope, when I had none.
Jessica Kennedy
10
THANK YOU
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart
God Supplies Angels
Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; my flesh will also rest in hope.
Psalm 16:9
I lay flat on my back staring at the ceiling. It was late at night, and I could see shadows from the nurses’ station shining through the glass door into my room. I could hear the beeping of the machines around me. Each time I inhaled, I breathed in the horrible smell of the yellow Xeroform bandages that covered my raw, burned skin. I had been in a major motor home fire, and I was 48 percent burned. My back was shattered and broken. Within seconds, my life had been dismantled. My husband had a 9 percent chance of living and was just two doors away from me in the unit. I missed him so much and did not want to live without him.
Each night was like the night before, lying and waiting for the night nurse to come in and hurt me with the two-hour bandage change. My depression and anxiety continued to grow. Nighttime seemed the worst time. I THANK YOU could not sleep, and my thoughts ran amok with dogged doubt and little hope.
I remember one night vividly. My finger did a yo-yo motion with the call button. I did not want to bother the nurses, but I did need to talk to someone. The burn unit is busy, and one of the hardest in which to work. However, my emotional pain won the battle and I rang. One of the night nurses, Joan, entered my room. She was a tall, thin woman in her fifties who usually worked days. I was so glad to see her. She always called me her prize patient, and she listened to me when she had time.
“What’s going on with you tonight?” she asked. “Are you in pain? Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Asleep” was a post-traumatic trigger word for me. I was asleep when the accident happened, so I rarely slept now. Somehow in my emotional state, I thought the accident would not have occurred if I had been awake. So, in my drug-induced stupor I felt I needed to be on night duty, so I could be in control. When a person is burned, all four parts that make up our humanhood is affected: emotional, spiritual, physical, and intellectual. Each is damaged and needs to be healed. My pain was continual, and the fear of going to sleep, no matter what drugs they gave me, was impossible to shake.
As Joan stood in front of me, I noticed the pretty, gold, shiny earrings she was wearing. I started to share with her some of my fears of looking like a monster.
“Will anyone accept me the way I look now?”
Joan pulled a chair over beside me and listened.
“Will I ever be normal again, or pretty, or able to walk?” I sobbed. “Will this pain ever go away? Will I be able to feed myself and put pretty earrings on again?”
Abruptly, Joan stopped me. “Have you looked at your face yet?” she asked.
“No, I am afraid to,” I cried.
She immediately got up and left the room. I feared what was going to happen next.
As Joan reentered the room, she had a mirror in her hand. “No!” I shouted. “I am afraid to look!” I had seen my arms and legs during the bandage change and I knew I looked like a freak.
She came closer to me and started to brush my hair, quietly saying, “You are pretty. Your face is all right. It is rosy with first-degree burns but that will go away.” Then she took her earrings off and clipped them on to my ears. My tears gushed uncontrollably as I found the courage to look in the mirror.
For five weeks I had wondered what my face looked like; now I knew. Thanks to a nurse named Joan who took the time to listen and help me through this important transition, I now had hope. All would be well someday.
Susan Lugli
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Susan adds, “After six years and numerous plastic surgeries, the love of my life is back to normal, working as he did before the accident. We are thankful for each day we have together.” ]
To School Nurses
All us kids think you are swell.
You care for us when we’re not well.
You give us icepacks for our heads.
You let us rest on little beds.
You give us tissues for our nose.
And check for splinters in our toes.
When we fall and break a bone,
You call our moms on the phone.
Our pierced ears you disinfect,
When infection you suspect.
If we bring notes, you give us pills,
To cure all our assorted ills.
You help us when our throats are sore,
And when we throw up on the floor.
When we’re hot, you take our temps.
You never make us feel like wimps.
You show us that you really care.
School is better ’cause you are there.
Ellen Javernick
Angels of Mercy
Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies.
Charles E. Jefferson
My aunts, uncles, and cousins had come to our house for our annual Thanksgiving dinner in 1945. Our day was filled with plenty of good food and lots of laughter.
I was five years old, playing in the basement, when I fell off a twelve-inch-high step stool onto my back.My sister ran upstairs to the kitchen to get Mom. I wasn’t moving. Mom helped me up the steps and sat me on a chair to observe me. Noticing that I was turning yellow and blue, she quickly got my uncle to help take me to Mercy Hospital in his car.
Snow was falling on an already white street, the stars twinkling in a black sky.
After serious discussion among several doctors, I was diagnosed with a ruptured spleen that had to be removed immediately. The doctors, machines, and lights frightened me. To this day I can recall the sights and sounds that permeated that small room.
And to add to my already heightened fear, my mom and dad were not permitted to stay in the emergency room with me. Medical technology and hospital practices were different back then. My mom had worn her heavy brown tweed coat. As I trembled on the examining table, I soon realized that if I threw my head back far enough, I could see her coat draped over a chair behind me. It was less scary then because I knew my mom would never leave me without putting her coat on; it was too cold outside.
“Twenty minutes and it would have been too late,” I heard someone say.
In what seemed like a minute and an eternity, I woke up in an all-white hospital room with a big white bandage across my abdomen. White walls. White sheets. White pillows. When I look back on this, I can see a thin little girl drowning helplessly in a sea of white.
Throughout the three weeks I lay there in that hospital bed rallying for my life, nurses in white uniforms and white caps wandered in and out of my room. I didn’t feel as terrified when they were there. They changed my bandages, changed my bedding, and washed my tiny body with their soft, gentle hands. They helped feed me.
As I got stronger, they let me be a little girl, encouraging me to play. Someone had generously given me a tube of red lipstick, which I used to adorn my lips, my cheeks, and the white sheets and pillowcases. When my mom noticed the red ribbons of color splashed everywhere, she apologized profusely to the nurses.
“Let her have fun,” they insisted.
“Angels of mercy,” my mom called them.
I welcomed them into my domain. Their freshly pressed white uniforms and caps stood out in my sea of white, like doves formed in the folds of God’s clouds.
Since that snowy Thanksgiving night, my twenty allotted minutes to live have spanned more than five decades of life. I became a teacher, a writer, and best of all, a mother. I bandaged scraped knees, stayed up all night with stuffy noses, and made several visits to the emerg
ency room with my children.
And each time I went through the double doors of an emergency room with one of my children’s hands in mine, there were nurses to graciously greet me. Their white uniforms and white caps were no longer visible, but they were still like doves formed in the folds of God’s clouds.
“Thank you,” I whisper, recalling a snowy Thanksgiving night.
And I hear my mom say, “angels of mercy,” her voice reaching me from the white light of heaven.
“Yes, Mom,” I call back, looking up past the ceiling to the sky. “Angels of mercy.”
Lola Di Giulio De Maci
To the Nurse Who Served in Vietnam
O Lord who lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.
William Shakespeare
My name is Mike. I was a Marine, and I stepped on a mine during Operation Allenbrook. I lost both legs. You were my nurse who told me I was going home. You bathed me, kept me out of pain; you talked to me about beginning anew. It was not easy but you gave me hope. Today, I just retired. I have thought of you often . . . I don’t even remember your name. I’ll always remember your face.
My name is Roger. I was killed during a mortar attack in Plieku. You made sure all my personal effects made it home to my wife. I was there at night when you cried over all of us—praying for me and my family. Yes, God does care and He remembers you.
My name is Tan. I was a little child in Ban Me Thout, and you cared for me and helped me. I have leprosy. I was there when they took you away in the middle of the night. I missed your singing to me. You were my missionary. My daughter has your name.
My name is Wayne. I was killed when our base camp got overrun at Bihn Phouc, but I remembered the times when you came to play games with us. You took my mind off the war; you made me forget. I was from Indiana. I told you that you reminded me of my girlfriend.
My name is Joe, and I am from Memphis. I rode on your plane coming over to Nam. You told me it was okay to be scared and you were going to pray for all of us. You took my last letter I wrote to my mom and dad and mailed it for me. I remember your perfume and your beautiful green eyes. I was killed by a mine that blew up my truck my first day.
My name is Jimmy. Me and all the guys want to thank you for a job well done. Please be easy on yourselves. Do you realize how many of us you saved? Do you know how many of us still have legs and arms that might have been removed if not for you? You helped ease our pain. You are the best and we appreciate all that you did. It was enough.
My name is David. I never got to tell you thanks for being there for me. For holding my hand and telling me I was going to be okay. Thanks for writing the letter to Mom; she told me how much she appreciated it when she got up here last year. Thank you for staying with me when I passed over. It is so beautiful here. I will be there for you when it is your time to come. I will call your name and I will hold your hand. I love you.
My name is Tony. My helicopter was shot down in the Plain of Reeds. I was on your burn ward. You wrote letters home for me. I told you that I loved you and you said all the guys said that to you. You don’t understand—I still do.
Kerry Pardue
God’s Hand
Never deprive someone of hope. It may be all they have.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Somehow, it had all come to this.
A fifth-and-a-half-a-day drunk and drug addict, homeless in body and soul. Thirty-two years old, two failed suicide attempts. I’d lost everything. And everyone.
Then, on a night like countless others, in the unfurnished back room of someone’s house, passed out on an old mattress on the floor, surrounded by unpacked boxes—something changed.
It had little to do with me. I had given up. Yet suddenly, in the silent hours before dawn, the world became perfectly still, and I was wide-awake, stone sober. A wailing came out of me, as a weight threatening to smother me crushed my body into the sheets, the tears pouring out of me like rain, like hard, deep, crystal cleansing rain until I could not breathe, could not see or hear or move, until whatever had been haunting me came rushing out with a shudder and a gasp and helpless hollow howling, and then died.
I was so sick in my spirit and body that much of what transpired the next few days following that night remains clouded in my mind, and I remember few details. I believe that I walked around in a stupor for a while, and those around me might have even suspected that the shattering of what was left of my sanity had finally come, because no one really spoke to me much. I know that I considered taking a drink, because I no longer knew how to go through a day without doing so, but that somehow I did not. I was too weak to understand what it meant, or what step I should take next.
Still, I had surrendered. On a primitive and very human level, I had given up, and given in. I had, in some unfathomable way, chosen life. I was far too sick and confused at the time to rationally think any of this, of course, to be able to reason such an unreasonable thing. But God’s grace was sufficient. I actually went one day, then another, without drinking. His helpless, but willing and obedient child again, the miracle had begun.
Sometime later, on a gray and rainy afternoon, I found my way to the downtown mission, to an AA meeting in the basement of an old stone church. I don’t remember much about that first visit, or even exactly how I got there. But one moment will remain in my mind as long as I live. I can still see my hands shaking badly as I tried to pour a cup of coffee, the stuff spilling all over the table, and a wrinkled hand reaching in to gently steady the cup and pour it full. And I remember those eyes, the eyes of this seventy-three-year-old woman, and I saw peace in them.
“Looks like you could use some help,” she said.
Her name was Margaret. She told me she was “seventy-something, and that’s all you need to know.” She had been a widow for eight years, and in recovery from her alcoholism for six. And for whatever reason, she took it upon herself to be my angel.
Margaret had been a nurse all her professional life. After she retired, when her husband of forty years became bedridden with cancer, he asked her to take care of him at home, and of course she did.
Margaret came to every AA meeting held in the mission. She had at some point taken on the responsibility of arriving early and making the coffee. She was happiest when helping; a servant’s heart beat strong within her.
Every time I tried to run away, emotionally or physically, Margaret would know. She could see the look in my eyes, and see what was happening. She knew this familiar fear personally, and did not take it lightly. She allowed me no self-pity, no easy way out. And her gentle strength helped save my life.
In a sense, Margaret became Christ to me, much like my own grandmother had when I was a child. Growing up in my alcoholic home, I found refuge in my Mamaw’s house, her unconditional love wrapping itself around me like a quilt. I had over the years nearly forgotten this place. Now Margaret’s love felt the same.
Margaret embodied a kind of calm against my longing. She knew how to listen. I had over the years learned to trust no one. Yet, in a matter of days, I risked drawing near a place shining within her that felt at long last like home. Perhaps, somewhere deep in her nurse’s soul, she possessed a gift of healing that went far beyond her physical years of professional service. Because for one exhausted, shameful man, her eyes shared a dancing grace, and her hands held a healing that time can never still.
I knew her for three brief years. She hadn’t told me about her cancer until months after we met. Others knew, as it turned out, but she had asked that the truth be kept from me, at least for a little while, perhaps until I had gotten stronger. To the end, she tended to my needs rather than her own.
I’ve been clean and sober for over seventeen years. In all that time, I’ve had to learn to move from my selfishness into a spirit of giving, of sharing the hope that Margaret and many others shared with me on a cold afternoon that now seems forever ago. Margaret is gone, but has of course never left me. Whenever fear and shame and an old but
familiar sense of loneliness creep into my soul, there remains the soft brush of her hand across my cheek . . . a mother’s hand . . . God’s hand . . . a nurse’s hand.
James E. Robinson
Knowing Your Limits
To oblige one grateful man, I will oblige a great many who are not so.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
As a physician assistant, I spent the first two years after graduating at one of the largest correctional facilities in the New York City area, Rikers Island.
Staff members rotated through the various clinics, infirmary, and special housing units addressing the many medical needs of our inmates. It was in the women’s mental health unit that I met Renee.
Renee was a disheveled woman in her midtwenties, with long matted hair, dirty clothing, and a toothless smile. During my daily rounds to the unit, she stood in close proximity, grinning and drooling, and making bizarre gestures. She often attempted to communicate, but her speech was incoherent and tangential. Abused by family and most people who came in contact with her, Renee had a lifelong history of schizophrenia and depression. She had been in countless psychiatric programs and on various medications. Too often she became noncompliant and relapsed into a world of paranoia where she self-medicated with illicit drugs.