As I stood on the other side of the bed in the ICU, the nurse in me wanted to check the ventilator, his dressings, IVs, and chest tubes. Then, as the nurse hung Denise’s blood over Carson’s bed and the red drops ran down the tubing into his body, I realized why my role had changed. I wasn’t out of control, as I thought. I instead trusted another nurse to stand in my place, just as Denise’s blood dripped in the place of mine. Many nurses served as my substitute on the other side of the bed so I could just be “Mom” on my side.
That’s when I realized the core of nursing is being there for each other . . . as nurses, mothers, and friends.
Cyndi S. Schatzman
A Dose of Compassion
There never was any heart truly great and generous that was not also tender and compassionate.
Robert South
Any first-year elementary teacher knows that half the children she sends to the nurse aren’t sick at all. But what’s a teacher to do? If she sends him and he isn’t sick, he misses a math test. But if she doesn’t send him and he is sick, he may throw up all over the classroom. It is that thought that makes even veteran teachers tremble.
So she sends little Johnny to the clinic. He practically skips down the hall with the clinic pass clutched tightly in his little fist. After five or ten minutes he returns to the classroom. The paraphernalia he brings back tells the story: two saltine crackers for a tummy ache, a Dixie cup with ice for a sore throat, or a Band-Aid for anything that involves even the most microscopic speck of blood. He walks back into class proudly displaying the proof that he was indeed declared to be in need of medical attention by a trained professional. At our school, her name is Nurse Janice.
I had been teaching for nine years when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic and unpredictable disease. The diagnosis brought with it worry, and surprisingly, relief. It meant that there was a name for my suffering. There was a reason for my debilitating fatigue and weakness. But it also meant that life changes would occur over which I had no control.
Learning about the disease and how to cope with it filled my time and my thoughts. The fatigue was unbearable. No matter how much I slept or rested, I was still tired. On the outside I looked the same; no one would have suspected a thing. But the truth was, my health was deteriorating. Daily injections slowed the progression of the disease, but I was fighting an invisible enemy. And I hated it. I began losing strength in my right leg, which caused me to limp when I was tired. And when I started losing my balance, stumbling and staggering, it was just one more indignity to add to the list. Still, I bravely and stoically continued to teach.
After a lot of thought, I decided to tell only two people at work about my diagnosis: the principal and the school nurse.
“I want you to know just in case,” I explained to Nurse Janice. “I don’t expect anything to ever happen at work. But if it does you’ll know my medical history.”
“Thank you, Karen,” she said, looking into my eyes. “And how are you with all of this?”
“I’m fine,” I said, still in denial. “I’m fine. But I don’t want anybody to know, okay?”
“This is between you and me,” she promised.
A few months later, her promise would be tested. As I was hurrying across the classroom one day, I stumbled. In an instant I was falling. My arm slammed into a desk as I fell to the floor, where I landed on my stomach. A coworker rushed to my side. Tears started to well as I slowly got up.
When I entered the clinic, Nurse Janice looked up. “Karen, what’s wrong?”
“I fell,” I managed to say.
“Keep an eye on the kids in the clinic,” she said to the nearby receptionist.
She led me to an empty office next to the clinic and shut the door behind her. I sat down holding my arm as she knelt in front of me, gently wiggling my pant leg up to reveal a badly skinned knee. “This might sting a little,” she said, putting ointment on it.
She asked questions and reassured me. Her eyes were kind and comforting. I felt as if I was her only patient, and that she had all the time in the world. She carefully bandaged my knee and then looked at my upper arm, which was already turning purple over an area the size of a brick.
She put her hand on mine and asked, “How are you?”
“Well, my arm is starting to hurt and . . . ” I started.
“No,” she said softly. “How are you?”
I knew her question wasn’t about a skinned knee or a bruised arm. The question was deeper. My life had been turned upside down with the diagnosis of MS and I hadn’t cried a single tear. But now I cried . . . and cried. I wept for lost dreams and an uncertain future. I sobbed deeply, from the core of my being. She consoled me, and then I cried some more. When the tears slowed and then finally stopped, she brought me a cold, wet paper towel to put over my swollen eyes.
“Take as much time as you need,” she soothed.
When I was ready to reenter the world again, I followed her back to the clinic to get a bag of ice for my arm. Kids were lined up to see the nurse; one with tear-streaked cheeks, another holding her stomach, and a few more sat waiting to tell their stories.
As I walked out of the clinic, I glanced back and had to smile. Nurse Janice was on her knees, with the face of a small child cupped gently in her hands. This is what she does day after day, I thought. Students come and go. Sick or not, they get a dose of compassion, a dose of kindness, and a listening ear. They get a moment to be the only one in the room.
Healing takes place in that little clinic with the cartoon posters. It takes place while sitting on a green vinyl bed, with a nurse looking into the eyes of a child and listening, really listening, to what is said, and to what isn’t said. And the cup of ice or saltine crackers he takes back to class may not prove to his teacher that he was truly hurting. But it is proof to one small child . . . and me . . . that in that moment, we are more important than anyone else in the world.
Karen Fisher-Alaniz
Chimes of Joy
The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.
Michel E. Montaigne
Most people, whether hospital staff, patients, or visitors, are familiar with “Code blue, code blue!” Those words summon up frightening and fearful feelings as staff are alerted to a medical emergency involving life and death.
Now, “The Chimes of Joy” are becoming familiar to many as well. After the birth of a baby, chimes are played over the paging system to get everyone’s attention, then soft sounds of a lullaby float down each corridor of the hospital, announcing a new life. Many people benefit from this moment of happiness, but for two families it became a significant event in their lives.
In a hospital room on the medical floor a family held vigil. A woman with cancer, who had fought a brave battle for many months, was now gravely ill. This frail patient was at peace with God and had no fear of dying. Her family surrounded her with their love and support. When the nurses gently made them aware that the time was drawing close to her final breath, they each prepared themselves for the loss.
Then they heard the dying woman whisper, “I hope a new life comes into this world as I leave.”
Within seconds, chimes played and a lullaby floated through the air as their mother smiled up at them, closed her tired eyes, and died serenely. Amazed and speechless, the family cried tears of sorrow and joy.
Feeling a bond with this newborn, the grieving relatives wanted to learn more about this perfectly timed birth. A few days later in the local newspaper, next to their mother’s obituary, they spotted a birth announcement of the same date. They called the parents and carefully introduced themselves to the puzzled couple, sharing their poignant story. The new parents were delighted to hear from them and eventually graciously accepted the $100 gift and, in honor of the family’s wife and mother, bought a savings bond for their son.
Years later, both families still exchange Christmas cards. The donor family sends the child a birthday card each year and his parents s
end them an annual photograph of him.
I was witness to the unfolding of the divine plan: to see the joy of birth lessen the pain of death.
Judy Bailey
Tom’s Mountain
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
John Quincy Adams
With a name like O’Malley you know I’m Irish. They say those of us with Irish blood have a fighting spirit. Well, I channeled my fighting into the spirit of adventure: I have climbed on mountains all over the world. I had always thought that Mount Everest was the tallest, toughest mountain. I was wrong. My older brother climbed one that was much taller and far more difficult.
His name is Tom. He’s a brilliant and talented person, with a ton of that fighting Irish spirit. He graduated from high school at the age of fifteen and due to his accelerated abilities and excellence in both the classroom and in sports, he received both academic and athletic scholarships to college.
Tom is ten years older than I. As a child, at night when I became frightened or unable to sleep, I would notice Tom’s bedroom light on. It was as though he never slept. I would go into his room and he’d let me sit on his lap while he continued to study. When I woke in the morning, back in my own bed, he was already off to school, or his furniture moving job, or training for some wrestling match. Then at night he’d be back studying hard again.
Tom completed law school, married, and had two sons, Tim and Tommy. While returning home from Tommy’s college graduation, the whole family was in an auto accident. Tommy was severely injured, and my brother lost his wife of twenty-five years and his son Tim.
Critical and in a coma, Tom underwent emergency brain surgery. If he survived, the doctors predicted certain and dramatic brain damage.
The entire family took shifts, staying at Tom’s side. During my turn I would sit beside my brother each night, talking to him as if he could hear and understand me. Tom would lie motionless as I rubbed his arms and sang to him his favorite Irish songs.
One day when my sister Molly was with Tom, she called the family up: “Come to the hospital! Tom is dying.”
All of his major body systems had begun to fail and the doctor suggested our family gather for our last good-byes.
Tom’s climb seemed to be over.
Minutes turned to hours. Some forty-eight hours went by and I stayed with him as the others left to get some rest. I said, “You know, Tom, sometimes when I’ve been real sick or injured, all I could do was stick out my tongue or move my eyes.”
Tom stuck out his tongue.
I ran out to the nurse’s station and yelled, “Tom just stuck out his tongue! He stuck out his tongue!”
I could tell by the look on the nurse’s face that she didn’t believe me.
Quickly I pulled her into his room and she awkwardly asked, “Mr. O’Malley, please stick out your tongue.”
He didn’t.
Then I thought maybe I had been hoping too hard.With tears running down my face I bent down closer to his ear and whispered, “Please, Tom, stick out your tongue again.” There was a long pause . . . then he did. As time passed, the diligent nurses helped him learn to communicate in a laborious process using an alphabet chart. First he communicated by blinking his eyes, and then he progressed to nodding his head for yes and no. The very first night we tried this, Tom indicated he wanted to ask something. After an exasperating hour of frustration, we figured out his question: “Do the doctors know they are working on a lawyer?”
That is when I knew he was still in there, climbing a mountain higher than I ever dreamed of attempting.
With the nurses’ unrelenting efforts and encouragement, Tom made slow progress, step by tiny step. He began to speak, to sit up. We were thrilled the day they placed him in a wheelchair.
He was transferred to Craig Rehabilitation Hospital where another team of remarkable, committed nurses worked him past his limitations with a tenacity and courage I’d never seen on any climb.
One day, while he sat in his wheelchair, paralyzed on his left side, Tom said to his nurse, “Someday I’m going to run the Boulder Bolder.”
Without hesitation, she said, “I’ll see you there.”
I wondered what false hope she might be giving him. He’d run that 10K with Sharon every year. But how could he ever do it again?
Every day, with his nurses’ help, he pushed, pulled, and did whatever it took to take another step up his mountain. That fighting Irish spirit that served him so well in school and in bringing him back from his coma was the same spirit and driving force that pushed him beyond his tragedy.
One year later at the famous Boulder Bolder race, Tom crossed the finish line—so did his nurse—in memory of his wife, Sharon, and their son, Tim.
Brian O’Malley
To Kunuri and Back
To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can.
Sydney Smith
It was November 15, 1950, when Mary and I stepped out of the army ambulance that had brought us from Pyongyang to Sunchon, North Korea, to join the 8076 MASH unit. We were the first nurse replacements for two burned-out nurses who would be sent back to Japan. The commanding officer greeted us with, “Are we glad to see you! What took you so long?”
We voiced our concern about both sides of the road being lined with southbound refugees. “What is going on? Are those Communist Chinese up to something?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he responded, “General McArthur assures us we’ll all be home for Christmas.”
The chief nurse showed us to our quarters. A light bulb hanging from the middle of the tent provided a dim light, the only light. Olive-colored long johns, underwear, socks, and fatigues hung on a clothesline strung the length of the tent. The tent sagged so much, we could stand upright only down the middle, alongside the laundry.My cot sat next to a blood-spattered wall. I spread out my mummy bag.
Casualties were light the next ten days at Sunchon. On the day before Thanksgiving, we moved north to Kunuri, twenty miles from the Manchurian border. All the nurses rode in the ambulances in the long convoy of trucks. They had even loaded the piano on a truck. Getting a new hospital set up was a new experience for Mary and me. The staff slept in an old, shot-up schoolhouse; my cot next to a blood-covered wall.
A short time later, a cowbell rang outside the tent. “Formatin’ time. Formatin’ time,” the colonel yelled.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“A formation is a party. He wants everyone to celebrate our new nurses,” Captain Henry told me. She was the nurse I was replacing, an older nurse whose husband had been killed in World War II.
There was a record player and a piano in the officers’ club tent. We each brought our mess gear cup and it was filled with the usual party drink, a mixture of grapefruit juice and medical alcohol. It burned all the way down. Everyone jitterbugged to some jivey music, combat boots flying on the canvas floor.
News of the party for the new nurses traveled to other outfits, and soon the tent was crowded and the party was getting rowdier. Men bragged to each other about their poker-playing winnings as they downed their grapefruit-juice cocktails. Two men vying for my attention got in a fistfight. The party was getting wilder. It was time to crawl into my mummy bag.
The day before Thanksgiving, it was bitter cold in our living quarters. The weather was freezing and the oil heater in the middle of the room was quite inefficient.
We nurses headed up, mess gear in hand, to stand in the long line for Thanksgiving dinner, expecting the usual canned pork or beef and gravy, canned vegetables, biscuits, and fruit cocktail. To our surprise cans of sliced turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, dried mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, and red Jell-O with raw apples were served. Outside a broken window behind the kitchen, a Korean woman with a baby on her back was loading up the empty beef and grav
y cans into her apron. The scrapings would be dinner for her family.
After we washed our mess gear, another nurse and I headed for the pre-op tent to start our twelve-hour night shift at 1900. Since we were expecting a quiet night, only fifty army cots were set up. We couldn’t hear much artillery. But by nine o’clock litters were pouring in. Wounded soldiers, freezing cold and in shock, quickly filled up the fifty cots. By midnight the ground outside was covered with casualties waiting while additional tents were quickly set up. An extra supply of blankets covered the hypothermic, shot-up soldiers on the icy ground. The little oil heaters in the OR tents weren’t much help, even when they worked. We nurses wore heavy jackets over layers of warm clothes, but couldn’t wear gloves on our cold hands.
Before the night was over, the fifty anticipated wounded turned out to be over six hundred. Every available doctor, nurse, and corpsman worked feverishly, crawling around on the frozen tent floor, cutting off six or seven layers of sleeves and pant legs in order to take blood pressures and get blood transfusions started. There was no such thing as a type and cross match. Icy cold blood in glass containers infused in everyone. Sometimes four transfusions at once were pumped into the shocky patients. As soon as they had a pulse and blood pressure, off they went to the operating room, where their litter was the operating room table.
“This transfusion won’t run. I’m sure it’s in the vein.Will you try?”
“No use. He’s gone.”
The electric lights went out from time to time and the doctors had to use flashlights to complete the operation.
Wounded Communist Chinese prisoners started showing up, and we knew that what had been a fear was now a reality: the Chinese had hit.