Holy cow!

Has it really been 6 weeks since I posted last? I guess so. I just haven't had much to say (still don't). I am still reading blogs and commenting on them (as some of you may have noticed). I am tired and having a lot of pain in my right shoulder, going for an MRI tomorrow to find the cause of this pain. I hate MRI's. They are loud, like an alien invasion, and boring, and make me a bit claustrophobic. But if it helps figure out what all this pain is about then I will just do it an be quiet.

Well, I wanted to include a photo or 2 to show you what I have been doing with my time lately, but blogger wouldn't let me. Oh well. Next time. More later.

Betty

It is 3 a.m. and my pager is blaring at me. I just laid down, not yet asleep. I get up and go to the phone and get the message from the answering service: "Yes ma'am, the call is from Betty Bebothersome. Says her catheter is leaking." I hang up and think nasty thoughts. "Dang you Betty, how many times this week have you called about your freakin' catheter!?" A chronic caller, Betty is known for her frequent leaking catheter calls. Often she is really calling because she has an anxiety disorder, and her catheter is the most convenient target for her anxiety. I call and try to get her to wait until morning as the catheter has ceased to leak according to her aide (she has 24 hour cargeivers), and there is plenty of urine both in the tube and the drainage bag. But Betty will have none of it.

I am angry when I get off the phone. In frustration, I grumble " I hate that woman!" My partner hears me in the other room and is a bit shocked by my response. I tell her to ignore me I am just angry right now, and I get ready to go to Betty's house.

In the car as I am driving to her house, I think to myself "where has your compassion gone? I think you need to get a different job if this is how you respond to your patients." Guilt and shame gnaw at my gut.

I enter the house to be greeted by a neatly dressed young woman with a scowl on her face. She says to me, in a whisper "another really long night". I reply "I imagine every night with Betty is a long, long night." "Yes" she says, rolling her eyes.

I walk up the steps into an imaculately clean, cutely decorated little house, and round the corner into Betty's room. (Keep in mind that I have only spoken to Betty on the phone, in the past. This is the first time I have met her. You know how it is to talk to someone on the phone over a long period of time? I tend to form a picture in my mind of the person. I didn't have a nice picture in my mind of poor Betty.) There in the hospital bed in a small, clean room is a tiny, frail looking little lady with the most anxious look on her face.

A tremendous surge of remorse and sadness wells up in my throat, as I introduce myself to Betty. I excuse myself to go wash my hands because tears are welling up in my eyes. My whole heart was melted by the sight of this tiny lady. My entire attitude has changed.

After taking a moment to compose myself, I return to Betty's room and begin to assess her catheter problem. I find that it is running just fine, but Betty wants it changed. As I go about the task, I converse quietly with her. She tells me that she was a nurse for 39 years. And she was a nurse in an era when nurses were not allowed to marry if they intended on making a career of it. Thus Betty is without family. And most of her friends have died as she is in her 80's.

I ask her about a small statue of a lighthouse on a shelf by her bed. She tells me that when she retired, she and another lady bought this house together. They used to vacation together, frequently during their years of working as nurses. On their last vacation together at the Grand Canyon, some 10 years ago, her friend died of a massive heart attack as they awaited an ambulance. "I have never gotten over it", she says softly.

As I leave, I think to myself "I have a whole new picture in my mind, now. I think my compassion has been restored."

Mother's Day

At 9:00 PM on Saturday, I arrived at our hospice house in answer to a page from the staff there. I was grateful for a call early in the evening, which might stave off calls at 3 A.M. (remember might). I went to the room of the patient having pain issues to find a smallish elderly woman, anxiously squirming in her bed. Her right leg from mid-calf to foot was black, her abdomen extremely distended.

We will call our lady Mrs. R, who said as I entered her room "oh, can you do something about this pain in my leg?! They said it is clotted off. Can I do anything to get some circulation to it?" I attempted to explain that since there was a clot in the main artery to her leg, that there was no circulation to the leg, and there was no way to improve that without major surgical intervention, which she was not healthy enough to endure. I wasn't getting through, and during the course of the next 5 hours had to repeat this explanation numerous times.

Mrs. R was out of her head with pain. She kept sitting up, lying down, putting the heating pad on, taking it off, thrashing in her bed, moaning, shouting at times and talking the entire time in fragmented sentences and words. During this time I increased her dose of pain medication twice. She was getting her medication through a subcutaneous line from a pump with a button she could press every 10 minutes for an extra dose. I pressed that button every 10 minutes for 2 hours. The average person would have been comatose from the amount of medication she received, but it was not helping.

It was decided after conferring with Mrs. R's very hospice savvy physician, that we should attempt to sedate her. Which we spent the next 3 hours doing. I stayed in the room with Mrs. R for 5 hours total that night, while giving her hefty doses of medication to make her go to sleep. It took a very long time, during which Mrs. R did what is known in hospice as a "life review".

She told me her story. Mrs. R's life was difficult and painful and she was struggling with feelings of guilt and shame as she walked through the door to the next world. She had been married 5 times, left her children with their father at the end of one of those marriages and thus had poor relationships with them, had been judged and scorned by most people she knew. She had had poor relationships with her own parents, as well. All in all, this led to Mrs. R lying alone in a hospice facility, with no friends or family to assist her in her dying process. You could hear the pain and shame in her voice as she spoke through her increasing drug induced haze.

Mrs. R finally went to sleep around 2:00 AM on Mothers' Day. And she died with no family near at 5:00 PM that evening.

I went home to bed around 3:oo AM, and slept until 8 when I had to give report by phone to the on-coming day shift. Then went back to sleep until 2 PM. When I got up I had a cup of coffee and got ready to go to the grocery store in preparation for the Mothers' Day celebration at our home.

As I was preparing to leave, J was on the phone with one of her daughters who was coming later, and the door bell rang. I went to the door to find J's son. He is 16 years old and generally about as self-centered as the average 16 year old boy. But in he walks, by himself, with a bouquet of flowers in his hand for his mom. It is the first time Joe has bought anyone flowers. And I am told, without prompting and with his own money. Happy Mothers' Day.

My New Toy

Well- my Economic Stimulus money came this week. So I went out and stimulated the economy a little bit. I had my heart set on a Digital SLR camera, but for less than half the price I got SOOO much more. . What I got was a Cannon PowersShot A650. It has many of the capabilities of a DSLR, and stores 12.1 megapixels! The highest megapixel count on the market. Plus it takes videos. And this is last years model. The sales rep at Costco said to me "this will be a much better buy for your money. See, it also comes with a printer for about 30 dollars more than the Nikon Coolpix". Now this is not just any ol' printer, mind you. He didn't tell me this when I was at the store: but it is a printer, copier and scanner!! The Blogger video window doesn't do the video justice- it is much higher quality. But LOOK at these photos!!