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#AMWRITING

The Secret Grief of Nurses

  • June 11, 2018June 11, 2018
  • by Cry and Nurse On

Some days I think I’ve reached that place in my career, my life, you know the one. The “back when I was young” stage. I feel like I’m not old enough to be there yet, but maybe I’m an old soul.

I remember sleepless nights leading to bright and early clinical shifts. Scared out of my mind, baby nurse, so worried I might not remember what a drug a patient was on was for, or that I would fold the sheet wrong. Someone along the way neglected to tell me that it wouldn’t take too long before I either knew where to look up drugs quickly and their purpose or they would become so familiar I wouldn’t need to think about it.

They didn’t tell I wouldn’t care too much about hospital sheets being folded correctly, although I worked night shift in the NICU long enough to care deeply that the baby bed linens and onesies matched as well as possible.

Nobody told me that in my first year of nursing I would spend a long night rocking and singing to a baby who had been beaten by those who were supposed to care for her and whether she cried for the pain or the separation I don’t know, but that night I held her. I don’t remember her name but more than 10 years later I can still feel the ache as I held her to my chest, the first layer of baby nurse peeled brutally away at the violation of the belief I so desperately wanted to cling to, that nobody would intentionally harm a baby.

I think most nurses remember their first. Their first patient that wrecked them. The one that broke their heart making them question why they thought this was a good career, all the while cementing that how could you do anything else when for this night, this baby was placed in my arms to be cared for? Maybe it’s just me. I don’t know. I’ve always been told I feel things too deeply, have no boundaries. I’m oversensitive and emotional and just too much. I cry too easily.

So for years, I went from one to the next. A baby or a patient that would stick a little deeper. The ones that made me want to quit, but simultaneously reminded me why I stay.

There is a slide show of snippets, moments that will never leave me that pulled me deeper and deeper into the messy thing we call life and being the one whose job it is to sit with people through the darkest, but also some of the brightest moments, of their lives.

I have taken a baby away from a mother as she bleeds wondering if me taking her baby out of her arms will be her last memory before she dies. I have painstakingly laboured over making a perfect set of handprints from a baby born still far too early because it is the only memento mom wants.

I have gotten too close and too attached. I have cried over painful procedures because I’m causing the pain and once again I got too close.

I’ve never figured out how not to see myself in every mom, every parent of a sick child receiving awful news always remembering the many voices cautioning that you can’t get too involved, to have boundaries. I figured there must be something wrong with me because I couldn’t close my heart off to the pain, the heartbreak.

I carried with me the ones imprinted on my heart. I felt guilty because we weren’t supposed to. Everyone seemed to know the secret of how not to let those special patients worm their way into your heart, or the most heartbreaking ones crack it just a little.

Somewhere along the way, all the layers of baby nurse fully gone, I am the nurse who jokes about “how we used to do things” as if 12 years is a lifetime and my soul does feel old but somewhere along the line I gave up trying “not to take them home” with me, “not to get too attached” or “leaving work at work”. It was a losing battle anyway and I cried. Not always at the best of times but mostly when my work was done. I confessed my utter failure to separate my heart from my work. I talked about the pain and the tears and my secret grief.

And then, only then, did I realize I wasn’t alone.

Walk onto any pediatric floor, neonatal intensive care, labour and delivery and you will meet some of the best nurses. Not only are they competent and skilled but they bring kindness and compassion and caring to everything they do. They work tirelessly to provided expert care, all the while holding space for some of life’s most painful and dark moments. The loss of innocence. Life gone too soon. Pain and pokes to those who can’t even begin to understand why. The ones who scream and cry through everything done to them only to offer watery smiles after or snuggle deeply into the chest of the nurse whose heart is breaking over the work that must be done.

So back when “I was young” we may have folded perfect corners and researched patients with wide-eyed innocence, but now I wonder why we don’t prepare those baby nurses better for the pain to come. I want to tell them it will suck, it will hurt, you might cry, but it’s ok. It’s ok if you aren’t ok with babies dying and toddlers screaming in pain. It’s ok if a mother’s scream at finding out her baby is gone haunts your dreams. It’s ok because at some point we’ve all been there. It gets worse, and then it gets better. You can be “not ok” and still be a damn good nurse, because, well, let’s be honest…..we all want a nurse to take care of us who still give a damn.

#NURSELIFE

A Life Well Lived and Too Short

  • May 28, 2017May 28, 2017
  • by Cry and Nurse On

A few years ago I got the chance to work on Labour and Delivery. It had always been a dream of mine and when the opportunity came along I jumped at the chance. I spent a year and a half there until I was pregnant with my third, my temporary line was up, and I was 23 weeks and spotting. I headed back to NICU for shorter shifts and lighter lifting (and hopefully fewer nightmares of bleeding to death!)

In that year and a half, I had the privilege of meeting some of the most amazing nurses I have had the joy of working with. All nurses work hard, but labour and delivery requires a special person. You are there for the best day in people’s lives and sometimes the worst. It’s physically demanding and emotionally draining and you must always be on your toes because things change in a moment.

Those nurses are with their patients often from start of shift to end. While they coach and support emotionally, they are also busy teaching, all while keeping a sharp eye out for the slightest sign that things are going wrong physically. To work there takes the utmost medical skill as well as a kind and caring, strong personality.

It was in that time that I met Kelly, she embodied to me everything that an amazing nurse should be. She would come on always ready to work. Energetic even on nights, kind and confident. She was friendly and I remember her talking about plans for her upcoming wedding.

After leaving Labour and Delivery I was glad that working NICU I still often got to pop back in and say hello to the nurses I had met and worked with. When I saw last week first that Kelly was sick, then that she had died I was heartbroken.

It was everything about this world that makes me long to believe there must be something more, something else. How can someone so beautiful be gone in a moment, leaving behind her babies, the love of her life, her sisters, her parents, her friends?

I ached for our world losing such an amazing soul. I thought of her family going through what no one should have to go through. I remembered all my co-workers from Labour and Delivery and watched them grieve on my facebook feed the loss of a dear friend and colleague.

I also read her blog. In the short week, she was diagnosed she immediately turned to words to sort out how she was feeling and to share her story.

She embodied courage and in total nurse fashion wanted to raise awareness and use her story to help others. Her writing reminded me of something I try to focus on when I’m working, that you never know what someone is going through, a reminder to treat everyone with kindness (just as Kelly would have done.)

From the US tech who didn’t seem to give her credit for managing to get there with babies, to the resident who seemed to minimize her pain. I hope that everyone who reads her blog is reminded that there are always layers and layers under the first impression our patients give us when we first encounter them. Also, that even small gestures of kindness go a long way to those who are scared, worried or stressed. 

It’s hard to reconcile a life seemingly cut so short and I’ve thrown a thought heavenward more than once of “really?!?” but ultimately she is gone and just like I see everyday at work from NICU and Pediatrics to Labour and Delivery, life rarely seems fair.

I’m left with how can I honour a life so well lived?

I’m grateful for the privilege of having known and worked with Kelly even for such a short time. Reading her obituary I can see that her life touched many as short as it was. It’s a reminder that none of us knows how many days we have and as cliche as it often sounds, we choose how we spend them.

Even in her last days, her thoughts were of others, taking care of her family and using her own pain to reach out.

I still get a twisted knot of stone in my stomach when I think about the pain of those close to her, a circle that is as large as her heart was. I also know that her husband and her babies will be taken care of. I’ve seen the support pour in for them and watched her coworkers and family circle around. I’ve marvelled at the layers of support as our NICU raised money to send support and condolences to the nurses in Labour and Delivery we work so closely with and her family.

A loving and generous spirit is contagious. Kelly’s life was far shorter than it should be, but in these past few days, I’ve sat and watched the ripples spread far and wide of her influence.

It doesn’t make it all ok. It still makes me mad and sad and sick all at the same time that someone younger than me could be snatched from this world from something as nasty as cancer days after one of her 3 babies was discharged from PICU leaving behind littles who need her, a husband who loved her. I want to scream “no!” and “not fair!” all day. I don’t understand it, it makes me question the purpose of life and pain and the point of love and I come up with tiny fragments. Flecks of gold shining through the pain and suffering.

Generosity, kindness, love.

These are the things Kelly exemplified with her life so they are things I will be comforted by in her death.

To read Kelly’s story go here.

To donate(or just feel comforted by the outpouring of love) go here.

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