If I don't get it out

I will fall apart.  I am so angry inside I feel like bursting.  Imagine going along down a road, a pleasant road with many little side trips.  You stop in a small village, meet wonderful people from all walks of life and then drive a bit farther and meet some more.  You go on like this until one day, just as you round a corner, BAM!  You get hit from the side by a car you never saw coming.  That is what happened this week at work.  My wonderful, pleasant job suddenly turned into a nightmare.  Today I made the mistake of checking up on the situation and there it was.  Still as ugly as ever.


Why is life this way?  Why is work this way?  No one was doing anything intentionally wrong, and out of the blue, things are destroyed.  People are hurt.  Emotions are wounded.  Life is dimmer.

Now, I feel so apathetic.  A thing I have not felt since I began this road trip two years ago.  Dear God, help me. 

In two years it's the first time

that I ever thought maybe this isn't the job for me.  But NOT because of my patients.  I still think they are wonderful.  It's management.  Their games.  Their idiocy.  Their judgments.  I don't want to sound bitter but I probably will.  I try so hard to do a good job.  My only goal, the ONLY thing I want, is for my patients to be happy.  That's it.  I have no ulterior motives, I don't care about money, the hours, the benefits.  Nothing matters except them.  NOTHING.  So when I try my hardest to help a patient I don't expect that I will be chastised, accused, slandered.  But that's what happened.  And for the first time, I wanted to just 
give
up. 

 

 

HELP ME

to understand that the world is filled with people who have ulterior motives.  I don't even care what their motives are, but when I am somehow involved in their grand schemes, it makes me uber unhappy. 

Today I got four phone calls after an initial phone call ten minutes before.  Mind you this was not an urgent phone call but because I had waited an astronomical TEN MINUTES without responding, four phone calls and two voice messages resulted.

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS????????  What if I had been with a patient?  Does anyone think that sometimes you just MIGHT be busy and it might take you longer than ten minutes to respond to a message? 

O. M.  GOSH. 

So I tried repeatedly to say something to my manager about this and I got:

Relax and have a margarita. 

O. M.  GOSH.

So here is what I learned today.

You must answer phone calls rapidly or you will be pelted with unnecessary phone calls that interfere with you trying to answer the call, make a call to reply, or listen to a voice message.

You cannot complain about the excessive phone calls because you are seen as being just too darn uptight and you need a drink.

Nice.

God, death and eternal life

It's interesting isn't it that there seem to be more and more people who don't believe in God......  "I don't need to believe in an imaginary fairy in the sky."  I've heard that and numerous similar remarks from many of them.  And yet. 

Why can they tell me there isn't a God and I can't tell them there isn't a Higgs boson particle or whatever it's called.  And just for their information, do they really, truly know how the universe began?  Nope.  It's pure speculation.  It's science they'll say.  And in reply I'll say, it's religion.

I have mine, you have yours.  But if your science can believe in things none of us will ever see, don't tell me my religion can't believe in things YOU won't ever see.

For I know there is a God.  I have had my little qualms of doubt like any other person.  But I've had a couple of experiences that PROVE to me there is a God.

I am the lucky one.  I wish everyone else could have such a thing happen.....and I don't know why they don't.  Or, maybe they do but choose not to believe what happened was God. 

Death isn't as frightening when you know you are entering a whole new experience.  I have so many patients tell me they aren't afraid to die.  In fact, they welcome it and wait for it, and yes, some of them pray and beg for it.  It's the eternal rest, peace, and a world of love and wonder.  We can't see it yet, but we know it's there. 

If you look, every day you'll see a little bit of it somewhere. 

I have lost so many

patients recently and some of them I adored.  If only I had more time!  That is a familiar lament however, and time is not given to all in equal measure. 

What would I do if I had more time with the patients I adore?  I'd ask them lots of questions.  About life.  About happiness.  About lessons learned and battles won.  I'd want to know how they became the way they are, the wonderful, perfect people that I meet.

I will miss them so much, and yet because I believe in heaven, I believe I will see them again.  I can't wait! 

But I thought it would be different here......

I have been incredibly naive.  AGAIN.  For some reason, I thought my monastery was immune.  Immune to gossip, to back stabbing, to myriad petty and foolish cares by those who don't realize that we are playing in a game that has an ending. Today my coworkers showed otherwise.  I thought that by caring for the dying, we were all focused and driven to become just a little better, a little more knowledgeable, a tiny bit more mature.  But as always, I was wrong.  Today it happened again.  A knife, thrust into me, into the very heart of me.  Oh, how it hurt, how it stung, and then I cried.  Not much, mind you, but some.  I tried very, very hard to control the tears. 

How could this happen to me?  I have done all I could, I thought they were happy, I thought I did my best, I thought they liked me.  And perhaps they do.  But now it is tainted.  It can never, ever be the same.  I trusted that it was ok, and somehow, it wasn't.  Our relationship is tenuous now.  I don't even know if they know.  But I know.  Once again, I have to constantly look over my shoulder, to worry, to fret, to think over and over "How can this happen?" 

Then, I went on.  You have to go on.  And in the going on, I felt better.  I saw my patient who is dying and she told me "I'm ok."  But she's NOT ok.  She's incredibly ill, but she said "I'm ok."  So who am I to think that my little petty gossipmonger should matter?  In the grand scheme, it doesn't matter at all.  I was brought right back to what matters in my hospice monastery.  The patient.  They matter.  They matter so very, very much and nothing.  NOTHING.  Will stop me from wanting the very best for them.

Maybe I need to try a little harder.  We shall see.  I will try because in all of my life, nothing has ever mattered more to me than these patients matter.  I won't let the others bother me, and I will continue to do what matters.  I will care for the dying.  To hell with the rest.

Why hospice nurses do not want their patients to have CPR/A qualitative study

The very definition of hospice being a type of care that is palliative in nature provides a strong impetus against the use of any type of aggressive treatment for one who is considered terminally ill. Be that as it may, patients are still autonomous and able to choose to have CPR at the moment of death.  Unfortunately, some nurses, yes, even hospice nurses believe that the patient is making the wrong choice and wish to influence that decision by making their own wishes paramount. 

What drives a hospice nurse to want to behave in an authoritative way towards their patients in making such a personal choice?  I believe that the answer to that question may be reached with some qualitative research.  Asking the hospice nurses themselves what would drive them to want to interfere in the choice of a patient who wants CPR may open up pathways to assist both patients and nurses in making this important end of life decision.

This study will be done with the permission of a rural hospice service.  All nurses will remain anonymous.  No patient information will be given during the study, the nurses will be asked to use only hypothetical situations or to give examples that they have encountered with real patients who remain anonymous.  If real patient information is used for research purposes, age and sex will not be given, nor will diagnosis be given.  The patients used for example in research should be hospice patients who choose to have CPR. 

Qualitative information given by nurses will be used for narrative case studies and to deign the reasons a hospice nurse might try to persuade a hospice patient not to choose CPR.  This study will not deign to decide the ethics of a patient choosing to have CPR, but may posit reasons that nurses should or should not ethically interfere with such decisions.

Atheism

I can't say that I am a religious person, but I do believe in God.  My reasons are myriad and some of them are quite personal.  Still, I consider myself fairly tolerant of other's beliefs and atheism is no exception.  I know quite a few people who profess to be atheist and they are good people.  Recently however, on a social web site, one of my friends has become almost fanatical about atheism.  From calling theistic believers silly idiots who believe in fairytales and superstitions, who condone acts of violence because the bible tells us to, the list goes on and on.  It's really quite shocking because I am not sure what the agenda here is.  Is the atheist trying to change the world for the better by proselytizing atheism?  Is he so worried about us poor believers delusions that he wants to help us by leading us to the truth that he believes?  The problem is multifaceted but there is one thing I want to know.

 

 

                          Why do you care that I believe in God?  I don't care that you don't. 

The hands.

Sometimes when I walk into a home to see a patient, the first thing I notice is a hand.  A hand stretching up to me, to shake mine.  Only after the hand do I see the face in the bed.  Sometimes a man, other times a woman, but always, always smiling.  They offer themselves to me, by the touch of their hand. 

I can't tell you how many times it's happened in the last year.  Or how many times I think "this can't be happening" while I ponder on the mystery of the dying.  They are so grateful to see me, so happy and so willing to share their journey.  I marvel that many of them aren't worried about themselves anymore, they worry about those left behind. 

"Take care of my wife" he begged me.  I promised I would and the promise wasn't an empty one.  Weeks after his death, his daughter called hospice.  "My mother needs help."  And help was sent.  Months later a card came in the mail from the daughter.  "Thank you" it said, "for helping my mother." 

"It's ok" I whispered to myself, "we just did what your Dad asked us to do." 

There could never be a better job, a better life than this.  I am so grateful to them for letting me live it and hope that one day, I can reach my hand out to a hospice nurse as I take that final journey.