Protea caffra
Beverly called the ambulance because she couldn’t walk anymore. Her feet were edematous after ten days of radiation treatment for metastatic lung cancer, and her heart was slowly overfilling with fluid, backlogging into her body. She was stoically resigned to her pain and newfound infirmity, but she kept a wry sense of humor, cracking jokes about being waited upon and the “magic carpet ride” sling we lifted her onto.
During transport to the hospital, Beverly told me she grew protea: pale red, pink and cream-colored flowers native to South Africa. Her family sells them at local farmer’s markets in bouquets. When I inquired further, Beverly perked up and gave me the rundown:
Breaking a Frame of Reference
When you see one on the subway, get off. When one is coming your way on the sidewalk, cross the street. Despite being a progressive-minded student studying drug policy, this was my frame of mind about drug users outside the research lab. This frame changed after my time at Street Health.
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Training During the Plague
If you had told me thirty years ago,
when I took call on endless sleepless nights
on incandescent AIDS wards full of fear
on which I tried to do the healing work
of drawing blood and packing leaking wounds
and viewing films of microbes gone berserk
in lungs and brains of patients wasted frail
to postpone certain death from HIV,
if you had told me then that I would see
a family with an AIDS tale just as bad—
today, two parents with disease but well,
their uncontaminated child, alive–
my doubt would equal that of Didymus
who disbelieved the Resurrection tale.
Like he who needed proof with sight and touch,
I’d need this scene to change my mind as much.
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Daily Constitutional
Rounds at the cancer institute where I’m a nurse practitioner start at 8:00 am: bellies are pressed, labs frowned at, lungs auscultated, pain discussed. Teams of physicians, nurse practitioners, residents, interns and students roam the halls–teaching, conversing, lecturing, scratching their heads.
But one of my favorite parts of the day starts at 10:00 am. That’s when the physical therapists start arriving and the patients start their daily exercise–walking the halls. Some measure their effort in steps, some in laps, some in miles.
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Learning to Let Go
Every New Year, many resolutions come to mind to try to guide me and provide focus for the year ahead. Now, as I approach the pre-retirement period of my life, I have chosen to learn and relearn how to let go.
I realize that I have to let go of my fantasies, let go of my fears, let go of so many things that seem essential in the moment yet represent nothing more than attachments to the past.
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Birth of a Midwife
As a nurse, I was brand new to labor and delivery–and I was on my third night shift in a row. Walking back from a quick break, I was called over by the charge nurse.
“You have the next admit from triage,” she told me. “She’s a live one–and so is her family. They’re carnies.”
“What’s that?” I asked, bewildered.
“You know, the people who do the circus and carnival circuit–gypsies,” she said, innocently using a term that is now considered derogatory, but was then often applied to the nomadic ethnic group known as Roma. “She’s going natural.”
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The Devotion of a New Nurse
I can tell you stories about my day, about the mundane miracles that transpire in the time-warped world of this hospital birthing center, but words will hardly convey what it is like–for me–to be a new labor and delivery nurse. Every time I meet a patient and ask them about themselves, I am reminded that I am only hearing bits of the whole story of their life, that I will never really know what life is like for anyone else, and that no one will know (or needs to know) what it is like for me. This seems lonely at first but is actually deeply intimate.
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Worrier to Warrior
I am a worrier. I worry about real and imaginary things, about significant issues and minor ones. My goal for 2020 is to stop being a worrier and instead become a warrior.
I want to embrace each day with courage, not with angst. Perhaps if I do, I will no longer suffer from 24/7 headaches that challenge my ability to concentrate for any extended period of time. Maybe I will stop losing myself in reruns of Law and Order: SVU and instead engage in real life adventures–solo or with friends–at a museum, theater, or restaurant.
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An Editor’s Invitation: Turning Over a New Leaf
At one time or other, we’d all like to turn over a new leaf.
Which leaf would you choose right now, in 2020, and which have you chosen in the past?
For now, I would choose the leaf that has me feeling bad whenever I run late seeing patients–which is always–because I haven’t figured out how to keep a visit within the 20-minute slot that’s been allotted.
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