we enter
there is
one emaciated body, encased in ivory blankets
and
one clear-walled plastic bag
hanging from the edge of the bed, ominously filled with red liquid
i feel my stomach churn
Malcolm sat in the ICU bed, propped up on pillows to ease his breathing. At seventy-five, he had suffered respiratory complications after open-heart surgery. He’d been on a ventilator for several weeks before gradually being weaned from it.
Malcolm’s blue golf cap hid a bald pate surrounded by a fringe of silver hair. He always seemed to be smiling, comfortable with himself and what life had thrown his way. His smile had grown even warmer over the past weeks as we’d gradually formed a bond of intimacy.
Betsy Willis ~
Many months have passed since the spring day when I was hit with the news from my yearly mammogram, but those typewritten words are forever etched in my memory: “The density appears greater in left breast.”
My doctor comforted me with statistics showing that mammograms aren’t 100 percent accurate–but she also lost no time in sending me to a surgeon, Dr. Prewitt. Upon meeting him, I immediately felt sure that I would be in good hands. He explained the procedure he’d use and answered my questions with clarity and a very welcome gentleness.
He too expressed doubt about the diagnosis, but said, “I’ll schedule you for a parking-lot appointment with the traveling MRI-guided breast-biopsy machine.” (I pictured a brain
Dianne Avey ~
One night on my nursing shift in the cardiac intensive-care unit, I received a new patient from the operating room: an eighty-eight-year-old woman who had suffered a major heart attack and had just undergone emergency coronary-artery bypass surgery.
Her bed was wheeled into the room along with the usual accoutrements: six different IV drips, a ventilator, an aortic balloon pump and various other lines and monitoring devices. Her name, I saw on the chart, was Mrs. Green.
The young surgeon took me aside.
“I don’t care what it takes, just keep her alive for twenty-four hours,” he told me, clearly more worried about his surgical-outcome stats than he was about Mrs. Green’s welfare. The hospital and insurers kept
Kristin Beard ~
“Get the patient on the monitor.”
“How long has he been down? Someone get on the chest!”
“Keep ventilating. He’s in v-fib. Defibrillate at 200.”
“Charging, everybody clear?…Shock delivered.”
“Resume compressions. Push one of epinephrine…Hold compressions. What rhythm is he in?”
“He’s asystole, resume compressions.”
We repeat the process a hundred times over. The medic said they started coding the patient an hour ago. The family is in the consult room with the chaplain.
Joanne M. Clarkson
For LS
Assume pain, I tell them, the young, the
minimum-waged, those who work the midnight
shift with no chance for stars. We lean
over the bed of a 93-year-old man with advanced
Parkinson’s disease. His face is
frozen, even his eyes don’t seem to move
unless you watch the sheen. These
student aides are to turn him, bathe and lotion
his stiffened limbs. After they roll him silent
and awkward as a rug, I notice the bandage
discolored with seepage, covering his left
calf. The notes had not mentioned
Janet Killackey
About the artist:
“I have always been interested in art. I chose nursing as a vocation, but my interest in art continued to grow, in fits and starts, during my forty-five years in health care. I have worked in many areas of nursing practice and also in many mediums–charcoal, pen and ink, oils, watercolors and now mixed media. I feel that this piece reflects where I am now–merging my life experiences in art and in the practice of nursing, both of which bring a level of comfort and caring to others.”
About the artwork:
Read More »
Candice Carnes
In 2002, I was living in Albuquerque and working as a nursing assistant. My staffing agency had assigned me to a medical surgical floor at a hospital in Santa Fe, a fifty-minute drive away.
One day, as I was enjoying the high-desert beauty en route to the hospital, a code was called.
The patient’s name was Sam, as I recall. It could have been anything, but Sam is the name that echoes in my memories of that day.
His heart stopped.
I hadn’t arrived at the hospital yet, but I had been involved in enough codes to know what had been done.
Despite his advanced age, Sam had full-code status with no restrictions, meaning that he or his family had wanted everything
Josephine Ensign
As a community health nurse, I work with homeless and street-involved teenagers. In almost thirty years of doing this work on both coasts, and in Thailand and Venezuela, I’ve gotten to know thousands of young people living on the margins of society.
I love working with them; they challenge me to see the world–and myself–in a broader way, one that opens up vistas of hope for positive change and a better future.
And I always find myself touched by their hopefulness and vulnerability. Their level of optimism varies depending on many factors: their socioeconomic background and level of education, their intelligence and social skills, their involvement with foster care, and factors such as the general level of chaos they experienced growing up, and
Cortney Davis
Spring
Thirty weeks,
and the baby’s not moving.
I listen to deep silence.
Then, the pregnant belly wakes.
From beneath the mountain,
thunder singing.
Summer
The final day of OB rotation
the medical student has a choice–
see the last patient of the day
or run to the coffee shop for a milkshake?
Milkshake wins!
What will I say when they ask me
was he dedicated?
Fall
“Why did you do this? Why did you order that?”
Full of indignation, the chief resident
attacks me
like the attending doctors
stormed at her only this morning.
Winter
There, on her cervix, a red spot
like
Stacy Nigliazzo
When I cut the stem
I knew it was just a matter of time.
I cleared the sill
and filled a crystal vase.
The petals unfurled.
The smell of summer pierced my skin
for three days.
When the first leaf fell
I added lemon pulp and crushed
an aspirin;
cut away all that waned–
the shoots were spry
one last day.
I scattered them over green earth.
Flecks of pollen
stained my lips and cheekbones.
About the poet:
Stacy Nigliazzo is an ER nurse. Her poems have appeared in Pulse, JAMA, Bellevue Literary
© 2024 Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.
