For my Health Concepts class we were required to write about how a patient has impacted us. I found joy in writing this assignment because I like to write, but also because it's forced me to sit and contemplate on my past experiences, something I often long to do, but feel like I don't have enough time for. Anyways, here it is:
In my clinical experiences over the past year I have met a variety of patients ranging from jolly old men to frightened little children. It was hard for me to choose which patient has had the most impact on me, when it’s more of a question of who hasn’t impacted me. Do I choose the patient who came into the hospital one day with a ‘the-glass-is-always-half-full’ attitude, or the woman who can’t remember even her name, but whose photos paint a picture of a full life, a loving family, and joyful friends? After searching through memories of past patients, both pleasant and difficult, I have decided to choose to write about a patient that my classmate and I have struggled with this semester.
This patient from the Alzheimer’s unit, whom I will change the name to Summer for privacy reasons, was not one that any of the students were all too thrilled to receive for ADL or med assignments. In fact, she was among the last I wanted to write about, but every time I thought about this assignment, it was her face that popped into my head. I decided that good experience or not, there is a lesson to be learned in all circumstances.
The first time I had Summer as my patient, she was the polar opposite of what the students who had had her in the past described. I remember walking into that nursing home room at 7:30 in the morning to greet her. She had a big smile on her face as I introduced myself, and we had a pleasant conversation while I adjusted her covers and moved her breakfast tray closer to her bed. I made sure she didn’t need anything else, checked that her call light was in reach, and left the room in high spirits as I went to introduce myself to my other patients.
When I came back into the room an hour later, she was still in a fair mood. I took her temperature, pulse, and respirations, and she was extremely easy to comply with... until I brought out the blood pressure cuff. Her eyes immediately got wide and she started screaming that she wanted my instructor to take her blood pressure because I was a student and didn’t know what I was doing. Her screams could be heard down the hall, and I remember walking out of her room full of embarrassment while I looked for my instructor. When I found her, she explained to me that this was normal behavior for this patient, and that Summer would eventually let me take her blood pressure. Of course my instructor accompanied me to reassure her (and me).
After that day I learned that I would have to tune into Summer’s attitude and how she would react to procedures each day in order to get work done effectively. It was difficult for all of us to handle her. She was incontinent, obese, and refused to get out of bed. It took three of us to clean her up, but that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was her screaming in anger and fright as we rolled her from one side to the other. I think the time that it ‘clicked’, the moment that I actually felt her grief and pain and saw her as a human more than just a patient, was one day when a few of us needed to clean her up. After hurling insults at each one of us, she grabbed my hand, and with tears rolling down her face she asked God to take her away from this painful world.
I wanted to weep. So what if she’s bipolar? Who wouldn’t feel fear and anger at the world when they were stuck in a nursing home bed with three nursing students cleaning parts that only their mother had cleaned when they were just infants? When weakness has taken over the body and confusion has consumed the mind, who wouldn’t ask God to take their very soul away from this sorrowful planet?
Of course we nursing students have all learned the art of talking in a soothing voice to calm our patients, but it doesn’t always come easily. It sometimes comes as a duty, something we have been taught to do. But I can say that in that very moment my heart went out to Summer and I wanted to comfort her. I wanted to soothe her. And I wanted to cry with her. It wasn’t a duty of a nurse any more to speak to her in a calm voice, it was a pressing desire for her to feel safe.
After that I was able to see every Alzheimer patient the way I saw Summer: as a vulnerable human being who has been moved to a strange place with strange people, and has little control over their lives due to their confusion that they don’t really know about. My eyes have been changed from seeing patients who wouldn’t remember me from day to day, to seeing people who have lived full, satisfying lives. People who were wrapping up their journey in this world, only to begin their journey this life was made living for.
