Requiem for Sgt. Harry

**VivaLasViejas**, ASN, RN

He was a Vietnam veteran, a 61-year-old black man with a dialysis port in his chest and bilateral leg amputations who lay in his narrow nursing-home bed, watching an NBA game on the 42-inch flat-screen TV perched precariously on the wall shelf above his dresser. But his nearly-sightless eyes were twinkling and his smile was sincere as my co-worker introduced me to him as the new charge nurse on the ICF unit where he'd lived for the past five years.

"Hi, babe," he said in a soft voice as we shook hands. "How're you doing?"

That would be Harry's greeting at the start of every evening shift I worked for the next nineteen months. I usually met him at the door as he was being wheeled back to his room from dialysis, but on the days he wasn't scheduled, he'd say it when I was doing his 1700 fingerstick. Otherwise, he didn't talk much, and he rarely complained, no matter how much it hurt when I had to disimpact him due to the massive quantities of pain meds needed to combat his phantom limb pain and the neuropathy caused by his diabetes. Unfortunately for Harry, he also had a bullet lodged so close to his spinal cord that it couldn't be removed without the risk of paralysis, so his back hurt constantly from its impingement on the nerves.

Thrice-weekly trips to the dialysis center, and the frequent visits from his wife and his ten children, were his only link to any semblance of normal life. Otherwise, he left his bed only to be Hoyer-lifted into the bath chair twice a week for his shower; day after day, month after month, year after year, he had patiently lived his life in that bed, staring up at the ceiling or at the TV. While his mind was intact, he was utterly unable to read, use his laptop computer, get around the building, or even go outside to feel the sunshine on his face and the wind in his grizzled hair.

That would be my idea of life in Hell. For Harry, however, it was just everyday existence, and somehow, he managed to make it enough.

Over time, he began to open up to me. I doubt he'd ever been naturally outgoing, but there were those nights when he'd tell me stories about his years in the Army and the time he spent in Vietnam. Even though I was a decade younger than Harry, he seemed to appreciate the fact that I was a fellow Baby Boomer and thus we remembered many of the same events, albeit from different perspectives. His wife, Mary, was my age, and we became friends as well. There were some nights when I'd come in to do his 2100 fingerstick, and all three of us would reminisce about the "good old days". This invariably annoyed his roommate, who was 20 years older than Harry but had ears like a lynx: "Dumb kids," he'd mutter, which prompted the normally mild-mannered Harry to wave a single-digit salute in Roomie's general direction and his wife and I to snicker madly behind the privacy curtain that divided the room.

There were bad times, too; times when he'd bottom out at dialysis and come home with both his blood sugar and his BP in the toilet, and his clothing soaked with sweat. Again, he rarely voiced a complaint, even though he must've felt like he'd been run over by a truck. There were also times when he'd have to go to the hospital for a few days because his shunt failed, or because we couldn't get his BP off the floor, or because his stools had become so hard and dry that we couldn't have pried them out with a crowbar. We never knew when we sent him out if he'd come back.......how long can someone's heart hold out under this kind of stress?

But he did come back, and not long before I left this facility, Harry was picked as Resident of the Month. This was an honor that included the chosen resident's biography and photos put up on the bulletin board for an entire month, plus his or her story told in the facility newsletter. Well, when that board was full, we learned that Harry had once been quite the fashion plate---one memorable black-and-white picture showed a smiling gentleman in a sharp pinstriped suit and fedora! Others depicted him in happier days with his family and pets, and there was one especially striking portrait of Harry in his dress uniform, taken just before he shipped out to 'Nam.

He got to see the board only once, and that was because I made sure one day to wheel him back to his room from the facility van after dialysis instead of having the aides fetch him. They didn't have the time to stop in the hall and let him check it out; but the look on his face as he took in the brightly-decorated display festooned with red, white, and blue streamers made me instantly glad I'd taken the few minutes to show it to him. "Well, I'll be damned," he whispered in his usual soft voice, grinning widely. "I was a pretty good-lookin' SOB, wasn't I?"

I haven't seen Harry for quite a while, but I've never stopped thinking of him and his incredible dignity in the face of what many would consider a life not worth living. I didn't know when I went in to have my knee surgery last summer that I'd already worked my last shift at the nursing home; soon afterward, my hours were cut back so severely due to low census that I had no choice but to seek greener pastures elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I had no idea that I'd also heard my last "Hi, babe". Two nights ago, I was at home on the computer, scanning my Facebook updates, when I read a post from a former co-worker that made me forget all about checking out my forums here at AN: "We miss you and love you, rest in peace room 310A".

For a moment, I flipped through the Rolodex file in my brain, frantically searching my memory for residents' names and their assigned rooms in a facility where I hadn't worked in over a year. 310A.........310A.........who'd been in that bed when I was there? I wondered.

And then I remembered, and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. Oh, no.......not Harry, oh dear God, not the Sergeant! He was only a little older than my husband, and while he certainly wasn't in good shape, nobody had expected this. It didn't take long to find out from other friends that he'd crumped after dialysis again, only this time he never regained his blood pressure, passing on to the next world before anyone could restart his overworked heart.

Of course, I'm glad that our weary warrior has laid down his arms and gone on to a place where there is no more dialysis, no more fingersticks, no more pain. But at the same time, there is an ache in my heart where a person used to live, and as I deal with yet another loss---and in my chosen field of nursing, there's a lot of that---I can hear the sad strains of "Taps" playing softly in the background:

Day is done,

Gone the sun

from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky,

All is well,

Safely rest,

God is nigh

Requiem for Sgt. Harry

About VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN

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