A young girl dying of cancer wanted me to kiss her goodnight and tell her a bed time story before she died. It changed my life.
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I thought I would share this touching story with you. I work on a Palliative/Oncology/General Medicine floor and work mostly nights. We mainly have geriatric patients, but we do have some younger children that are on our floor as well.
There is this one special little girl who touched my heart. The nurses on the floor had warned me that she doesn't sleep at night and is constantly ringing on the call bell. It's a busy floor, so I knew that it was going to be a long night.
Well, this night, in particular, I was pretty busy, and sure enough, this little girl was ringing on the bell non-stop. No matter what I did she just kept ringing that bell. I finally asked her after the 20th time of ringing the bell why she wasn't sleeping.
She has cancer and is in pain, and most of the time she just wants to be readjusted in bed to a more comfortable position. She told me she couldn't sleep. Well big surprise I knew that already. I sat down at the edge of her bed and asked what I could do to help her get to sleep.
I asked if she had any nightly rituals that she used to do at home that helped get her to sleep. She told me that her mom would tell her a story and give her a kiss goodnight to get her to sleep.
So I told her a story and gave her a kiss goodnight and sure enough the rest of the night she slept and didn't ring the call bell!
This continued the next few nights that I had her. I would tell her a story to kiss her goodnight and she would sleep.
Well her cancer got worse and a few nights ago she was dying. I was on the floor that night and didn't get her as a patient. Just as she was about to slip away her mom came up to the desk and asked for the nurse that told her daughter stories every night to get her to sleep.
The nurses all told her that it was me.
I had just finished my rounds and saw her standing at the desk waiting for me. She asked if I could tell her daughter a story even though her daughter had now slipped into a coma. Her mother began to tell me that her daughter loved my stories and before she had slipped into a coma would always ask for me on the night shifts to come and tell her a story. I was busy, but I knew that it would help the patient's mom feel more at peace to give this one last request to her daughter.
I walked into the room, sat on the edge of her daughter's bed and began to tell her daughter's favorite story about a princess and a sleeping dragon. As I told the story I held her daughter's hand, and I could see her daughter struggling to breathe. Just as I got to the end of my story I heard her taking her last breath. I got up kissed her on the forehead, like I had usually done and she passed away right after.
I was glad that I took that one moment out of my busy night to grant a last request to such a sweet little girl. It was hard, and I cried.
