My Week (good post)

[JentheRN05, RN]

Okay - I plan to journal about my week this week (I kept my report sheet to do so) but I just wanted to share.

I honestly had a great week. I'm going onto my 5th week of orientation. This week was my 4th week.

Let me start by saying last week (3rd week) was really very rough. I was very sick and had no voice part of the week and worked one day with no voice). When I'm sick I don't think well, so I was very nervous last week because I was so sick. I was only taking care of 3 patients last week because I was working my way up, and well the load wasn't heavy enough to have any more than 3 anyway.

Well this week a better week in that I had more patients. Monday I had 4. One of which was just told in the AM that he had inoperable metastic cancer. He was in with a severe neck pain. Ended up being the cancer that spread to his spine and his brain and well all of his bones. He was just plain angry. He didn't talk to me, and his wife was with him ALL the time. I could see she was hurting, and he was actually hurting her mentally. One time when I was walking out of the room, I heard him yell at her for something. I wonder if the cancer wasn't in the frontal lobe because his wife said that he has just become a different person since he's been in the hospital. He was always so incredibly loving that when she went back to her home country to visit her family and he stayed home, he would call her several times a day to just tell her he loved her. So his anger was so different for her. It very well could've been the first stages of grief (denial, anger). But it could've also been the disease itself invading his brain. In either case, as I said before I could see she was hurting. I had been watching for her to leave the room all day. Finally she was out of the room and I caught up with her in the hallway. I asked her how she was doing, how she was feeling. She immediately broke down and cried. I hugged her, she hugged back. She was soooooo upset. She doesn't know what to do, he won't talk to her, he's so angry. I told her what I felt was possibly going on, that either he was so angry about the disease or the disease had affected his frontal lobe which can change a persons personality. Basically we had a good long talk (I had done alot of my work as quickly as I could earlier so I could make time at a moments notice to be able to talk to her). She thanked me for listening and hugged me. I followed her into the room. I touched the patients hand and I simply said, "just remember, I will be here all day if you just need to talk, and what's more important your wife is here to and she'd love to talk, or just listen if thats what you need, but you two need to be in this together, and talk." She had tears in her eyes as she mouthed "thank you" and I walked out of the room. I peaked in from time to time to give him pain meds and checking on them. At the end of the day, I reminded him, talking is very important right now. Don't hold back from your wife, she loves you.

Well Wednesday I went in, I had 4 patients again (the load was light I would've taken more if we had it). At the end of the day, the patient that I had taken care of's wife came up while I was doing some last minute meds, she tapped me on the shoulder and as I turned around she said "I just wanted to give you a hug and tell you thank you." Mind you my preceptor was standing right about 4 feet away and witnessed all of this. It just was really sweet.

Well yesterday, I had taken 5 patients, I had 2 students taking care of 2 of my patients, but of course I had helped them and checked on my patients too (because they are still my patients at the end of the day). About 3pm my preceptor and I went for a walk. She told me that I had made a dramatic change since last week. She said that last week there is no way she would've felt comfortable with me going to nights (which is what I hired on for). But she said, "I have seen an amazing change in you this week, you have done very very well, you have alot of confidence and have taken 5 patients and been on top of everything, your very well organized and well I'm just proud of you, I know you are definately ready to go to nights" She then brought up the lady that hugged me "the way you handled that was awesome." I told her that is why I organize my day as best as I can, to get stuff done early so I have time to spend with my patients, just to talk to them" Her response "your going to be a GREAT nurse" I said "Your gonna give me a big head!" She said "no I mean it, you have really impressed me this week, it's a huge change from last week where if our boss were to ask if you were ready for nights I would've said no, but now I don't question that, you are definately ready"

So - I starts nights next week. I will never forget the compliments I got from my preceptor, or I get at the end of my day from my patients. They always tell me that I have been "wonderful, great, you've given great care" This is what makes a nurses profession the best profession to be in. I feel that if we could only lend an ear to the patient that rates their pain 10 out of 10 on scale of 0 - 10 I think that would decrease it to an easy 7. Just by listening. I love being a nurse, and can think of no other profession where you can have such a big impact on a persons life at a time when they really need guidance, or just someone to care.

One of the students that was caring for my patients, turned out to be the niece of the patient who had the metastic cancer. When she went in to tell her uncle hello, her aunt I guess was asking about me. The student told me, "she just loves you, she said, where's Jen? and since there was 2 nurses (me and my preceptor both named Jen, my student asked her automatically if she was looking for the other one, she said, no - Jen (T) me. She said apparently my talk I had with her meant the world to her and she wanted to talk to me sometime today"

We CAN and sometimes DO make a difference. I hope I never lose the compassion I feel for my patients that I have right now. After this weeks experience I KNOW I have chosen the right profession for me. I am a nurse :)

~Jen

[Bijou-Spice]

Congratulations! Obviously you are on the path to being a very compassionate nurse! The moments you had with this patient and his wife are what will make the bad days a little better!:balloons: