Nursing exposes us to many types of people. We can become jaded quickly against patient types we don’t like. We must remember the unlovely are deserving of our compassionate care. The next time you take care of a drug addict/alcoholic, remember that someone somewhere loves them just like you love your family.
I recently moved to my dream location, one with layers of mountains, breathtaking sunrises, and gorgeous lakes and rivers. It is the perfect lifestyle for me and my family. I left a hospital that I had worked in for 23 years. I left best friends and co-workers that are precious family to me. The medium sized hospital served mostly insured patients. Many were elderly, many were extremely sick, on occasion there would be the drug seeker.
Contrasting that with the patients I see a lot of now is amazing. The hospital I work at is in a low income area Many patients are drug or alcohol addicts with little or no insurance. As a result, they often come in with advanced disease processes and habits that are difficult to treat. Forming opinions on these patients is easy, choosing not to is difficult.
The young pretty girl lying on the stretcher had bright blue eyes. I smile at her as I begin to hook her up to the heart monitor in preparation for an EGD. Looking closer I notice the dark circles under her eyes, scattered scabs, and the slightness of her frame.
"What kind of stomach problems have you been having?" I ask.
"I have pain right here," she points to her right lower abdomen.
I can't help but see the black, broken teeth common with methadone addicts. My heart hurts to see someone so young and pretty already showing such devastating signs of drugs. We all know and love someone that has addiction problems. I personally don't understand the quicksand of drugs and alcohol; I am afraid of drugs and am not a big drinker. Over the years I have learned to be grateful for my fear, it has kept me from some dangerous situations.
Often as nurses we become jaded concerning certain types of patients. It gets old pacifying the whiney 30 year old man who thinks just because he's in the hospital that his every whim needs to granted. Or the drug seeker who asks for pain medication as soon as they wake up from anesthesia. It makes me weary seeing the IV pole being walked out to the parking lot by a patient in a hospital gown even in winter just to smoke a cigarette.
One day a young man in his mid-twenties was rolled into my room for an EGD. Anesthesia began asking the token questions about drug use. He stated that he had used drugs in the past, but was drug free now and had been for three years. As I put the oxygen tubing in his nose and around his ears, I looked into his sweet face.
He looks like my son. Suddenly I can't breathe. I move over to the counter with my back to the room. Trying to muffle the uncontrollable wave of emotion that washed over me when I saw my son in the young man. The only problem was that my son is still in the tight grip of drugs. At the same time I was proud of my patient, my heart reminds me that it is still broken.
Sometimes when we push pain down deep, it surfaces when least expected. I love my son with all my heart. I want the best for him. At the same time, I can't be around him until he gets sober. That is what is best for me and my family.
I try to remember when I see patients come in that are addicts that they may have someone praying for them. Someone that loves them more than life itself, someone that hates the habit. They are people, people who have made bad decisions. Whether it is because of traumatic events in their life, terrible home life, or peer pressure; one bad decision led to another. I treat them the same, even if inside I, in my humanness judge them. I set aside my feelings, recognizing that it is not my job to change their lifestyle but to give compassionate nursing care.
Talking about my son is not easy. In fact, I am not sure even now it's the right thing to write about. Putting it in black and white makes it very public, leaving me vulnerable. I share this to say that as a nurse, I am not to judge people. I do not know their circumstances or the reasons behind their pain. I have to put aside my prejudice and treat them with respect deserving of all human beings.
Remember... the next time you are confronted with a patient that goes against your convictions, they have someone who loves them and wants them to get better.
My point is that as long as we treat everyone like a helpless victim with no input into their situation they will never get better. Anyone who has ever recovered from addiction will tell you the same thing if they're honest. They didn't get better until they took responsibility for their situation.
As a recovering addict I have to say that I do agree with this. I was abused as a child and began using drugs at a very young age to escape and numb myself. As I got older I struggled with untreated PTSD and because I had zero coping skills, my drug use just got worse and worse and worse. And the #1 reason why is because I truly believed I had a right to use drugs after what I went through, that I NEEDED to use drugs or I could not deal and would kill myself.
I rode that self pity train all the way to my near destruction and I used my past to guilt trip everyone in my life into either outright enabling me or just turning a blind eye to it. It was only when I finally got real with myself that I could no longer use my past as an excuse to destroy not only myself but my children too that I finally got clean. Getting real was realizing that nobody was hurting me now but myself, that I was just continuing where my abusers left off. The freedom I felt when I realized the obvious truth that I was responsible for these choices and could therefore change was amazing. I couldn't change a dang thing when I was a child but my life now IS my responsibility and it took a lot of destruction for me to finally see that. Until then my past held all the power and I felt helpless and hopeless against it.
I don't feel like I'm explaining myself well but at any rate, for me the quoted post is true. And I also just
wanted to thank everyone in this
thread for their compassionate posts. I was a little scared to open this because sometimes hearing others thoughts on addiction hurts but you
As a recovering addict I have to say that I do agree with this. I was abused as a child and began using drugs at a very young age to escape and numb myself. As I got older I struggled with untreated PTSD and because I had zero coping skills, my drug use just got worse and worse and worse. And the #1 reason why is because I truly believed I had a right to use drugs after what I went through, that I NEEDED to use drugs or I could not deal and would kill myself.
I rode that self pity train all the way to my near destruction and I used my past to guilt trip everyone in my life into either outright enabling me or just turning a blind eye to it. It was only when I finally got real with myself that I could no longer use my past as an excuse to destroy not only myself but my children too that I finally got clean. Getting real was realizing that nobody was hurting me now but myself, that I was just continuing where my abusers left off. The freedom I felt when I realized the obvious truth that I was responsible for these choices and could therefore change was amazing. I couldn't change a dang thing when I was a child but my life now IS my responsibility and it took a lot of destruction for me to finally see that. Until then my past held all the power and I felt helpless and hopeless against it.
I don't feel like I'm explaining myself well but at any rate, for me the quoted post is true. And I also just
wanted to thank everyone in this
thread for their compassionate posts. I was a little scared to open this because sometimes hearing others thoughts on addiction hurts but you
all have truly warmed my heart.
It takes real guts to share on that level. God bless you.
Thank you Brenda. I was watching an interesting TEDTALK from Dr. Nadine Burkes Harris titled "How Childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime." I was curious to how she connected the two. She talks about how childhood trauma from abuse, parents with mental illness, substance abuse, etc effects the development of the brain and their health. She also shares an assessment criteria. She shares an behavior health assessment tool called ACE score (Adverse Childhood Experience) that helped her to understand her patients tremendously.
I was taking care of a patient in a nursing home who is nonverbal in and every time i came to comfort her, she would take her hands and push me away. I was thinking in my mind maybe she has had past experiences that she is unable to connect. After work i went home to look up patient communication. In my fundamentals book i came across the section"patient trust" that stated "A trusting relationship is often difficult to establish with a patient who has had negative encounters with other health care providers." It was a great reminder. What i learned from this experience is that patient-nurse communication, establishing a patient level of trust , and emotional history is just as important as understanding the pathophysiology.
odaat
101 Posts
As a recovering addict I have to say that I do agree with this. I was abused as a child and began using drugs at a very young age to escape and numb myself. As I got older I struggled with untreated PTSD and because I had zero coping skills, my drug use just got worse and worse and worse. And the #1 reason why is because I truly believed I had a right to use drugs after what I went through, that I NEEDED to use drugs or I could not deal and would kill myself.
I rode that self pity train all the way to my near destruction and I used my past to guilt trip everyone in my life into either outright enabling me or just turning a blind eye to it. It was only when I finally got real with myself that I could no longer use my past as an excuse to destroy not only myself but my children too that I finally got clean. Getting real was realizing that nobody was hurting me now but myself, that I was just continuing where my abusers left off. The freedom I felt when I realized the obvious truth that I was responsible for these choices and could therefore change was amazing. I couldn't change a dang thing when I was a child but my life now IS my responsibility and it took a lot of destruction for me to finally see that. Until then my past held all the power and I felt helpless and hopeless against it.
I don't feel like I'm explaining myself well but at any rate, for me the quoted post is true. And I also just
wanted to thank everyone in this
thread for their compassionate posts. I was a little scared to open this because sometimes hearing others thoughts on addiction hurts but you
all have truly warmed my heart.