Having a hard time...

locolorenzo22, BSN, RN · Mar 29, 2009

First off, let me offer my prayers and well-wishes to you and your friend. A stroke is such a unexplained thing sometimes. It is always tough for us to understand that patients understand everything we say or do with them.

Sometimes going through this directly affects your patient care. I have been fortunate enough not to have to endure it with anyone in my family, but I take care of a lot of stroke victims on my floor at work and at my nursing home. After years of doing teching on the floor, I am a STICKLER for mouthcare and good hygiene. I always talk to older patients when I'm bathing them....doesn't happen as often as I like, but I'm never above giving a bath when I need to.

Emotionally, you get attached, it is part of caring. You will be a better nurse for it.

Again, its different when it's someone you love...GL sweetie, be strong for her, and take time for yourself. .

AriaRN, ADN · Mar 29, 2009

Im sory this is so long.....

I pray that your friend recovers. I just experienced something similar.

My Godmother was diagnosed with colon cancer 7 years ago. During the las week of Feburary her health took a drastic turn and she was placed under in home hospice care. In 2 days she went from speaking and laughing as she normally did to responding to nothing but pain. She was being given high doses of morphine every hour for the extreme pain she was in. Her cancer had metastized to her lungs .It was becoming difficult for my 2 cousins (her daughters one of which is an RN) to care for her because of the careless attitude of her "dh". I was there one day and they were exhausted and decided to go home. I was taught how to administer her medication and how to suction the thick mucos that filled her airway. She died 4 days later. Though it was difficult, this proved to me that i am capable of being a nurse. Your friend would NOT want you to give up on what you want to do. Please dont give up.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Mar 29, 2009

It is OK for you to be upset and to cry and grieve for your friend. When tragedies like this happen to those we love, it is emotionally draining. However, we don't have that emotional investment with every patient that we care for. And that is a very big difference when the patient is a friend or someone you don't know.

Being a nurse is facing reality; it is facing true life daily. I think that most people, especially young people, do not think about life beyond being healthy. However, the truth is that people get sick, have accidents and sometimes they do not get better. Sometimes they are left debilitated. Sometimes they die. If everyone in the world were in perfect health nurses and doctors wouldn't be needed, would they? It takes great strength and maturity to assist others in facing the loss of their good health and their life. Most of us will face the prospect of loss during our lives--loss of health, loss of life. All of us will die some day either because of old age, a disease, or an accident. Seeing this when it happens to others is what we nurses do and it actually brings great rewards into our life and allows us to learn many things about our fellow human beings. Part of that involves that compassion that you were talking about. Compassion is feeling sympathy for the suffering of others and having the urge to help them. Nursing, then, is a giving profession. What you don't know is that it yields many personal rewards that feed your soul 10 times more than your heart and soul will ever put out. What keeps us going back to do this day after day is some burning spark within us that we can't explain. It is either there or it isn't. I can't explain it. I think it is karmic. Some nurses will tell you that they need nothing more to keep them going than to see someone who needs help. And, that is what compassion is. Nursing school will teach you the academic part--the scientific things that you will pair with that compassion to maximize the help you will give patients.

rolland542 · Mar 30, 2009

Hi all,

So it was just a few weeks ago that I was posting on here that I was SOOO excited to have received my nursing school acceptance letter. I have worked my butt off to get good grades and learn all that I can and I have always known I wanted to be an RN. I consider myself to by a very compassionate person which I think is extremely important. On that note, I've always wondered what it will feel like to actually BE a nurse. To work with a terminally ill child, or to see a family hurt in an automobile accident... I have been very fortunate in my life that I have not had to deal with things of this nature. Until now.
A week ago today my best friend -who is 26- had a stroke in her brain stem. She was taken 5 hours from here to a larger hospital and today was the first time I was able to drive up and see her. It was THEE HARDEST THING I have ever experienced. Her mother is a Registered Nurse and she stopped me in the hall of the ICU before I went in to warn me about what I would see. She told me she was not able to talk at all but that she would weep uncontrollably when she saw me...I was glad for the warning but nothing she could have said would have prepared me for what I was about to see. The person in that bed did not even look like my dear friend. Her mom told me that even though she can't answer me or show emotion when I talk to her, she is still 100% there and understood everything that was going on. So I spent the day holding her hand, talking to her, sucking her saliva, putting chapstick on her dry lips, and hugging her every time she started to cry.
Now I know that this was a million times more difficult for me because she is my best friend... But as I watched the nursing staff care for her I wondered what kind of toll it must take on them to see patients like this day after day. I found myself second guessing even becoming a nurse. I am so emotionally drained from helping take care of her all day, I don't know if I'm cut out for this anymore.
Can anyone offer me any words of encouragement? I guess I'm feeling a little lost right now...

My thoughts and prayers are with you and the family of your friend.

Emotional attachments can be difficult to deal with in nursing but amazingly it is just that which sets apart good nurses from the bad. All I can say is this....if you can set aside your feelings and emotions to see what your friend needs from you in the here and now, you will be a great nurse. You are seeing the patient and her needs. Administering what little help you can. Medicine is wonderful, but compassionate nursing care is not to be replaced! One of the things I have learned in my 20+ years of nursing is that the human side must show through. Your patients become family and you will grieve their loss if you witness it but you will realize that the rest of your family still needs you and go on with your duties.

When my mother had a massive MI and was in a coma - I realized that my years in nursing gave me the strength to say she will never recover - she will always be like this and I was able to let go of her. I am a better man and a better nurse for it.

Strength........