Nursing is a very busy and rewarding career. During my 36 years, I have had many experiences in which I have been exhilarated, saddened, overwhelmed, and just plain exhausted. None, however, compare to the night that I was humbled right in the place I stood at the bedside of a young man who was dying of AIDS. Here is that story:
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Nursing is a very busy and rewarding career. During my 36 years, I have had many experiences in which I have been exhilarated, saddened, overwhelmed, and just plain exhausted. None, however, compare to the night that I was humbled right in the place I stood at the bedside of a young man who was dying of AIDS. Here is that story:
I was working full time on the night shift at a chronic care hospital. Most of the patients I was taking care of were in the end stages of HIV infection, most with accompanying dementia and behaviors which were out of their control. These patients did not sleep through the night; there were many with med-seeking behaviors, belligerence, cigarette privileges which went through the night time hours, in addition to physical limitations such as insomnia and incontinence that come with end stage disease process.
Sadly, most of the patients were under the age of 40 and the job was more emotionally draining than physical, particularly when one of these young persons died.
There was one patient in particular, a 26 year old male, who seemed always to be arguing with staff, refusing his HIV medications while demanding more and more pain medications, and disturbing the unit often enough to elicit many complaints from the other patients. When he didn't get his way, he would call the staff vulgar names in a very loud voice, would spit at staff, and become physically aggressive. I had to keep reminding myself that he was very young and very sick, and was extremely angry at life and was facing his own mortality.
Still, I would dread going to work at night, knowing that this young man would be up half the night, screaming obscenities until he got what he wanted, either medication, cigarettes, or take-out food. To put it bluntly, he was not my favorite patient and it was a real effort to provide care for him objectively and non-judgementally on a consistant basis.
One evening, I arrived for my shift at 10:45 p.m. as usual. As I was putting away my belongings in my locker, one of the 3-11 nurses came in to the locker room and told me they were having a problem with this particular patient and could I please come and help them. I remember that I rolled my eyes and reluctantly followed the nurse into this young man's room. There were 2 other staff members who were gowned, gloved, and masked trying to remove sweat pants from this patient, who had been incontinent of a large, bloody stool. His body was limp and he was barely breathing. I gowned up and moved to one side of the bed to assist in turning him over so that we could clean him, all the while wondering what had happened.
As the nurse on the other side of the bed rolled him toward me, he was so weak and limp that I put my arm under his head to cradle it while easing his lower body over onto his side. He was so thin! I looked down into his eyes while my arm cradled his head. He seemed to look up at me with eyes that were half closed and then.......this young man took his last breath and passed away!
My eyes immediately began to fill up with tears-I felt I had just been sent a message from a power higher than myself, reminding me why I had become a nurse in the first place: to provide care and comfort to the sick, to heal when I could, to provide comfort when I couldn't, and to practice nursing in a compassionate and non-judgmental way. To this day, when I encounter a difficult resident, I always remember that experience and, instead of becoming annoyed, I treat that resident with extra patience, kindness, and compassion.
