Patient to Nurse, Chaos to Hope

[Samanthaslittleworld]

Patient to Nurse, Chaos to Hope
By Samantha Hunter
Have you ever thought about how you would die? I bet it wasn't when you were young. I
bet you wouldn't think it would be tomorrow. How about tonight? I bet you didn't imagine
dying before your parents... before your grandparents. You wouldn't think it would be in
the middle of a hot Summer night on a gravel road. All that you have been working
towards, all of your aspirations of becoming a nurse, everything that you have dreamed
of since you were a little girl, was abruptly interrupted when one day you wake up as a
patient. Not a nurse. Will you ever get to be a nurse? What if you will be a patient for the
rest of your life?
Just 20 years old and in the beginning of your third semester of nursing school, you
wake up in a tier one trauma ICU from being a passenger in a multiple trauma car
accident. Except you didn't just wake up, you've been up for two weeks, just delirious
from the skull fractures around your head, immense swelling in your brain, several
narcotic medications to subdue the pain, the constant ringing of alarms throughout your
room, and from having a stroke. You're 20 years old diagnosed with a long list of acute
medical problems, but the only one you can't seem to wrap your head around is the
diagnosis of a stroke. Maybe you can't wrap your head around it because of the dead
brain tissue limiting you to think critically. Maybe it's the shock from physical trauma
crawling all over your body. Maybe it's the fact that every time you close your eyes to
rest, you aren't sure you'll wake up... and death is more threatening than any type of
diagnosis.
After 28 days of being in the hospital, you finally get discharged home. You go home
with a midline IV in your arm for medications and a port coming out of your liver to take
out your bile. You get sent home with opioids to help the pain, antibiotics to fight off the
pneumonia you got in the hospital, aspirin to prevent another stroke from happening,
and a feeling that you haven't felt in a long time... hope. Have you ever been scared of
hope? With disorder happening for what feels like so long, you slowly find comfort in
chaos. What would hope bring? Seems like it would only bring disappointment. Feels
like everything else has been ripped away from you... you can only think that hope will
be ripped away from you too. Recovery is not linear. You will fail. You will fail over and
over and over again. Recovery brings new things to be afraid of. Yes, you survived, but
at what cost? You will never be the same again.
You really learn who you are when you almost die. You learn what really matters in life.
The first time you cry when you get back home is not because of what you'd expect it to
be. Yes, trauma is terrifying. Yes, death is even scarier. But one day when you're sitting
in a chair, looking outside at the world that you once knew to be so beautiful, you see
two little birds dancing in the grass. These birds are friends, cheering on because they
found seeds to nibble on. You cry. You cry and you cry. You can't seem to stop crying as
the realization hits you. Life is so beautiful. Life was almost taken away from you.
Everything that you think is important and matters, is not ever as important as being
alive in this wonderful world we call life. You realize that everything can be taken away
from you. No matter who you are or what you do, tomorrow is never promised. Never
take life for granted. Have you ever been joyful to feel pain? To feel pain is to be alive,
and that is something to be grateful for.
A year and nine months later, you find yourself walking down an aisle, wearing a gap
and gown, and holding your nursing diploma. How did you do it? You have flashbacks of
yourself in the hospital dreaming of your graduation day. Terrified that it may never
happen. Terrified that your trauma and brain damage will limit you in becoming who you
were destined to be. You took the trauma and turned it into something beautiful. That
takes strength, but you survived a near death experience... you are the strongest
person you know. You will now be a nurse with the same perspective of a patient. You
will now help people continue in this wonderful world we call life. Something to never
take for granted. You won't be a nurse for just any patient, but trauma patients in the
Neuro/Trauma ICU. You were a trauma patient with a stroke just a year and nine
months ago. The ICU floor can be terrifying for new graduate nurses, but there's comfort
in this chaos. There's hope in this chaos.
April 2024

Patient to Nurse, Chaos to Hope.pdf

[Patricia Ordnung]

Oh my goodness.  I'm speechless.  How lucky the nursing community is to be able to call you one of our own!