Deo Juvente

The haziness between life and death never fails to baffle me. Teetering among the living and the dead at work most days of the year reminds me incessantly about the importance of life that I would have otherwise taken for granted had God not siphoned me into nursing.

Of course there are days (and sometimes even weeks on end), where I feel jaded and sick of the job with the shit I have to shoulder from irritating patients and colleagues with hormonal imbalances and/or psychological dysfunction.

Then God intervenes.

My blunted senses become astute as the neurons kick into action with rapid fire. And without fail, a lesson unfolds.

The ward received a case a new case recently. Enter Rm37, labeled as uncommunicative and DIL (dangerously ill list) on MWM (maximum ward management), he came to us with the smell of death encircling. The palliative team in charge of his care ordered no observations necessary. Yes, not even OM parameters.

“just maintain the IV fent”

It was clear that our role was solely to provide comfort in his final stretch.

He was breathing with the aid of a tracheostomy, had end stage renal failure with dialysis stopped and an active bleeding gastrointestinal tract. Modern medicine had pinballed him from the ICU to a general ward, from hospital to hospital, postponing this man’s imminent death for approximately half a year since his collapse.

I found to my surprise that despite his condition, he was quite lucid. And with that revelation, came a wave of irrepressible empathy as I cupped his cold fingers in my warm hands.

A reflection of the vigor of my own life.

I asked him about his tattoo on his arm, the adventures in his youth and whether he wanted us to reinsert the nasogastric tube that he had pulled out earlier. Through the whole conversation (well, I talked while he mouthed his words slowly and at times repeatedly), he remained engaged and displayed no sense of frustration at my feeble attempts to match lip movements with words.

In fact, his pale face even broke into broad smiles occassionally and slipped into slumber as I patted him.

Whatever hatred I felt for my problems in my world faded into the distance as I acknowledged the opportunity God has granted to comfort another.