"Love is an indefinite thing to most of us; we don’t know what we
mean when we talk about love. Love is the loftiest preference of one
person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that this sovereign
preference be for Himself (see Luke 14:26 ). Initially, when "the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit" ( Romans 5:5 ),
it is easy to put Jesus first. But then we must practice the things
mentioned in 2 Peter 1 to see them worked out in our lives.
The
first thing God does is forcibly remove any insincerity, pride, and
vanity from my life. And the Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved
me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so.
Now He commands me to show the same love to others by saying,
"there are fears that if aid does not reach the victims more quickly, many hundreds of thousands of people could die." - (myanmar) BBC NEWS
". . .
love one another as I have loved you" ( John 15:12 ).
He is saying, "I will bring a number of people around you whom you
cannot respect, but you must exhibit My love to them, just as I have
exhibited it to you." This kind of love is not a patronizing love for
the unlovable— it is His love, and it will not be evidenced in us
overnight. Some of us may have tried to force it, but we were soon
tired and frustrated.
"The Lord . . . is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish . . ." ( 2 Peter 3:9 ).
I should look within and remember how wonderfully He has dealt with me.
But the response makes little difference for some - such as these
parents, who have just identified the body of their child at the ruins
of a school in Dujiangyan. -(china) BBC NEWS
The knowledge that God has loved me beyond all limits will compel me to
go into the world to love others in the same way.
I may get irritated
because I have to live with an unusually difficult person. But just
think how disagreeable I have been with God! Am I prepared to be
identified so closely with the Lord Jesus that His life and His
sweetness will be continually poured out through Me? Neither natural
love nor God’s divine love will remain and grow in me unless it is
nurtured. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained through
discipline." -oswald chambers
~ ~ ~
according to world vision, there are 2 things we can do:
1) pray. 2) donate. (see CNN compiled list of agencies delivering aid to china & myanmar). 3) anything else? i want to help but i don't know how.
"I want to go home. NOW!" my patient lifted his walker and slammed it back on the ground.
"Yes, sir, I know, but I'm waiting for your doctor to call back," I explained.
He huffed and puffed and returned to his room, slamming the door behind him.
A few minutes later, his doctor called me back. "Doctor, do you want to continue his cholesterol medicine considering he has liver problems?"
"I don't see what's the point," he replied. "He's dying of cancer, why bother about cholesterol? It doesn't matter anyway," he hung up the phone.
Great. This man is dying but he thinks he's going home to get better? Nevertheless, I had to continue with his discharge.
"We're here where the daylight begins
The fog on the streetlight slowly thins
Water on water's the way
The safety of shoreline fading away..."
"Okay, here's your prescriptions..." I started.
"Can you show us how to empty this bag?" his wife pointed to a pouch draining fluid from his liver. "How do you take care of it? What do you do with the dressing? How do you turn the valve on and off?" They asked a ton of questions about this and that, but seemed totally oblivious of his prognosis. I answered their questions, and finished the paperwork. They left.
Shortly after, his attending physician came up to the floor. The patient had already gone home, but I decided to ask her about the same medication I had asked the specialist, just to see what she'd say.
"What? No he can't take that medication, his liver's messed up," she answered.
"That's what I thought," I said. "But umm...is the family aware that he's dying?"
Sail your sea
Meet your storm
All I want is to be your harbor
The light in me
Will guide you home
All I want is to be your harbor
"It doesn't seem to get across... I don't think they realize he only has a few months left. Who knows? Maybe that medication will be merciful and accidentally put him into a coma so he can leave peacefully. It'll be hard on the family, but it'll be better for him, you know?"
I honestly can say that I do NOT know.
~ ~ ~ (at home)
"Hi Meng...how are you?" I asked my aunt over the phone.
"Um, not good," she sounded depressed.
"What's wrong?"
"Remember I took my dad to the doctor the other day? Well they admitted him to the hospital and they ran all these tests and it turns out the cancer has spread to his brain and to his bone and to everywhere and it's too late to do anything."
"Oh no..." I didn't go with them, but I already knew the outcome. When she
told me "cancer" and "refused treatment years ago," I
knew that this one trip to "find out what's wrong" was going to be bad.
Really bad. "They gave him 2 months left to live. He can't do anything. He can't walk; he lies there in bed, he's always in pain, and sometimes he can't even remember who his kids are...." her voice started cracking.
(My stupid nursing intuition was right. And I hated that I was right.)
In the background, I heard my little cousins fighting and squabbling. I heard my aunt yelling at the oldest kid to watch the crying baby. I heard her sadness and sorrow travel through the wires of the telephone cord and into my ears, desperately pleading...
"...we have no hope. we have nothing left."
Fear is the brightest of signs
The shape of the boundary you leave behind
So sing all your questions to sleep
The answers are out there in the drowning deep
What now?
~ ~ ~ (at war)
We're walking a bridge. Not a sturdy bridge, no. It's one of those really crappy bridges with several steps missing and only thin ropes for the handrails. When the wind howls, it quivers and swings as you tread slowly across. You shudder, squeeze your eyes tight, trying not to look down at the vicious raging waters and rocks below you, and hold on for dear life.
The wind blows. It swings to the right.
It says, "You're dying. But there's hope!" (Does that even make sense?)
The wind blows again. It swings to the left. It says,
"You're dying. There's no hope. Say your goodbyes!" (Does that make sense either?)
And somewhere along here, as I float between the role of a healthcare provider and the role of a niece, or the role of a sister, a daughter, a friend, or a simply being HUMAN .. I realize that no matter how tightly I grasp its weak handrails and look ahead at its dangerous path, it will always be a tough place to be.
You've got a journey to make
There's your horizon to chase
So go far beyond where we stand
No matter the distance
I'm holding your hand
~ ~ ~
But perhaps... there issome hope.
Because there is God. (And He will never abandon me.) And there are family. And there are friends. And we will walk down this crappy bridge...
"What is that?" Curious, I walked into my patient's room to find
him breathing
rapidly. I took his vital signs: blood pressure was a little high, pulse ok, temperature ok. His
respirations were fast, but his oxygen saturation was 100%.
Normally, when I call a doctor to report a patient's worsening
condition, I'm ahead of the game. If my patient's short of
breath, I place them on oxygen. If they have
'as needed' medications available, I give
them. If he's aspirating (choking on fluids), I raise the
head of the bed, I shove a yankauer in their mouth and suction the crap
out.
But this time, I was empty handed. "Doctor.. please come see your
patient. I don't know what's wrong but he looks
bad."
Thankfully he came not long after my
call. He ordered some blood work and it showed that his fluid and
electrolytes were way way off. So he ordered some medication and
repeat blood work.
A long hour passed. The doctor returned, saw the patient again,
the lab results, and consulted another physician over the phone.
He ordered some IV fluids... but that was it.
My patient was clearly deteriorating. I asked the doctor if we could transfer him to the ICU. 3 times.
"No..keep him on the floor. Wait for the IV fluids. BUT
after you hang the fluids, if he gets worse, you can transfer
him." He started to walk away. "Don't call me if you
transfer him."
While waiting for the fluids, I did some research on my patient's
condition. And I realized... he was probably going to die. Soon.
Okay, Soapie. Let's think about this.
You have two choices: this man can die under your care, or he
doesn't have to die at all.
Time to bust a move.
I harrassed the pharmacy for my IV drip. I hung the bag and
immediately called the house supervisor to get my patient transferred
to the ICU. I briefed the ICU nurse over the phone with my
patient's status, and she didn't waste any time either. Before I
knew it, she had run all the way from her unit to assist us in
transferring the patient.
"Hurry and get this man off the floor before he codes!" she
commanded. We pushed his bed down there faster than my legs could
move. The ICU staff worked swiftly to stabilize him.
~ ~ ~
In the morning, I had forgotten to put something in the patient's
chart, so I returned to the ICU.
"Any better now that he's on dialysis?" I asked the ICU nurse.
"Nah. He's a dead man," he replied.
Crap.
~ ~ ~
Over the following week, I wondered and worried about that patient. Was he still alive? Nah, he couldn't be.
Then a few days ago, I saw one of his doctors. "Doctor, what happened to that one patient...?"
"Oh, him? He's coo. He already went home."
"Really?! You mean he was talking, walking and breathing?!" I couldn't believe my ears. "But... what made him so sick?"
"All the other stuff is extra, but the real culprit is HIV," he answered.
"You serious?! I transferred that patient to the ICU that night when his other doctor wanted him to just lay here..."
"Well, you did good," he said, while busily flipping through a
chart. "You saved that man's life; he almost died." He
continued with his work, not even looking at me. As if it were no
big deal.
She rolled her eyes with disgust. "You are another one I gotta get rid of."
WHAT!? "Excuse me?" I am not an object, I'm a person too...
"YOU HEARD ME!" The patient then ignores me, and talks ABOUT me in FRONT of me, to her friend on the phone, very clearly so I can hear: "Here we go again, another one who wants to give me problems with my meds... she thinks she knows better but I KNOW ME better than her and no one's gonna tell me nothi'n." She turns to me. "Go call my doctor and you'll see you are WRONG and I am always RIGHT."
A mere 5 minutes after meeting her, my patient started attacking me because I would not give her the medication she wanted.
(Sorry, you can yell at me all you want, but I refuse to put YOUR life in danger and MY license at risk). Thankfully, this stuff doesn't bother me anymore. Even back in nursing school, I would sing this song between difficult patients during my tough clinicals...
"I really gotta get up outta here
And go somewhere
I gotta shake you off
Gotta make that move
Find somebody who
Appreciates all the love I give...
I gotta shake, shake, shake, shake, shake it off.." -mariah carey
~ ~ ~
It's been 2 years since, and I think I've done a lil bit of growin' up. Instead of just 'shakin it off,' my new song goes somethin' like this...
"What you want " [morphine?] (oo) Baby, I got [with phenergan] (oo) What you need [and benadryl too] (oo) Do you know I got it? [as long as there's a doctor's order...] (oo) All I'm askin' [if you want your drugs on time] (oo) Is for a little respect ..." -arethra franklin
Please be nice to your nurses. We work hard, our feet and backs hurt like HELL, and we clean up and put up with all kinds of crap (literally). That's all I'm askin'.
~ ~ ~
* OH! BTW. Although I'm very busy (if I'm too busy for sleep than I'm certainly too busy for xanga)...
but I ain't too busy to
GO AND VOTE! TEXAS early voting ends THIS FRIDAY.
I went today and there was NO LINE! Save your time and go by Friday, cowboys and cowgirls.
I tossed out my old scrubs and bought brand new ones because a new policy at work required all the nurses to wear the same color. Ever since, the comments haven't stopped...
(Day 1 of wearing new scrubs)
secretary: Dang Soapie! Look at you! Those scrubs look good on you! You look like you're a REAL nurse! me: Huh? secretary: Like you come in here to get your sh*t done! You look older, more mature, like a REAL nurse! me: What're you saying?! I didn't look like a 'real nurse' these past 2 years then? secretary: *laughs* yeah!
(Day 2)
co-nurse: Hey Soapie! Those scrubs look good on you. me: Oh thanks! co-nurse: Yea. Too bad you still look like a kid!
(Day 3)
charge nurse: Whoa! Look's like you ACTUALLY found some scrubs that fit you! me: Hey!
(The following week)
nurse tech: Team G! Those scrubs look good on you. me: Oh no.. here we go again. (I retell her what the 3 previous coworkers said). nurse tech: HA! And you STILL look funny!
(And last night)
nurse tech #2: Hey Soapie Soapie! Are you charge nurse today? me: Huh? No. nurse tech: Are you sure? But you look like YOU are in charge! me: Is it the scrubs? nurse tech: *smiles* It's the scrubs!
Lifetime
