i'm rachel renegade; i'm a sarcastic little bitch. don't get in my way, ever. i don't sugarcoat shit. i choose to live outrageously and i haven't been happier since.
♥Vegetarian♥Female♥Single♥Midwest,USA♥
There are rooms that become haunted, or cursed maybe. Rooms
that get the same type of patients, over and over again. The room that always
has disoriented, demented patients. The ones trying to climb out of bed or
playing in their own poop.
The room that always has vegetables. The ones that are
there, but not there anymore. Yes, we call them vegetables sometimes. Because
we have to harden ourselves, distance ourselves from what’s really happening.
That’s why we love acronyms. MVC, MCC, GSW, SAH, etc. They help us avoid what’s
really happened to these patients. We have to find a way to harden ourselves,
because if you allow yourself to truly realize the fact that, the “vegetable”
in there was a fully functioning human two weeks or two months ago, you’ll lose it.
When you see the pictures their family posts around the room of them with their
kids, out riding ATV’s, being normal. You’ll realize what a shell they are.
That their body is holding on, keeping them alive even though their brain
doesn’t seem to be interested.
We have to turn off the feelings about these patients. If
you stopped to truly realize what it means to have two patients that were
assaulted, one was pushed out of car, one was shot, another met a semi head on.
If you stop to truly examine what that means for their life and their families…
you’d never get out from under it. You’d never escape all the feelings. You’d
never make it out of bed in the morning to come to work.
The first one that really got me was a woman in her 20′s. She’d hit a semi head on. Prolonged extraction, field intubation. Never
good things. She’d survived, she’d made it out of the ICU. Her family papered
the walls of her room in posters, pictures of her. She was a teacher, she
ran marathons. Before. Now she makes no communicative intent, she neuro storms,
she doesn’t follow commands. Her family asks whether people come back from
this. “What have you seen?” they ask, desperate for hope.
What do you tell them?
She transfers out of your unit and to a hospital closer to
home. You’ll never find out what happened to her. She was a few years older
than you.
So you try to engage and care just enough. Just enough to
get by, to give compassionate care to people for twelve and half hours a day, three
times a week. You try to be nice, even when people are mean and horrible and
scream at you and cuss you out. You try to think of how you would want your
family treated. But you gripe and complain about them at the desk with other
nurses. Why are they so needy? So mean?
Maybe they have to be. Maybe they’re
just trying to survive.
