Twenty Minutes
Hurricane Irene was coming and I was on call for my per diem, home infusion nursing job from Friday at 5pm to Monday morning at 8:30am. The company I work for did everything they could to prepare the patients for the impending storm. My goals were simple, earn some money, avoid driving in the storm, and relax a little.
Things were going well until Sunday around 4pm when my beeper went crazy and it didn’t stop until Monday morning. The respiratory therapist had lost power and wasn’t getting her calls so they rolled over to me. All the respiratory patients who lost power were anxious they didn’t have enough portable tanks to make it through the night. It continued all Sunday evening. When the 10:45pm call came in, I hoped it was the last one and went to bed after dealing with the problem.
My beeper went off at 1:45am. A dog had jumped on a patient disconnecting the needle going into a port in her chest. I had to go and fix it. I wanted to cry when I realized they lived over an hour away. But I was in my car by 2am. I kept hearing my manager’s voice in my head. “Sometimes you have to haul your ass out of bed in the middle of the night and fix it, even in bad weather.” Clutching the steering wheel the whole way, hoping I wouldn’t fall asleep and crash my car, I was relieved to turn into a well lit driveway around 3. I was greeted at the door by the patient’s mother. My patient was weeping. She was in a world of hurt, lying in her hospital bed with the offending dog in a cage near her. Both were verbalizing their grief extremely well, one crying, and the other howling. When I leaned toward her to fix the needle, she started to talk. With a voice high pitched with emotion, she recited her history; she had stage 4 Cancer, had been diagnosed in April and was a kindergarten teacher, now living with her parents. I quickly did what I had to do and her Mom hooked her back up to her pain pump. My anger and irritation at being awoken in the middle of the night quickly dissipated. I was there for just over 20 minutes. As I was leaving, I turned back and gave her a long hug. She returned the hug just as hard. We both knew I would never see her again. I wished with everything in me for a magic wand to save her from what I knew was coming.
The ride home was uneventful. The wind and rain had stopped and the night sky was now clear, full of stars and beautiful. My hands ached from clutching the steering wheel as I drove. I got home safely, despite driving on empty for the last half hour, and climbed back into bed around 4:15am. My beeper went off one hour later and then again and again and again. I hope I was nice when I returned those calls, because I really wasn’t feeling it and 8:30 could not come quick enough. I finally raised the white flag in defeat at 7:30 and called my boss and gratefully turned the calls over to her one hour early.
I was touched by an angel this weekend, thanks to a jumping dog. I was honored to have had twenty minutes with *Sarah. She humbled me with her pain, sadness and courage, all swirled together in her personal hurricane of hell called cancer. It isn’t the big moments that have shaped my life; it’s the twenty minute ones.
* Not her real name.
Things were going well until Sunday around 4pm when my beeper went crazy and it didn’t stop until Monday morning. The respiratory therapist had lost power and wasn’t getting her calls so they rolled over to me. All the respiratory patients who lost power were anxious they didn’t have enough portable tanks to make it through the night. It continued all Sunday evening. When the 10:45pm call came in, I hoped it was the last one and went to bed after dealing with the problem.
My beeper went off at 1:45am. A dog had jumped on a patient disconnecting the needle going into a port in her chest. I had to go and fix it. I wanted to cry when I realized they lived over an hour away. But I was in my car by 2am. I kept hearing my manager’s voice in my head. “Sometimes you have to haul your ass out of bed in the middle of the night and fix it, even in bad weather.” Clutching the steering wheel the whole way, hoping I wouldn’t fall asleep and crash my car, I was relieved to turn into a well lit driveway around 3. I was greeted at the door by the patient’s mother. My patient was weeping. She was in a world of hurt, lying in her hospital bed with the offending dog in a cage near her. Both were verbalizing their grief extremely well, one crying, and the other howling. When I leaned toward her to fix the needle, she started to talk. With a voice high pitched with emotion, she recited her history; she had stage 4 Cancer, had been diagnosed in April and was a kindergarten teacher, now living with her parents. I quickly did what I had to do and her Mom hooked her back up to her pain pump. My anger and irritation at being awoken in the middle of the night quickly dissipated. I was there for just over 20 minutes. As I was leaving, I turned back and gave her a long hug. She returned the hug just as hard. We both knew I would never see her again. I wished with everything in me for a magic wand to save her from what I knew was coming.
The ride home was uneventful. The wind and rain had stopped and the night sky was now clear, full of stars and beautiful. My hands ached from clutching the steering wheel as I drove. I got home safely, despite driving on empty for the last half hour, and climbed back into bed around 4:15am. My beeper went off one hour later and then again and again and again. I hope I was nice when I returned those calls, because I really wasn’t feeling it and 8:30 could not come quick enough. I finally raised the white flag in defeat at 7:30 and called my boss and gratefully turned the calls over to her one hour early.
I was touched by an angel this weekend, thanks to a jumping dog. I was honored to have had twenty minutes with *Sarah. She humbled me with her pain, sadness and courage, all swirled together in her personal hurricane of hell called cancer. It isn’t the big moments that have shaped my life; it’s the twenty minute ones.
* Not her real name.
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