“Love what you do and you will never have to work a day in your life “
I’m not really sure where that quote comes from but I have heard it enough to have it memorized and to realize that it is the ideal as far as careers go.
It’s a goal that most people will spend a lot of years / jobs trying to reach it.
In the meantime it seems that most people look at work as a necessary evil almost …just a means to earn money.
I have been extremely blessed to not feel that way about my career. I can honestly say that I love being a pediatric nurse and that work has never felt like “work” to me.
Yes, it has it’s ups and downs, and I’ll admit that sometimes it’s harder to get up and ready to go to face the challenges that shift might bring, but my the patients and the families I get to take care of always make it worth it.
Leaving for the race I wasn’t sure what my role as a nurse would look like , especially since I wasn’t going with the title of a nurse. I was just a willing vessel like everyone else on my squad, ready to do whatever the journey brought along the way.
I was hopeful and expectant however that God would provide me opportunities to step into that role along the way, and he did just that this last month in India.
I have decided to try to share some of those experiences/ stories with you.
Here is the first one :)….
Disclaimer :
I did my best to make this readable for all , but Some of the details may make more sense to my nursing friends or people in the medical community
While in Calcutta, after coming across mother Teresa’s, Missionaries of Charity organization we had decided to spend one afternoon volunteering at one of the homes. We were placed at Prem Dann , a home for the dying and destitute.
I assumed this would almost be like a hospice home so I was excited for the opportunity to get to maybe contribute some of the skills I had acquired working as an oncology nurse the last three years.
We arrived and I was surprised to see that for the most part the people were walking around and not in the condition that my mind had assumed when I heard the name of the home.
The nurse inside of me was a little sad to not get to care for people in that way ,but nonetheless I would care for these lovely ladies in other ways instead.
I painted nails , sang along to some songs I couldn’t understand any of, prayed with a few women, and made the cutest friend whose one toothed smile and laughter at my attempts to speak Hindi made my afternoon .
Some where in the middle of all this , one of my teammates came to find me and let me know that my teammate Rosie, who is also a nurse, was helping some doctors do something , and asked if I wanted to join,
Duh I want to ! Lead the way.
I followed her and arrived just in time to catch a glimpse of Rosie and two other doctors pulling the last few maggots out of a woman’s skull. ( It was fascinating)
She would later inform me that the wound they were clearing out was the second on her head and that prior to removing the maggots they had left gauze soaked in Ether ( ETHER ?!) sitting in it for an hour.
All of that had been done without any anesthesia or numbing agents.
I then helped a precious Indian woman wrap her badly burned chest in bandages. She had shown up at the home badly burned the day before but they were not sure why.
That day I would later meet a woman who did not have eyes anymore and who had also very obviously been a burn victim head to toe……Her husband had poured boiling hot water on her.
After this I got to finally introduce myself to the two female doctors who were there and discovered that they spoke Spanish!
Score!
They quickly added me into the group of hands after discovering that fact, and realizing that I was a nurse also.
I was given a mask and a pair of gloves and then we moved into a room that had beds with women who were bedridden or not as mobile as the women I had seen previously.
The first woman we met was elderly and quite frail. She had bed sores with bandages that needed to be changed.
Bed Sores are something that occur when you are immobile for long periods and there is no relief of pressure from bony parts of your body….Basically your skin and tissue underneath get worn out and destroyed.
Being a pediatric nurse , bed sores are something I rarely see . Kids have their youth / age working In their favor and tend to bounce back more quickly than then elderly….not to mention that getting them to try to move around is usually not a problem #wiggleworms.
Anyways , we began by helping the woman to turn in her bed onto her side. Moans ensued and her body trembled with the movement.
Shouldn’t we be giving her pain meds?
There were multiple sores to be redressed so the doctors instructed me and Rosie on what to do and we tackled the ones on her back and hip while the doctors attended to her feet.
After redressing the first sore it occurred to me that I should defiantly be changing my gloves.
I watched the doctors as they tended to multiple things and didn’t change their gloves at any point… Okay well I should still look for gloves.
No gloves anywhere.
Oh look, there’s the box they pulled my gloves out of.
…….Just kidding the pair of gloves they gave me were literally the last pair.
What!?
I guess it will just be a matter of very carefully and strategically not touching any open skin with my already contaminated gloves. *** side note :later that month we would visit a hospital where I realized that they wash and REUSE their gloves***
Okay. Enough…. move on Arlene.
We finished the second sore and helped the precious woman to be repositioned in bed. She was all smiles after as another one of the volunteers joked around with her and helped her to eat her food.
We then waited
Okay that wasn’t so bad… Keep your hands up and don’t touch anything else Arlene.
Maybe it’s better if I just don’t wear gloves and wash my hands after touching anything …
Wait…. Then my hands will get body fluids all over them.
Wait. These gloves aren’t even to stop contamination- they are to protect ME.
What germs could we be spreading ?!
Okay get over it Arlene….Moving onto the next person.
As soon as I saw the next woman we would be tending to I was taken back to work when patients bodies can no longer fight whatever is going on.
This woman was dying.
She was a skeleton with skin layered over. She was so frail I was afraid to even move her , but we had to change the sheets before beginning to even care for her wounds as she was sitting in a soiled bed.
There are bandages all over her back where we are moving her. Where can I even hold her?
Her arms … They are so small though ! I think I might break them.
Oh I got it I will tuck a blanket under her back, try toavoid the wounds and use that.
“Okay Habalina we are going to move you now.”
Once again shaking and Moans ensued as we moved her onto her side.
“Ahh I’m so sorry “
Now to explain all the details of what ensued from this point would distract from the the point of my blog and maybe come of as biased and I would hate to give any wrong impression.
Long story short , the people of the home we were at had to stick to a schedule that our care would soon be interfering with so we were then being asked to leave.
All volunteers must leave at noon.
As the doctors argued with the women in charge of these rules me and my teammate Rosie resolved that we would take it upon ourselves to quickly change the very obviously soiled dressings .
We started with the very large gauze covering her hip.
Ahh, This dressing is dried / imbedded into her skin.
Where’s the saline…. Wet it. Wet it. Wet it.
With each pull on the gauze, her body would twitch.
” I’m so so sorry” was all I could say.
Pain meds. pain meds, we need pain meds.
The dressing was off.
OH MY GOSH ….. That is her hip bone
I did not anticipate the size of the wound or extent of how much of her
I was staring a a pretty large portion of this woman’s hip bone with infected tissue surrounding it.
I looked at Rosie, who is an adult ICU nurse and was probably more familiar with wounds of this sort.
” What do we even do? “…”Have you seen sores like,this ? “
Rosie would then explain how the wound was pretty bad , but how it is common to see for someone in her condition.
One of the doctors returned from her discussion with a higher up and told us to finish up as quickly as we could because we had to leave , and that they would return tomorrow and see her first.
We proceeded to do our best to dress this very large wound as best we could and then moved on to the next one…All the while apologizing to this woman for the discomfort she was experiencing.
This woman is dying, is it even worth it to put her through this.
Okay right side is done.
Time to tackle the huge dressing that is peaking out on the left side.
“Okay we are going to turn you again sweet Habalina “
At this point people were standing around waiting for us leave with very obvious frustration painted on their faces.
Is this for real? Are we seriously being RUSHED to take care of this dying woman.
I think this is what righteous anger might feel like.
Keep your mouth shut Arlene.
As I began to try to quickly pull of the gauze that was covering the other side of Habalina’s lower back I gasped and quickly put it back on.
Oh my gosh that’s the biggest hole I’ve ever seen in someone.
” Umm maybe you guys should look at this it looks pretty bad / worse than the others”
I pulled back the bandage once more and liquid gushed out accompanied with quite a smell. (
” And. I’m. Petty sure. It’s reeeeally ….Infected” …. came out in between gags.
” Yeah that’s bad “, Rosie chimed in with an equally concerned look on her face.
This is going to take a while to fix. Do we have time?
What do we do? ….How does that look SO Bad?
Omg the smell…. This poor woman… Jesus , what do we do?
” We gave to go”… One of our squad leaders had come to find us at this point and told us that everyone had left and they were waiting for us to leave.
Are we really going to just leave this like that ?
This feels so wrong
I moved to quickly secure a dressing over the wound with the help of one of the doctors and then we placed Habalina back onto her back.
I looked at her and she was pointing her hands forwards her mouth. …One of the doctors would tell me she was sacking for pain meds.
NO DUH she is asking for pain meds.
“Can she not get morphine or something ? ” I pleaded
The doctor proceeded to explain to me that narcotics were not allowed to be given to patients there.
But she is dying. This can’t be real.
“Isn’t there ANYTHING we can give her ?” I pleaded.
Tylenol was basically the only option of what they could give the women there.
That’s pointless...
As I saw my teammates moving towards the door I looked at Habalina , into her eyes and went to grab her hand.
I refuse to just leave like,this.
She gripped onto my arm with so much force it shocked me that her frail arms could do so.
Jesus What can I do ?!
Feeling entirely helpless and my heart breaking for this woman , I did the only thing I know to always work…. I prayed.
I prayed for her and pleaded to Jesus to take away her pain and bring her peace and comfort.
I pried her hands out of mine and caressed her face, and with tears in my eyes , walked off after my group.
I can’t believe they wouldn’t even let us finish taking care of her.
Who will take care of her tonight until the doctors return.
Will anyone be there with her as she is suffering ?
All these thoughts and questions would race through my head a majority of that day.
It’s never easy to see suffering but it’s even harder when there isn’t much that you can do about it… Especially when you know that there is SOMETHING that can be done.
I don’t know all the details of what being a nurse in another country besides the U.S would be like but I do know that I am blessed to have worked in a situation and country where abundant resources are available.
I’ve never had to question something like clean gloves , which seams so trivial to my American mind, but is so significant as a nurse concerned about taking the best care of her patients.
I’ve also never experienced not being able to give patients medication that they very obviously need.
Working on an oncology unit , death and the dying process have become somewhat familiar to me, but I have had the blessing of being able to know that everything was done to make the process more comfortable and as beautiful as possible within human means.
However, all that aside , and as shocking as all this was and how hard it was to come to terms with in comparison to my experiences thus far , the reality is that Habalina was in a much better place or situation at the Missionaries of Charity than a lot of the people in India.
She was getting SOME care as opposed to none.
She had a bed to sleep in and eventually die in as opposed to a street corner or the ground somewhere.
She had the hands of strangers and volunteers being Jesus to her when others have no one else.
I am sure that Habalina has been freed from earthly suffering by now.
My prayer is that she felt Christ’s love that day
“For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”
Philippians 1:21-23 NKJV
…. Far far better
