Week 4 of ornientation. Almost a real nurse.

My first day on the job. I went with the brown.

Witnessing the suffering of others is a challenge each health care provider, friend or family member of the sick or infirmed faces each day. On my floor, we are blessed with perhaps the happiest of the sad cases. My floor is predominantly post-operative. People come, wheeled in on stretcher or by hospital bed, draped in blankets and clutching their patient controlled anesthesia button. They usually look sleepy and out of it and move gingerly.

Through out their time with us, I watch and help them struggle to perform activities that before said surgery were thoughtless- going to the bathroom, rolling over in bed, sitting up and eating. In general, whether communicating via interpreter in Portuguese, Hindi, Creole or Spanish, or though bad jokes about bad television, days are spent working to improve the patients and get them well enough to be on their way….

In general we wave goodbye a few days after we wheel them to their selected room. I get to watch them go from sick to better, from hobbling to walking confidently with a walker, from gingerly rolling over to voluntarily getting out of bed to ask a question. From averting their eyes when the gown is up and exposing incisions and staples on a once smooth abdomen, to looking and asking questions and partaking it their own care. That is the norm.

And then there are the exceptions. The people for whom I know are facing a long road ahead; people for whom this is not their last stop in a hospital for the near future, who are starting down a path of tough time. Holding hands with her doting partner through a drugged half-sleep, one woman laughed about the new words her three year old was learning, struggling with sad news of a recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Then there are those for whom the hospital is enjoyable – almost like a vacation. Perhaps those make me the saddest of all. A long and matted-haired, wiry man with a visible protrusion from his neck from a tumor comes out of his room. In one hand he is holding his gown closed so as not to expose himself to the nurses charting behind the desk. In the other, he clutches a dollar bill. “Excuse me,” he asks. “Can you tell me where to get some ice cream?” “Vanilla or chocolate?” I ask. “Both, he answers with a smile. I pick up the phone and call the kitchen. “Can you bring the patient in room 11 some chocolate and vanilla ice cream?” It was as simple as that. He grins with a wide smile and almost skips back to his room to his blasting television.

It’s the little things that get to me.