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March 11, 2007
The end of one's life
A patient where I work weighs heavy on my mind these days. She is 61, relatively young for a population that usually ranges any where from 70 - 104.
She is dying of cancer, breast cancer that metastasized to her colon and now, it's every where.
What is hard is she won't talk about it. She won't speak of it with her family or the nurses, but she came to be with us, to die. She didn't want to burden her family with her end of life needs so to speak.
Death is no stranger to me, a nurse of nearly 20 years I've seen a lot of it. As a hospice nurse for five years I dealt with it all the time, young and old, but this lady makes me sad. She has fear in her eyes like I have never seen and I don't know how to help her feel safe, I don't know what I can do help ease her fears.
As a nurse when someone is dying of a terminal illness your first thought, usually, is comfort, keep them comfortable. Don't let them hurt, physically or mentally/emotionally.
It's terrible to have to watch someone suffer, but when they are suffering over the fear of dying, it's the worst.
I worked the night shift last night and nights on these people are hard. It's quiet, it's dark and it's lonely. They lay in bed, half awake, half asleep, half unknowing of when they will take their last breath. You try to comfort, you hold their hand and tell them you are there for them, they can talk to you, they can ask you to listen, they can pray or ask you to pray with them, but there is silence, no response and then you see a single tear streaking their face and it's suddenly impossible to hold back your own tears.
You wonder what they could possibly be thinking, you ask, but again there is no answer.
So you continue to sit with them, holding their hand and praying silently for their peace, their comfort and for God to come and take them home.
Posted by tracey at March 11, 2007 09:02 AM
Comments
You Sneak! When were you going to tell me you had a blog back up and running again?!
As for the post, it's really difficult to read. I almost feel like even though the normal population knows what a nursing home is for, we ignore it. We shove our elderly or terminally ill there and leave them for the nurses and LNA's to take care of, trying to cut them out of our lives to lessen the pain when they do die.
Thanks for bringing this to the forefront Trace...people need to remember that just because you can't care for yourself doesn't mean that you're not scared of the future.
Posted by: Randi at March 11, 2007 03:31 PM