When ‘it’ hits home.
There has been nothing usual about what is happening with the COVID19 pandemic. What hasn’t changed is the care that I try my best to impart on my long-term care patients. Care that is guided by policy and protocol. A nursing facility is their home.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Instead of waking up and starting your usual morning routine, i.e., brush your teeth, shower get dressed, make coffeee...long term care patients are greeted very early by their night shift nurse with morning medications, and care given that often causes discomfort due to their fragile condition. They do not open their eyes to their families.
They open their eyes to me.
One particular patient, whom was married had been up all night crying quietly. Nothing consoled him. I went through all my nursing interventions in attempt to alleviate his mourning. He missed his husband, more than ever now, often calling out for him.
Nothing I could do was easing that pain. See, his partner would visit my patient near daily but, due to infection control restrictions, instead could only now call in daily for updates. It began to be too hard to focus on the positive while giving him my usual report toward the end of my shift.
I told him, “he misses you”.
With a cracked voice, he replied.
“I miss him too”.
And, then the husband began to cry over the phone with the same heartbreak. I didn’t have an intervention for this.
I ended my call by asking him to stay by his phone for a few minutes. That I would be calling back with more information soon.
An unusual urgency came over me, like I knew I was about to perform CPR or some other life saving skill.
I ran to the supply closet. Grabbed a plastic bag and slipped my freshly disinfected phone into it. I washed my hands. I gowned up.
And then, I broke the usual protocol.
I went to my patient’s room and dialed the husband from my bagged up cell phone, HIPPA be damned, hitting the speaker button so they could at the very least hear each-other’s voices.
Through the sobbing and tears, do you know what they said?
NOT the usual.
All they said was,
“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you”.
That was it.
That was all.
My patient passed away not long after this day after being sent to the hospital for difficulty breathing. The husband called in for a final call, this time giving us report of his death, ever grateful for those last I love you’s.
~Danielle K. Cass, B.S.N., R.N.
About the Creator
Danielle Cass
Hero? No. Just a night shift nurse hoping to make small differences by the light of the moon.
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