During my hospital stay that lasted from May 10th thru June 12th, 34 days, I had many many nurses who took care of me. When I came out of ICU into a regular room on the 3rd floor, I was experiencing some depression and anxiety. I was also still on morphine, and was not thinking straight because of it.Of all the nurses and patient care technicians I met, one stood out as exceptional in my mind.
Her name was Karen, same as my name. She took extra time to just talk to me, to soothe my anxiety, to just be a person and not just a nurse. In my drugged state, I know I asked some weird questions, and said some nonsense things, but Karen never laughed or dismissed me. She truly tried to help me in a personal way.
On one particular day, I misread or misunderstood something that was written on my daily agenda. I thought that because I had failed to complete a certain number of exercises on that day, that I had no hope of recovering from my surgery. Isn’t is funny how we can misinterpret things when we are on drugs? Anyway, I was trying to explain to Karen what I was talking about, and trying to ask her if there was anything else I could do to “catch up” or disregard the outcome of the lack of meeting the goal.
Karen took the time to explain that my “failure” was not really a failure to anyone but me in my mind, that the goals written by the doctor were not absolute, just what they would like for me to be able to do by the end of the day. Not reaching the goal did not doom me to being in the hospital forever.
Because she was so friendly, so caring, so human, I want to do something, like maybe send a Interflora gifts for her. I know I felt like I didn’t thank my healthcare providers enough throughout my stay at the hospital, and feel like sending a special thank you to someone who made me feel sane would be in order.
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