A comment on my last post by Jen who writes over at Keep Insite Open (which I love because I’m a HUGE believer and supporter of Harm Reduction Theory) made me look back over my journal entries from my first year in nursing school. This led me to this little post that I wrote about my very first day in clinical and my feelings about patients and hospitals. I can’t say I feel exactly the same way now–several years later-but it was interesting to compare. 

Hospitals lack any sense of time…

That’s the first thing I noticed when I stepped foot into the hospital for the first time as a student nurse about three months ago. And as I find myself there several hours a week, with more nursing responsibilities at every moment, time means less and less.

When you’re dying, whether fast or slow, it doesn’t tend to happen on a schedule. Sickness happens when sickness happens, and Pain exists at night as it does in the day. The hallways are always brightly lit, and there’s always traffic.

It’s as though you step from one reality right into another as you pass through the hospital’s entrance. There’s a strange, intangible barrier that separates the outside world from the hospital. It’s filled with fear, uncertainty, and mystery.

The day is measured by bowl movements, diaper changes, needles, physiotherapy, pain, heartache. Who has the presence of mind to notice the time flying by. After eight hours on my feet, I feel as though I could go another thousand…because I truly care about the patients I discover. And I know that when I step through that barrier, and back into the real world, I will never see, or know about the patients I cared for. All I want to do is stay with them…

I think it’s I fall in love with every patient I encounter. Not romantically of course, but in what I could only imagine a mother-child relationship to be like. I mean, I’ve cared for patients who couldn’t talk, walk, communicate, or truly think. They simply sleep, eat, pee and poo…so I only feed them, change their diapers, clean them and make sure they’re comfortable. They are fully dependent on me for their care, and that takes a leaps of emotion for me.

There’s also a sense of immense fear. No matter how much we practice the skills on each other, and study the theory and science, when they scoot you into a room, point to a patient, and say, “he’s all your’s,” the most prevalent emotions is excruciating panic. They may as well have been telling me to perform open heart surgery…

But what’s there to do but take a deep breath, and dig in…do your best…struggle through…make it happen. So far, the struggle has only become bigger…wider and deeper, but at the same time, the rewards become infinitely greater. It feels as though piles of bricks are continually dumped on me. I’ll just keep putting them aside, one by one.

There’s infinite pages of things I could say about my first few experiences in the hospital. The incredibly simple, yet life changing moments just keep on coming…but there simply isn’t enough time in my life to express them properly…..

As for my personal life… *laugh* …I’ll let you know when I have one again