Healing Hands

My patients have an awful lot to say about me, I guess because I don't say much of anything so the silence has to be filled somehow, right? Nearly every single shift and sometimes a few times a shift, I get compliments on my hair. All the old people think it's natural and I can't lie so I have to confess it's bottled. But they love it anyway. All the little old ladies think I am so beautiful and I smile sweetly and say "Thank you, now don't move while I put this IV in!".

Last week I took care of an 82 year-old man who introduced me to his wife like this: "This is RaDonna my nurse, she takes really good care of me and she also has a really nice butt!". I was mortified! My face turned a brighter shade than my hair and I ran out there as fast as I could! The funny thing is I got a text the next day from a paramedic friend of mine saying that he was transferring my little old man to the next hospital over and he wouldn't stop going on about my nice butt. So now my derrière is apparently the talk of the county!

My favorite thing that my patients say about me isn't my hair or my tush, but that I have a very gentle touch. It made me so happy when I finished putting in an IV today, and my patient says "Thank you for being so gentle with me." So many times I see nurses or aids roughly turning patients or grabbing their arms to put the blood pressure cuff on them and it makes me so sad. One of the ICU nurses I followed around the last month of nursing school told me that patients can tell you care by the way you touch them. That has stuck with me throughout my year-long nursing career and I hope I never forget it.

I tell you what though, I didn't feel very gentle last Tuesday when I was holding a tiny little 7 week-old baby for a lumbar puncture. Poor little baby had a fever that wouldn't break so we had to give him the full workup: labs, IV fluids, cath urine, lumbar puncture, and antibiotics. I was terrified taking care of such a tiny baby and the worst thing was he never stopped crying the entire 6 hours I took care of him. Every time I walked into the room I brought some other method of torture with me. I looked for a vein on him but had to bring reinforcements because he had nothing that I could see. I catheterized him for the urine sample and that was hard because I had never cath'ed anyone under thirty before! When it was time for the lumbar puncture, we laid him on his side at the edge of the bed and bent him into a fetal position and held on as tight as we could without hurting him. He wailed the entire time but Dr. C was good and nailed it.

We ended up transferring that poor little boy to a hospital with a PICU to rule out sepsis. One thing I hate about emergency nursing is that I rarely get to find out the end result of my patients, and the few times I do find out, I usually don't like what I hear. The little old man who like my butt was transferred because he had a massive aortic aneurysm and he only had a 50% chance of surviving the surgery to repair it. A sweet man I took care of last week for gallstones ended up coding the following day. This morning I cared for a man with a 106.9 F rectal temp and after I finally got him cooled down enough that he wasn't delirious from the fever, all he wanted to do was hold my hand because it was warm.

I don't know if any of these patients lived or died but they touched my heart, each in their own way. I am so glad I can make a difference to them by the gentleness of my touch and hopefully bring God's comfort through my hands.

I found the following blessing for nurse's hands on the internet and I wanted to share it with you.

Blessed be these hands that have touched life.
Blessed be these hands that have felt pain.
Blessed be these hands that have embraced with compassion.
Blessed be these hands that have been clinched with anger or withdrawn in fear.
Blessed be these hands that have drawn blood and administered medicine.
Blessed be these hands that have cleaned beds and disposed of wastes.
Blessed be these hands that have anointed the sick and offered blessings.
Blessed be these hands that grow stiff with age.
Blessed be these hands that have comforted the dying and held the dead.
Blessed be these hands, we hold the future in these hands.
Blessed be our hands for they are the work of Your hands, O Holy One