Live Like You Were Dying

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Nursing is obviously a huge part of my life right now. Every Thursday I wake up at 5:30am and after scowling at my alarm clock for a few minutes, I drag myself out of bed to get ready for my 12 hour shift at the hospital. The floor that I work on is an Oncology ward where the patients are quite sick with cancer and many are palliative. It's a strange reality, cancer...I mean, the patients don't look any different and it's easy to forget they have an illness that’s threatening their very life.
The last two clinical weeks have been eventful to say the least. The patients I had the previous weeks both passed away. At first, death isn't something you think about when you go into health care. In my idealistic state, I guess I pictured myself saving the world one patient at a time, like a nursing superhero. I've quickly come to realize that when curative treatment isn't an option, comfortable care is just as, if not more important.
My one friend built quite a relationship with a patient who ended up passing away last week. In an attempt to deal with the situation, she cut off all her hair. It's a beautiful gesture, one of empathy and compassion. But I think if I tried to cope like her, I’d be bald by next week. My particular patient was palliative and just wanted to die comfortably. There was no specific care for me to do, so instead of IV’s/medications/vital signs, I played scrabble. I think that when I spelled out J-A-C-K-S for a triple word score it was more therapeutic than anything medically I could have done that day.
My housemate Nicki likes to listen to country music. And although it mostly makes me want to kill myself, one song she belts out at the top of her lungs really made me think. So much that I’m actually ashamed to admit that downloaded it! It’s the one by Tim McGraw, “Live Like You Were Dying.� I think that I need to start living each day like it was my last (spoken with sexy country twang). With a passion for life that is contagious. To stop saying I want to do things, and just do them! So often I get caught up in the little things that don’t really matter in life. I worry about marks on a test, complain about the bus ride to school, forget to call my dad…I lose sight of what’s important.
One patient this week was told that he had hours-days left to live. It got me thinking. What would I do in my last few hours of life if I was told I was dying? Would I go skydiving? Write letters to friends? Hug my family? Kiss my boyfriend? Steal a car? What would you do?

posted by Rachel Pede @ 11:26 PM   2 comments