Musings and Mutterings

Our society has a bad habit: polite perfunctory exchanges. These drawl and drab traditions are great at heart, and truly I think they come from a genuine place for most people. However, the usual exchange of "Hi, how are you?" "Good (or 'ok' or similar nondescript terminology), how are you?" "Good, thanks," is so often a ritualistic custom without much forethought. And for most places and people, this is totally acceptable- and probably applicable. When you have a chronic illness (or a barrage of them), this takes on a whole new degree of complicated- do you lie or tell the truth, protect them and yourself or just lay it all out there? Personally, I've found the former to be the way to go, if for no other reason than time constraints. Typically this serves me well. Even at doctor appointments, the half-hearted opening discourse that begins the entire interaction is routine and rushed, and the rest of the interaction is the same. Once I ...

This May, I will have been a nurse for 12 years. In all these years of nursing, there are literally hundreds of patients and families whose names and faces I no longer remember. I have a few moments, though, that stand out. My first patient that died. Patients with the incurables, and inoperable, and minutes left in their lives. But of all the memorable things in my short nursing career, my most favorite moment was 3 and a half years ago. I had been new to working in pediatrics, and so they gave me the "easy" patients. JD was easy. Waiting on a heart transplant, there was not much to do but wait. She had an amazing family, I adored her mother and always hoped I'd get to take care of them. After what felt like forever of waiting, I got a call one night from the transplant team- "Don't say or do anything to alert mom, but we have a potential match and we need to get these labs done: ...." So I was being as cool as I possibly could be-- which was not reall...