People Like Us?
By Suzanne Magee
Sometimes it’s harder than others to keep my mouth shut. I mean, it’s never easy for me to do it at all, that’s just the way I am, but sometimes it really takes everything I have to zip it up. Unfortunately, when I’m at work I have to remember that I’m there to serve people at a time when they need help. As a ER Nurse, I see people at some of the worst moments in their lives, and I always try to remember that what you see of people in that kind of a stressful situation isn’t always who they truly are. People will say and do things when they are facing a tragedy that they would never even think of saying, or doing, under normal situations.
That’s why at work I’m not an activist when it comes to my interactions with patients. I never comment when I hear bigoted remarks about gays or lesbians, and I never let these kinds of comments affect the care that I give to patients. If it were a choice that someone made to be in the ER with me as a Nurse, I might feel differently about it. No one chooses to need to be with me at work though. Usually it’s an accident, or an illness, or sometimes even a true tragedy that puts me, a patient, and their family together. It’s just not the right time to respond to comments that I find insulting, or even hurtful. But, as I said before, sometimes it’s very hard to keep silent.
Recently I had a patient in the ER that touched me greatly. It was an elderly woman, trying to hang on to her independence when it was far beyond time to surrender it. She had fallen in her bathroom and broken her hip. She had presented to the ER after crawling for over an hour to get to the phone and calling 911. Her family arrived ( three adult sons and one adult daughter ) shortly after she did, having been notified by the ER staff of the accident. They were very attentive to her, and had obviously tried on many occasions to get her to move in with one of them. But she wasn’t ready to give up her home of fifty years, where she had spent so much wonderful time with her husband and raised her children.
Later in the night, when everyone realized that even though the fracture would require surgery, she was going to be okay, the conversations in the room became less serious, and her children began to discuss the elections that were going on. My patient needed to have her gown changed because she had soiled it, and to use the bedpan, so I asked her family to step out for just a moment. They stepped out into the hallway, and I pulled the curtain closed to provide my patient with some privacy. It was difficult for her with the fracture to even use the bedpan because moving even a little was very painful, and she was embarrassed at needing help with something so private. I medicated her for pain, and reassured her that it would be better soon.
I could hear her children talking in the hallway as I helped their mother off the bed pan, and cleaned her up. They were talking about why they were voting for George Bush in the upcoming election, and how for one of the men, the fact that Bush was pressing for a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage (actually the words he used were “fags from getting married“). He made other comments of the same kind, and mentioned that he found homosexuals to be “disgusting perverts” that he didn’t want to breath the same air with. I let it slide off my back, and went about my work, smiling at the old woman and reassuring her that she was going to be just fine. When I left the room, and told her children that it was fine to go back in with her, they thanked me for taking care of their mother, and one of the men walked up and said, “I don’t know what we’d do without people like you.”
Indeed. What would they do without people like us?
Sometimes it’s harder than others to keep my mouth shut. I mean, it’s never easy for me to do it at all, that’s just the way I am, but sometimes it really takes everything I have to zip it up. Unfortunately, when I’m at work I have to remember that I’m there to serve people at a time when they need help. As a ER Nurse, I see people at some of the worst moments in their lives, and I always try to remember that what you see of people in that kind of a stressful situation isn’t always who they truly are. People will say and do things when they are facing a tragedy that they would never even think of saying, or doing, under normal situations.
That’s why at work I’m not an activist when it comes to my interactions with patients. I never comment when I hear bigoted remarks about gays or lesbians, and I never let these kinds of comments affect the care that I give to patients. If it were a choice that someone made to be in the ER with me as a Nurse, I might feel differently about it. No one chooses to need to be with me at work though. Usually it’s an accident, or an illness, or sometimes even a true tragedy that puts me, a patient, and their family together. It’s just not the right time to respond to comments that I find insulting, or even hurtful. But, as I said before, sometimes it’s very hard to keep silent.
Recently I had a patient in the ER that touched me greatly. It was an elderly woman, trying to hang on to her independence when it was far beyond time to surrender it. She had fallen in her bathroom and broken her hip. She had presented to the ER after crawling for over an hour to get to the phone and calling 911. Her family arrived ( three adult sons and one adult daughter ) shortly after she did, having been notified by the ER staff of the accident. They were very attentive to her, and had obviously tried on many occasions to get her to move in with one of them. But she wasn’t ready to give up her home of fifty years, where she had spent so much wonderful time with her husband and raised her children.
Later in the night, when everyone realized that even though the fracture would require surgery, she was going to be okay, the conversations in the room became less serious, and her children began to discuss the elections that were going on. My patient needed to have her gown changed because she had soiled it, and to use the bedpan, so I asked her family to step out for just a moment. They stepped out into the hallway, and I pulled the curtain closed to provide my patient with some privacy. It was difficult for her with the fracture to even use the bedpan because moving even a little was very painful, and she was embarrassed at needing help with something so private. I medicated her for pain, and reassured her that it would be better soon.
I could hear her children talking in the hallway as I helped their mother off the bed pan, and cleaned her up. They were talking about why they were voting for George Bush in the upcoming election, and how for one of the men, the fact that Bush was pressing for a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage (actually the words he used were “fags from getting married“). He made other comments of the same kind, and mentioned that he found homosexuals to be “disgusting perverts” that he didn’t want to breath the same air with. I let it slide off my back, and went about my work, smiling at the old woman and reassuring her that she was going to be just fine. When I left the room, and told her children that it was fine to go back in with her, they thanked me for taking care of their mother, and one of the men walked up and said, “I don’t know what we’d do without people like you.”
Indeed. What would they do without people like us?
posted by LNewsEditor at 10:15 AM
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