Ghosts of Patients Past

Every nurse, every where has them

Photo by Vladimir Fedotov on Unsplash

I retired after 26+ years as a nurse. Sometimes the enormity of that still hits me square in the face. All. The. Patients. I touched in My Life. And All. The. Patients. who touched me.

A lot of them are gone. The number one rule in healthcare has always been this — you can’t save everyone. And I didn’t. I couldn’t. I did what I could, with what I had, where ever I was. Then I let it go.

I’ll admit there were some I pulled healing energy out of the air for. My favorite was a fellow biker chick named C.C. who had come for her breast cancer surgery. We compared notes on motorcycles and rock music as she drifted off to sleep. The surgeons told me a few months later that she was healing and doing very well.

But then, that’s what they always told us. And we would never know the difference. So often a patient’s name didn’t even stay in our memory banks past the end of their case, as we bustled and hustled and made the OR ready for the next one. And there was nearly always a next one.

Initially, I could remember every single patient I laid my hands on — pumping life back into them to the sounds of chaos. Alarms, shouting, running feet — but everything becomes tunnel vision and you just concentrate on the count. Making sure you’re going fast enough, deep…