At the end of a shift on the medical ward I am so emotionally drained and exhausted, I feel that I cannot possibly be able to sort through the emotional turmoil that is aged care. Today for example I was faced with the distress and frustration of a lady who couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to go home. She literally spent close to 2 hours begging her son and granddaughter to take her home.
”Mum, you know you can’t get into our car. We can’t possibly look after you on our own! Please wait until tomorrow to see the doctor?”
“But you have to try! I don’t want to see any more doctors, there is nothing wrong with me! I just want to go home!”
She had this look in her eyes that broke my heart. She was so pleading and so desperate. All she wanted was to go home. Simple as that, according to her. If only it were so simple.
There was the sorrow and sympathy that comes with working with a family of a palliated patient. Simple sentences sent me reeling in shock. “I’m not scared of dying. I’m scared of what happens between now and the day I die.” Stunned, I spent the next 6 or so hours of my shift trying to fathom the tiniest ounce of understanding for what she was going though. We have studied Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of grieving at tafe. Denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance, but none of this knowledge allowed me any insight into what a completely cognitive, physically able patient must have going through their head as they lie in a hospital attached to a morphine pump, literally waiting to die.
Shock. Sympathy. Grief. Grief as a nurse. Grief that there is nothing we can do. Grief that this incredible woman has to face such an awful outcome. Grief for her family who welcome me so warmly. Asking my name, and when I am working next so that they can keep an eye out for me to have a chat.
However, there are positive emotions as well. Sharing the joy as a patient you have helped get better is allowed to go home. Helping them pack their things, checking every last nook and cranny making sure they have everything they came with. Laughing with them, sharing their joy and the heartwarming goodbyes that almost make you sad to see them go.
I come across so many emotions within an 8 hour shift that I spend the next 4 hours processing everything that happened. I know that it isn’t healthy to “bring your work home with you” as such, however it is completely impossible to encounter such grief, heartache and joy so personally and all at once and simply leave it behind when you walk out that door at the end of a shift.
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