Goodbye, Kettly

Emergency Department... a place where we see deaths up close and personal. The ED staff who choose to stay do so because they love the rewards that come from saving lives. We are hardened (crazy) souls who have accepted life's realities. But it is difficult when you lose one of your own.

Today, we said goodbye to Kettly.

Through life’s ups and downs, Kettly managed to smile her way into her fellow nurses’ hearts. She reveled in the deep friendships that blossomed amidst stressful times in the ED. As she struggled with illness, she persevered and impressed her hospital family with her indomitable spirit of resilience and tenacity. Her easy wit and sense of humor brightened our days as we all commiserated with each other at the end of each day. Kettly cared for her patients, even as she needed caring herself. She offered hope.

It is difficult to imagine that the once-vibrant nurse who delegated cooking duties like a drill sergeant for the holiday party is no longer with us. Could she have been preparing us for her untimely passing by creating special memories of friendships and by showing us the value of team work? Did she realize that the new triage nurses would remember the words of encouragement she gave them on her last day in the unit?

As she held her family in her heart, she reserved a special place for her hospital family.

Last night, we gave Kettly a White Rose tribute and showed our appreciation by honoring her with our Nursing flag. The nurses, all dressed in white, stood en masse in solidarity with a few of our colleagues who struggled to read lines from a poem written by another nurse:

To witness humanity—its beauty, in good times and bad, without judgment,
She was there.
To embrace the woes of the world, willingly, and offer hope,
She was there.
(“She Was There” is copyrighted by D. Jaeger)

Kettly, we will miss your carrot cake, your de-boned turkey, and your words of wisdom. But most of all, we will miss the nurse who showed us quiet strength and resolve through adversity. We will miss your regal presence.

Caring for Mr. G (Frequent Flier)

Original text: New York, February 2005
Published March 2012- revised version for the Nursing 2012 March edition


IN EVERY ED, there are two true constants. One is that patients come and go, no matter what the weather, in the dead of night and most certainly at change of shift when the ED is in gridlock. Another is that despite all the frustration and high-intensity stress, we, as nurses, care.

We care, even for our "frequent fliers."


One of the regulars

Mr. G was one of our most frequent visitors. With a long history of alcoholism, he showed up at our hospital every day, delivered by the emergency medical technicians or staggering in on his own, asking to be taken to the ED.

Mr. G was part of our daily lives. We showered him, lectured him, fed him, and discharged him before he went into withdrawal.

The ED social worker tried to place him in a local shelter, but he rarely stayed long. Sometimes he’d be admitted to the hospital for management of his withdrawal symptoms, in part to give him time to heal, but also to reassure ourselves that we were doing our best for him. In our naïveté and optimism, we hoped that someday Mr. G would hit rock bottom and reverse his life’s downward spiral. But he didn’t want to detox and refused admissions to rehab.

Mr. G was unlike most other alcohol abusers who frequented our ED. He never was violent, never cursed us, never hit us. He just couldn’t seem to stay sober long enough to go home.


Road to recovery?

Once, we didn’t see Mr. G for a month. All the nurses kept asking about him. We thought that maybe he’d relocated or was tired of being brought over and over again to our hospital. It turned out that the social worker had finally convinced Mr. G to enter rehab, and he had a job. One day he surprised us all when he walked, with a steady gait, into the ED. Sober and smiling, he blushed and grinned from ear to ear as we stopped and greeted him. We high-fived with him and gave him words of encouragement. We felt there was hope.

A month later, however, Mr. G returned to the ED drunk and seizing. And so the cycle continued once again.


Gesture of faith

Just after the New Year, emergency medical workers found Mr. G on a street at dawn, unconscious with a core temperature of 35ºC. He was brought into the ED and the team worked on him for 2 1/2 hours. We thought he’d eventually wake up, as he always did. But his luck finally ran out.

His mother and brother came. They said they’d tried to get him help for years, but he’d always refused their offers. He chose to live on the street. They didn’t have enough money for a burial, and their only option was Potter’s Field in Hart Island, N.Y., where unknown people and indigents are laid to rest. It’s not open to public, and Mr. G’s family wouldn’t be allowed to visit his grave.

One of the nurses started to collect money to help defray burial expenses for our frequent flier. The ED nurses opened their hearts, without question. Even though it was too late to save Mr. G, the last humane thing we could do was help him be laid to rest, to give him a final good-bye.

It was a beautiful gesture, something that reaffirmed my faith that, whatever reasons that have made us choose nursing as a profession, the one true thing is that we do care.





http://nurses.definitelyfilipino.com/index.php/2010/10/frequent-flier/