Wow...?

Well, the epic weekend has come to a close, and boy was it full of surprises and learning experiences.

I had a lot of panic attacks. My panic attacks are unnoticeable...as in unless you really, really, really, really REALLY know me, you don't notice they are happening to me. I honestly don't think my ex-boyfriend whom I dated for almost 4 years could notice, and he is always able to tell when I have a headache or stomachache. I don't even think my parents could tell. So I keep it very hidden. I don't have obvious symptoms (i.e. short of breath, rapid pulse, sweating) but instead I feel it in my stomach and I feel like my entire world is collapsing around me and that I am unprotected and vulnerable. Sometimes they can be 10 seconds to a couple of minutes and usually the only cure is to be alone for a couple of minutes, or if that is not possible then I usually just quiet down and sort of "give myself a hug" (i.e. just wrap my arms around my stomach so that I cover that sense of feeling "unprotected"). OK but enough about that. Point is, I usually only get them a couple times a month and extremely sporadically. But this weekend I was having a couple a day. Not sure why....My longest one was Saturday morning, after breakfast, before seeing anyone really--And before going to the service--it just came over me. I immediately excused myself, came back to our hotel room and just hid underneath my covers...in my nice dress....I mean really- Who does that? Me, I guess. Not often though, I promise.


Anyway, the memorial service was really excellent. I am usually not an emotional person, by any means. I used to be proud of myself that I could be in very traumatic situations and not shed a tear....it just literally wouldnt happen. No tears. I guess now I realize I just never had anything to cry about, til now. Now, being 23, I friggen cry in movies. WTF is that?   

But honestly, I had already shed my tears for my grandmother. Don't get me wrong- I was still very sad and still in disbelief- but what made me actually cry was seeing everybody else  cry. My rocks...my aunts and uncles. My mom. I don't like to cry in front of people because I can't just shed a tear. If I am going to cry, I am going to bawl. So I didn't want to bawl. So I kept telling myself to just play it cool, play it cool, don't cry....but, I did. Seeing everyone else cry is really what did it.    

Other than that, though, there was never another cry-moment. The rest of the weekend was spent with my amazing crazy family, and it really was just like that dream I had, sort of a premonition of how the weekend was going to go. We talked about grandma, we laughed, we told stories, we shared pictures, we felt her there with us, too.

But what I learned most of all, is something  I should have realized long ago and what will ring true with me for the rest of my life. Just as I did realize in my dream, my grandma (in the dream) was healthy again. In real life, before passing, she was extremely not-healthy and her quality of life was rapidly decreasing. She could no longer do some of her favorite activities. But in the dream she was back in full health, full laughter....playing games with everyone.

Well, through talking with family, they helped me come to realize that my grandmother is happy right now. We joked around that by now she is organizing some sort of big event in heaven, she has already joined a choir to sing in and play her accordion, she has met up with people from her past, she has made wrong things right, and most of all, she feels healthy again. And she will always be looking down on us. So I don't worry about her, I am not sad anymore. I am happy for her. She got her happiness back. And she will be around to visit us all on occasions :-)


My cousins are growing at an extreme rapid rate....like almost non-human! Its quite comical because after me, 23, the next 'group' is my sisters 'group', composed of 2 18 year olds, a 17 year old, and a 15 year old. For the past ten years it has been a constant struggle.... Do I sit with the adults? Do I sit with the kids? But this year I found it much more widely entertaining to stick with the "kids", except they're not kids anymore! They are going to college! Crazy to think about when you remember them being born. 

My cousins from Florida, I see them grow up on Facebook, but its not the same as seeing them in person. And I haven't seen them in person in about 3 years or so...So last time I checked, they were still young teenagers. Well, this weekend they were mature, gorgeous, amazing kids *mini adults* and it was such a treasure to see them like so. One of my younger cousins, only 10, asked me what I was drinking today. I told him, wine. He says......"Are you old enough to drink wine?"  And I said, "yes, I'm 23."   Needless to say, he did not believe me! I guess everyone is growing at an alarming rate. I can't even believe i'm 23, actually. What kind of age is 23, anyway?


Well....time to hit it. Tomorrow is our epic 10 hour drive back home and I am lucky enough to be dropped off 3/4 of the way through to spend a fabulous night with my bestest college roommate EVER, and we will be seeing the Philadelphia fireworks on the fourth of July! So COOL! Im pretty sure it will come in second place after Amsterdam adventure in terms of best nights ever. I'll be sure to tell you all about its awesomeosity. :-) 


Before I leave you, I will leave you with delightful pictures:

This is SO SPECIAL. My grandfather came out today with a handful of my grandmothers jewelry, and said that grandma would be so happy for all of you girls to take a piece of her home with you. So we did! We all picked out some of her necklaces that fit our unique personalities, and I will forever cherish this, forever and ever and ever. And ever after that, too. And the cross- my grandmother loved to sew. Anything that could be sewn or embroidered, and she was on it. Well, She hand-made these crosses. I guess at one time she was making them to sell. Well, we found a box of them, all in different colors. We figured it would be nice for everyone of the family to have one, but would there be enough for all? Probably not. But alas, we counted them- and sure enough, to a tee- There was exactly enough embroidered crosses of hers to go around to every single family member-even our newly born 1 year old to the family. If that is not a direct gift to our family from my grandma in heaven- I don't know what is! So something more to forever cherish.....

Memorial service photos....Amazing to see her throughout her entire life span and how much we look like her!

This is the garden outside of her church....just gorgeous...

This is my cousin's first born!! Ahhhhh how are we old enough to have kids! AH! But he is just an ADORABLE bundle of JOY and I was so happy to have finally been able to meet him from Florida!

One of the 18 year old Floridian cousins trying to pretend like the grass is actually amazing to lie in like it is in the movies.....I never actually asked how it was but it sure didn't look amazing. But SHE is amazing!

This is my sister getting her hair braided by her one cousin, and my other cousin in front of her. I call them the three musketeers :)


Goodnight all! Thanks for reading....


~A writer in a Nurses Body
         

To Have Said Goodbye

I'm not sure how to say this....life post-Europe has been great. I have been seeing so many friends, old friends, friends, new friends.......I have been with family around the clock, both nuclear and out-of-state family...and this has all been a pretty happy time. But thats the thing. It makes me undeniably nervous. Nauseous.


With the recent *unexpected* passing of my maternal grandmother, it woke me up. That was my first close relative that has passed away....although I am with and around death so much at work and in other parts of my life, I was never a survivor until now.

It woke me up. It made me realize that we truly do take so much for granted, even if we are good people and don't intend to...Sometimes I think we think we are immortal. We forget death happens to all of us. We forget that our loved ones could die any minute, we could face death ourselves tomorrow and not know it. Any of us.

We forget that. Because its morbid, and depressing....But then the unexpected happens and we are left with not even being able to say goodbye.


This all has made me so jumpy, so anxious, so nervous....that I am going to lose more. If I lost my grandmother, I could lose my other grandmother too. I could lose my father who has a suspicious family history of heart disease. I could lose a close friend. It really has made me realize how fragile everyone is. How fragile I am.

I went to spend a week with my paternal grandmother this past week. Its been a long-due visit....and it shouldnt have been. I should be seeing her all the time. And with my maternal grandmother passing, it has motivated me to just drive out to see her and just....spend time with her. She tells me all the time when I am with her that she feels "guilty" that she is not "entertaining" me, but she doesn't even know that all I want is to just be around her.

With this newfound anxiety and feeling like I could lose it all in a second, I have been acting weird. I am trying so much harder to mentally-record special moments with loved ones I am afraid of losing....and when I can't rely on mental, I have been taking pictures with her too. Just savoring moments, taking it all in in case I have to remember it all tomorrow. Its eerie. I don't like being like this....but is it necessary, sometimes?

Everything happens for a reason. I firmly believe and know that. As unfortunate as it was, my grandmothers death happened for a reason....but what reason?

I guess we aren't always meant to know for what reason, but a reason there is. We just have to have faith.


I said earlier in my blog after it had just happened, that it didn't feel real. That I still expected to see her when I travelled next to North Carolina. To talk to her on the phone, still. To see a comment on one of my pictures on facebook from her. That her death was just a hiccup in her health and it was a quick hospital visit, but she's ok now. I'll see her. But thats not true, and Its starting to settle in now. For my mom and my aunt, they have both expressed it "settling in" when they call their house and their father will never more say, "Let me go get mom".

For me, it has hit in unexpected ways. The other day I browsed through my phone contacts and realized I had my grandmothers cell phone number saved. Did I ever even call it? Just to talk? Also, I was just viewing my blog followers and realized she registered as a blog follower, quite some time ago, so she could receive emails when I post. Its those little reminders that punch you in the stomach.

I feel extremely sad that she was so excited for me to be able to go to Europe...and she only got to see a few blogs. It kills me that she couldn't even have seen a single picture. If I had known, I would have made more of an effort to get pictures up for her to see.....but who ever knows? You can't live your life with the "If I had known...." racing through your negative thoughts. You didn't know. I didn't know. But I know now, and maybe the "reason" for it all is to make me stronger and to realize for the future how fragile life truly is, and to savor every breath, every moment. Say goodbye to people as if you won't see them again, tell them how much you love them. Every time you see them...


As a conclusion to this eerie post, I leave you with an eerie finding. A week or so I stumbled across one of my county college's literature book that I have been published several times in, back in the day. The following poem is a poem I wrote back in 2006, to express the heartbreak of loss. Losing someone close to you. How that feels. It just seemed fitting that I just happened to stumble across it again, now. Like I wrote it for the future almost.....


"To Say Goodbye"

It's Learning
                    To say goodbye.
                                  To look through this fine print,
And see, eye for eye, the impact that has hit.
                    To say goodbye,
Is learning
                    That this is the hardest part of dying.
It's not the pain that comes with it....
                     Not the physical pain.
                                      It's the tearing.
                                                 The Ripping Away,
                                                          At an innocent heart.
                                                                             Innocent?

It's an Anger,
                        masking an inevitable sadness.
                                                           A fear.
                                                           A Hope.
A dream.

                                                           A truth.

It's pretending to be angry, so you don't have to;
                                Cry,
                                Let go.
An anger,
                For leaving us here.
                             For giving up.
                                         For seeing the light.
                                                     Without us.

For knowing that in the end, they chose death,
                     rather than pain.
                                             They chose heaven.
                                             They turned down life.
                                                           A change.
                                                           A chance?

An anger. A frustration.
                You should have stopped them.
                You should have been there.
You didn't say goodbye....So much anger.
You think about it,
                 over and over and over again.
        What could have gone differently?

Would it have been wrong to have asked you to stay?
                                Because of a need?
                                An inability to let go?
                                                    to say goodbye?
A fear?
             Of being alone?


One more chance......

                                     .....to say goodbye.



I love you Grandma. Miss you. Miss your smile.



~A Writer in a Nurse's Body




                         

Putting a pause on things

Hello everyone...

I lost wifi once I left Paris and therefore have yet to update you on the rest of my trip (London!). I just got home back to the USA and have found out that one of my beloved Grandmothers is no longer with us. Despite having full intentions on blogging tonight about London and then following that with a Europe reflection tomorrow sometime, I will not be doing either tonight and maybe not tomorrow...I just can't even think about Europe right now, honestly. I don't even want to look at my pictures. She passed when I was in Europe.


My grandmother lived in North Carolina and she was a very important figure in my growing up, despite being 10 hours away. Being so far, I only got to visit every couple of years or so, and looking back I wish I could change that now. But we always wish we could change things when its too late. All I can do now is pray and wish for her to be able to look down on us and that she is happy where she is now.

Sorry for the blogging interruption....maybe by the end of  this week...


I love you Grandma C <3 


~WNB

It's A Strange Thing to get Used to

Death, that is.

Today  I attended a funeral (long story, no questions), which had an open casket viewing. To pay your respects to the deceased, it is common to go up to the casket and view the deceased and say a prayer or well wishes or whatever you want to call it.

Well, looking at a human body, that has passed away is something most people will never be comfortable with or get used to. Not that anyone should. Except funeral directors. Or autopsists. Because its kind of their job. But for everyone else, its normal to feel uncomfortable. I don't feel uncomfortable, but it does create a strange feeling working with the dead or viewing the dead.

In a casket, for example, the body is dressed up, groomed...it just looks as if they are sleeping. They are even in a sleeping position. They look peaceful.

Then, your eyes begin to play tricks on you. Even on me, who has been around this topic for 5 years now. Here is my theory: Our brains are so wired to see people breathing when people are sleeping, that our brains actually trick us into thinking that we see the chest still rising, even as they lie peacefully in their casket. Our brains are so wired into thinking we see the normal "twitches" a person has when sleeping, that we think we saw them too. Its almost alarming, so much so that for a second we think- Did that person just breathe? And then you remember.

Our brains don't often get the chance to learn the sight of seeing a human body that isn't breathing. So this is a strange sight for our brain and it does not like it.

Death is a strange thing in the hospital, too. It is one thing to view the deceased in a casket. They are nicely dressed, peaceful. Well, I cannot put in words what it is like working with the deceased in the hospital. Some of the time they are a complete mess because they just suffered through a code, and most likely CPR. They have tubes in them, IVs, foleys (sometimes), sometimes they are bleeding somewhere or everywhere...there is a lot of things that could happen. And, sometimes, they didn't suffer through a code but died peacefully in their bed. Well, the hospital bed. But even so, they are in a hospital gown..their hair is messy, they are "hospital-y".

There is something fascinating in the emotions department that comes out of you when you have a deceased patient in front of you that you just had a conversation with an hour ago, or 5 minutes ago, or that morning, or your last shift....Its very strange. One minute they were telling about their grandchildren, and the next...

I had a patient that I had worked with my entire winter break, and she was one out of 3 that was still on the floor 2 weeks later when I came back to help on a weekend. She was in the hospital for about a month and a half total (she left to go home for a day or two). So that really gives the staff a chance to get to know a person. It is even more tragic witnessing death in the hospital when the patient was walking and talking and "independent" when you remember them being admitted, to them being completely bedridden, unresponsive and hallucinogenic and barely breathing in their last minutes of life...(which has nothing to do with the hospital stay, simply just the course of the disease).

It's another story completely when you, as an aide or nurse, are selected to do the post-mortem care. I won't go into details to bore or gross anyone out, but it is strange, I can tell you that. You are with someones beloved grandpa, or grandma, or parent, or child...just after their death. It is very important to treat all patients with extreme and utmost respect at this moment (in case you already didn't all the time anyway).

I think a lot of people get scared when going up to a dead person...whether it be at a wake or if they are a new aide or new nurse that hasn't had experience in this department yet. Why are they scared? Different reasons, sometimes. I think people feel scared of the unknown, scared perhaps because they have never been around a dead person before, or scared that the person will come back to life, or maybe scared that the person's ghost is watching you watch the body. (Call me strange, but I always think about that). I am one of those people that believes in spirits, ghosts, souls, etc., and I wouldn't doubt for a second that the spirit sticks around most of the time when they first leave their body. But who knows.

So that is my depressing blog, on death. And, as if this blog weren't long enough already, I wanted to include at the end here my first "real" (aka not written before college) short story. It was not assigned to be about death, the assignment was just to write about a moment that you learned an epiphany, or a moment when you learned something that changed you forever. And I chose to write about the first patient that touched my life- and how I took care of her after she passed. I used pseudo-names in the story, names are not real.  I was 18 or 19 when I wrote the story. I'm going to include it at the end of this, so it is purely optional to read. But, this blog is also about writing, and this is a story about nursing, too. So its a double whammy that fits not only into this post, but perfectly into this blog. So feel free to read it, and to those of you that do, thank you! And feel free to comment if you like it, as always.

With Love,

~A Writer in a Nurse's Body


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"Walls Made of Curtains"

The white latex gloves snapped as they wrapped around Lyn’s small sized hands. She threw her long brunette hair that laid upon the front of her scrubs into a messy bun and then took a deep breath as she stood before the curtain. She inhaled one last time, preparing herself to see her second dead body. Only this one had just died.

“Okay, I’m ready Melissa.” Lyn lightly touched the curtain in front of her as the two curtains that came together separated for her to enter the small make-shift room, walls made of curtain.

Melissa was leaning on the window-sill as she wrote Edith’s information on the body tag. She placed the body tag on Edith’s right big toe, and tied it really tight. At first, Lyn was worried that it would hurt Edith if it was too tight, cutting off the circulation to the foot.

Then she remembered, again.

Lyn took two steps over and touched Edith’s right pinkie, as she slowly let herself grab the whole hand. The top was cold to the touch, but the bottom still warm. She glanced at Edith’s watch that she was still wearing. It had only been an hour since she had passed. Lyn lifted the limp arm and unlatched the watch. It wasn’t right for a dead person to be wearing a working watch. It just reminded her that time went on without us. Time will always go on.

“Can I have that? I didn’t even see that. That goes in her valuables bag.” Said Melissa as she took the silver chain watch from Lyn’s open hand. Melissa then threw it in the plastic hospital bag and tied the top to enclose the belongings inside.

“What about everything else?” Lyn asked as she scanned the rest of the room. The faded red closet was open, there was Edith’s petite nightgown that she had specially ordered still hanging, and her small size 5 flat shoes beneath the gown.

“Only the valuables go with the body, you know that. Everything else is the family’s responsibility.”
But Edith doesn’t have any family, she thought to herself. Edith had told her that.

Lyn looked back at Edith and her small bag of valuables, “Well what the heck good does that do? Is Edith supposed to be guarding those items? Is that why they have to stay with her?”

Melissa finished zipping the bag, which was now just a giant-oversized plastic bag sitting on the still white linen on the wooden bed. It didn’t even resemble a body anymore, let alone Edith.

“Seriously Lyn. This is just the way it is.”

“Doesn’t she get to wear any clothes?”

Melissa shook her head, “They take care of that at the funeral home. The family arranges what she wears.”

Great, Lyn thought. Edith was going to be naked at her funeral.

“I guess so.” Lyn murmured.

There was a knock on the wooden door behind the curtain as the security guard entered the room, “Is she ready?”

“Depends on who you’re asking.” Lyn murmured.

“Yes Sir, Edith is ready.” Replied Melissa.