The woman at the well

There is an old Celtic tale about 5 sons of the Irish King Eochaid.  The sons were out hunting and got lost. They became tired and thirsty~ they set out in search of water. Each went a different way but all ended up, at different times, to the site of the woman beside the well. 

The tale tells that the woman guarding this well was hideous.  Blacker than coal was every inch of her. Her hair was a grey, wiry mass of substance that compared to a wild horse’s tail.   This hair appeared only attached at the top surface of her scalp.  Her nose was awry and held wide nostrils. Her eyes were red and smoke blurred.  Her center was a wrinkled and freckled belly that overtook warped, crooked shins, garnished with massive ankles and a pair of capacious shovels for feet and knotted knees.  Long livid nails escaped her hands. 

The oldest son of the King found the well first.  Standing before the hideous woman he asked for some water.  She told him the only way to get some water was to kiss her.  He refused, vowing he would rather die than kiss her and he turned away.  One after the other, three more brothers followed the path that led them to the woman at the well.  Each refused in repulsion to kiss the women and each of them turned away. 

Finally the fifth brother, the one called Niall, took up the quest and found the woman at the well.  Upon hearing the terms of the bargain, he agreed without hesitation not only to kiss her but also to embrace her.  When he had willingly done so, right before his eyes, the guardian of the well transformed from the distorted, hideous figure to a beautiful woman.  The woman introduced herself as “the King of Tara, Royal Rule.” 

She gave him the water and before he left the well she bestowed on him a blessing for himself and his children, that they should be graced with the Kingdom and highest of power. 

You see, Niall also saw the woman as the hideous figure that his brothers had seen but unlike his brothers he was guided by his deep and gentle heart, offering her loving-kindness rather than revulsion.  Take note from this tale, the other brothers were not cursed for turning away from the woman…instead they just remained parched, hard and dry. 

I read this tale in the book, Heal thy self by Saki Santorelli.  This simple tale spoke to me.  When I am at work I have a choice to see my patients in this very manner.  They come to me in many states of disarray…from physically repulsive to pristine…from angry to kind…from delusional to intact…and so it goes.  I wish I could say I always acted like the fifth brother and embraced each patient with my loving and gentle spirit…but I can say that when I do embrace them this way, my heart is forever changed…and when I don’t it is also changed…

When I choose to see beyond the physical imperfections, mental imperfections and bad behavior of certain patients and go to them with a kind and gentle spirit of caring I can see the change in them almost immediately~  Once we establish a kind exchange my heart is changed and I see them differently.  We are a culture of what we see… I pray that I will honor each patient as they are inside and that I will then be forever blessed. 

If you were to be completely honest with yourself…is there a certain patient population that causes you angst? Disgust? Fear? … without really knowing why?...

I had some reflection exercises recently in my Senior Seminar class that have caused me to look inside of my thoughts and my reactions to those very situations.

The exercise that recently got my attention was that of boundaries.  While reading the section many different thoughts were running through my mind…the boundaries I have set with my mother in order for us to have a relationship, actually ended our relationship all together because she was unable to NOT cross those boundaries over and over again without regard, and I at that point in my life was unwilling to loosen the lines of the boundaries I had made out of stubborn pride and need… maybe now…

Boundaries come into use for many different reasons…safety, security, independence…there are physical boundaries like fences and doors to keep people in or out....Rules of conduct and behavior are boundaries in civil codes of behaving. The boundaries I set with myself in my own behavior have been helpful but I didn’t ever think of boundaries as being a place of meeting and coming together~ like the shore line and the ocean…both needing each other to make the perfect picture of dependence and co-dependence in a good way.

The words that made me stop and think the most in my reading of, heal thy self, …that our roles as patients and practitioners are similar…that we are not just in a role…we are in a larger field of human connectedness~ of shared humanness.  Shared humanness…interesting. 

I tried to keep this concept in the forefront of my mind at work this week and it helped.  When one of our beloved female ER docs, who is scattered and slow but such a wonderful practitioner and patient advocate was driving me crazy because she was sooooo behind and patients were stacking up…I thought, we are in shared humanness right now and I will not get upset~  I instead re-organized her charts and kept her on task…she realized what I was doing and smiled at me with a nod and said, thank you…prior to this I would have re-organized her charts and made sure she realized I had done it and done it with some tude….

Yesterday I had another opportunity to realize my misunderstanding and my need for and about boundaries.  We have a population of alcoholics that frequent our ER. There is one man that can drive my emotions to a red hot steam in 5 seconds flat…I know this and I try to not take that gentleman and typically swap another nurses patient (one she is having a time with…) As I saw the name of the patient coming in via ambulance~ the immediate reaction that typically rises from me occurred…disgust.  I have thought about this over time and realized that this one man reminds me of my childhood and feelings of anger, repulsion and fear surface with those feelings…it took me a while to recognize this…

Just as quickly as the feelings surfaced the thought about shared humanness surfaced.  As I recognize that for the patient’s best interests and mine, letting another nurse take him is usually the right thing to do…yesterday I chose another option.  I took the chart and went to prepare the room for him.  I prayed.  I asked God to show me how to care about this person as His child…in our shared humanness…I asked God to show me what boundaries to place on his behavior and mine in our ER today without any of my own emotion behind them…typically and shamefully I would do the bare minimum with him and give nothing of myself while doing it…I asked to see the boundaries as shifting and moving as needed.

When the patient arrived in his usual state and with his usual rude, foul mouthed demands I watched him…I listened to my thoughts and let them pass without judgment…I felt my breathing quicken with my heart rate, I felt my face start to show disgust but I said to myself…shared humanness… I continued to let the paramedics get him off their stretcher and onto mine and I for the first time noticed something in me… fear…I could be him…my disgust came from the PTSD type recall of seeing my father drunk and acting in this way over and over again while growing up…my fear was no longer that I could be harmed because I was in control here, I had the power to make strict boundaries on this man’s behavior!  The fear that I recognized now was that I could have ended up like this man…it was in me, the compulsion to drink….he could be me…shared humanness….

I prayed continually as I assisted him to change, offered him a washcloth and soap to clean up…and tended to the carrying out of MD orders.  I prayed while he flung insults and threats at me and I continued to pray while I set boundaries that were fair and not out of my need…but both our needs…shared humanness…

I noticed that during my interactions with him I felt nauseous at times, SOB and irritated.  I felt my pulse race and my stomach clench.  I prayed for strength….so much of this patient and my guttural reactions were related not to him at all but to my cellular memory of home… BUT what did occur yesterday was the being present and being able to focus on the care of the patient despite my need to flee…I noticed my thoughts, and reflected on them.  I noticed the reactions physically and applied lavender oil to my wrists and neck…I breathed deeply and continued.   I will most likely continue to swap patients when he returns again…but I am thankful for the exercises in this book I am reading for class that are allowing me to slowly chip away at the protective layer that I have built over time and to understand why it is there…and flirt with the possibility of thinning it out!! 

How multifacited are you as a person?

I am many things.  I am a truly complicated person.  God infused me with many abilities and many emotions~ How amazing are you? Take a few minutes to get to know yourself again…

 I wanted to take the time to think about myself for a moment…not to be conceded or strange BUT because one of the homework assignment I had recently that had me meditating on an area of life that started me thinking about the wonder of God’s creation…the human.  Through thinking about this I hope to be able to see my patient’s as God’s creation as well and not just “the back pain in room 3”

Here goes…

I live in a body that is 5 feet 8 inches tall.  I have been this tall since 7^th grade and you can imagine the teasing I got about that. J I was a string bean for 18 years and thus called Olive Oyl on occasion…I also had no boobs until age 17 so I was also teased for that and called “president of the itty bitty titty committee”…I can laugh at that now.  I have dark brown hair by design by because of my fabulous hair dresser I now have blonde by hair designer!  J  My body serves me well most of the time, I am relatively healthy.  I had a heart defect at birth (PDA) but that has been fixed and the resulting right sided enlargement only causes minimal issues. (a little pulmonary edema).  I’ve gained some weight over time and I would love to lose it but it seems my lack of exercise love outweighs the wishing it would just go away idea.  This body can work a 12 hour nursing shift without barely sitting down, though not as easily as it used to.  This body birthed 2 children…has made love so many times I wouldn’t know how to count it…has endured 3 broken bones, several ankle sprains and many a heartache.  I can roller skate, ice skate and I have strong legs (inside joke).  This body can now perform yoga, to which it is very thankful for J.  You get the idea…

I have the capacity to love deeply and with much emotion, and I am happy about that…can you imagine if you didn’t have more than just a couple of emotions?,  or if you had to bridle them all the time?  …I have many, many emotions~ love, fear, sadness, grief, happiness, pleasure, annoyance, frustration, gratitude, anger, pity, confusion, curiosity and on and on all in the course of a day!

I still have an unbridled passion for my husband of 26 years (in May). I absolutely adore the relationship that he and I have.  He is my best friend…he knows everything about me and I do mean everything…and oh how that can sting~ but at the same time I can be me and that is a major blessing!!  My kids are grown but my love and appreciation for them has only increased with each passing year. We are now friends and that is so cool.  I truly know that I would lay down my own life for my family.  Our new grandson has brought out another kind of love from my heart that I didn’t even know was there! It amazes me how much love can be stored in the human heart. I have issues that need taking care of…and one day they will be I’m sure. Of course pain can be stored in the heart as well and yes I do have some pain in there.  I at times talk to a counselor and it helps.

 I am a woman, a wife, mother, grandmother, friend, daughter, sister, aunt, daughter in law, cousin, niece, student, fairy god mother to many little children in our life…I am a nurse, an artist and a writer. I am the daughter of the MOST HIGH GOD. I am a Christian. I am forgiven.  I have just learned to knit…but I cannot sew to save my life! I like to cook when I have time…but I only cook a few things well~ I for some reason enjoy watching cooking shows and I would love to have a world class kitchen with all the gadgets but I’m not sure why, lol…I love to decorate my house in new ways- often.  I am learning new things every day about myself and about nursing, which I love. I really like to drink wine and I love chips and salsa.  I’m not a sweet eater but I do like sour patch kids J.

I love the ocean, the beach and the way the sand feels between my toes.  I used to love to lay in the sun but now this 45 year old body gets WAY too HOT to do that anymore!  I have a problem with my feet getting too hot as well… it’s quite bothersome!  One day I want a house by the ocean or the lake…that is a goal of mine!  I want to go to Italy and Greece…and if it wasn’t so dangerous I would want to go to Israel.

I’ve done many types of nursing~ Med-Surge, Orthopedics, home health, hospice, diabetic educator and ER.  ER is by far my favorite~ it fits my personality the best. I have now found a new side of my personality in nursing that wants to learn more about herbs, natural remedies and less interventional care and more preventative care! The rest of my nursing career will most likely be in this direction.

So do you get the picture?  Every patient that comes to be cared for by us nurses is a person…a complicated and multifaceted person.  It is so easy to get lost in the business of the day and do what comes naturally to us and that is to say, “I need some pain meds for the broken arm in room 3 or the husband of the heart attack in room 8 is on the phone.”  I am guilty of this.  I want to break myself of this. 

So~ who are you?  I’d love to have some of you write up a few paragraphs of just who you are!!  Enjoy thinking on it for a few minutes.

Hard Lesson Learned

I was supposed to fly to Virginia on Jan. 13th with my son to be with my daughter, her husband and baby, (my 7 week old grandson) BUT I contracted strept. throat and became quite ill rather fast on Jan. 12th.  By 8pm on the 12^th I was having bilat. ear pain, was feverish, chilled and having a hard time swallowing.  By the time 330am on the 13^th rolled around and I was supposed to get in the shower and get ready to leave, my fever was 102 and I ached all over!  Needless to say I’m still home and NOT with my beloved children and grandchild in Virginia.

The lesson learned you ask?  Stress and lack of Self-care WILL make you sick…and you WILL end up missing out on life’s fun during that time!

Prior to going back to college to obtain my BSN, I had not been introduced to the subject of nursing burnout and self-care. I have since been educated on the crisis of burnout in our nursing profession and one of the biggest weapons against burnout being self-care. Nurses as well as women (double jeopardy if you are a female nurse!) tend to put other people’s needs ahead of their own.  We are taught this concept as young girls and we have it reinforced in nursing school! (Up until now that is) The other lesson that we are taught is that if we do not put other people’s needs ahead of our own we are NOT nice girls…hence if you take your breaks at work you are not tending to the needs of your patients and if you take your breaks during a busy day…you are a slack off!

Nursing educators and theorists have been writing about the effects of stress on the nurse and the eventual burnout that occurs from that repeated, prolonged stress for many years.  Self–Care is now a term used to describe a variety of things a nurse can do to relieve stress and thus bring more balance and peace to our nursing lives…thus bringing us out of burnout or keeping us from becoming burnt out.

Now “taking care of myself” was certainly something I always thought I did~ you know…sleeping, having fun, eating right most of the time…etc.  The term Self-Care encompasses a much bigger meaning than just taking care of myself. It means realizing that I am worth taking care of~ that if I do not take care of myself chances are no one will do it for me~ that in order for me to perform at my highest and best level I have to infuse peace, fun, love  and balance as well as proper nutrition and sleep. It also means that I need to have boundaries and limits around my life…work hard AND play hard…give love and receive love…be creative and expressive.  It also means that during a 12 hour work day I MUST eat and rest in order to recharge…I could also inhale some lavender and orange incense to promote relaxation or energy as I need it. 

Another area that I have been learning about in the realm of Self-Care is being present…present in the moment~ Instead of running to catch up with my thought, allowing my brain to observe my thought without judgment and then moving on to the next thought, allowing my heart to feel the pain, the sorrow or the fear and then letting it pass.  I tend to stuff things during my work day, (and in my home life)…in order to keep moving on to the next patient and the next issue.  Once in a while I have a patient or family issue that forces me to stop~ observe~ feel and be present.  These moments are the most rewarding so why do I run from them most of the time???

I can honestly say, as I have in this blog, that I have been in varying stages of burnout during my 21 year nursing career.  When I began instituting self-care measures a year ago I felt the burnout lift and shift to a less severe burn. (Maybe it is now just smoldering but no longer a burn).  I learned Reiki and went to yoga at least twice a week and I started eating better and drinking less wine.  I felt happier and more able to face the long 12 hour ER shifts.  At work I started taking my breaks for the full time and trying to get off the floor…I brought lavender and orange scents to work to sniff during the day for the calming or energy effects and I ate more healthy foods.

During the last several weeks I have let that slip greatly.  I’ve been eating poorly and drinking more wine again at night “to de-stress” and sadly the yoga went to the wayside.  I also have been allowing an emotional issue in my life to control me and to worry me…hence I let my energy level dip…my defenses break and just when I needed my health to be pristine…WHAM!!!  It wasn’t. 

I will take this illness as a learning moment.  As painful as the moment is…it is necessary to learn that in order to be our best we have to give ourselves the best care!  We can only give what we give ourselves and we can only be as strong as the strength we infuse ourselves with. 

Self-Care…a much needed reminder for myself this week. 

A shout out to hard working women.

Today as I thought back on my aunt’s 60^th birthday party I realized that much more could be celebrated from that day.  My aunt Alice is an amazing woman, someone I have admired my whole life.  She has been a guiding influence for me since I was a young girl. I was blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with her and her family as I grew up and thus was blessed with her time.  She has been a nurse since her early 20’s…ICU the majority of her career.  I loved watching her get ready for work…she always took her time to look “professional” and her crisp, white uniform was always pressed with starch. Her trimmed nails were always painted a beautiful red or burgundy color, and …she wore makeup, lip gloss was a must!  While she prepared for work her hair was in rollers and then she would brush it out and put on her cap.

 It’s funny what you remember from being a kid watching from that view point.  What I know now of course is that she took pride in her appearance and she wanted her patients to know that she cared for herself and therefore she would be able to care for them.  I loved listening to her work tales~ the patient’s always sounded so interesting and though I didn’t understand her medical jargon I knew I wanted to be just like her.

The other celebration as I think about the party is the rest of my female relatives that were present.  We come from hard working stock!!  The woman we all descended from, Grammy Abby, was a child bride, worked hard her whole life raising a large family…her younger marriage she worked nights at the stick mill and then took care of the babies, the cooking and the laundry during the day…..every woman in this family has been a hard worker!  The women at the party are aunts and cousins, we are wives and mothers… and we represent the middle class working woman~ there were 4 nurses among us, a teacher, a social worker and a physical therapist.  The rest of our female clan who couldn’t be there includes more social workers, another nurse, a family counselor, a budding doctor, another teacher…and I’m sure I’m forgetting someone!

As I posted photos from the party I felt such pride in the women of our family…the heritage of hard work and character. (The men are a whole other story for another time!! ) I watch my daughter and my baby cousins raising their little families with such grace and hard work!  They are the next generation of women who are contributing to our society in such amazing ways.  They love fiercely and they give to their families with all their ability…they then go out into the world and work hard to provide for others in professions that are honorable and time honored.  We have been blessed by God in so many ways~

Thank you Ladies of the family for being such wonderful women~ To the older gals…thank you for your example and to the younger one’s…keep up the good work!! Love you all.

A few scriptures to ponder.

Be diligent and hard-working (Proverbs 14:23)

Work is good and given by God (Genesis 2:15).

Be skilled at what you do (Proverbs 22:29; 1 Corinthians 4:12; Ephesians 6:5-8), and do it as you were serving the Lord (Colossians 3:22-24)