sea salt

What a privilege it was to talk with the Uncharted Living podcast crew about (what else?) death and dying.  This was my first time on a podcast, and as proof that nerves really do mess with your brain, I described a MOLST as "measures of life sustaining treatment" instead of its proper name, "medical orders of life sustaining treatment." (may my healthcare colleagues forgive me!) *note: the views and opinions expressed are mine and do not reflect those of my agency or any other person or organization* _________________________ While death is a certainty for all of us, we rarely talk about it for fear of facing our own mortality or being called morbid. We’d rather not think about it, thank you very much. In this episode, we talk with a licensed hospice nurse about the dying process, how it includes the patient but so many others who are left behind to grieve. We discuss what hospice entails, and that the role of a hospice nurse is not “simply changing bed pans and a...

Is it OK if I look at your feet?   I pulled off her socks, not surprised by the cool, swollen feet underneath. These are the feet of congestive heart failure, and I'd grown accustomed to seeing them; I gently pressed my finger into the skin to leave an indentation, estimating the scale of swelling based on how deeply I could indent. I inspected the heels, a common site for pressure wounds, relieved to feel the skin intact. Would you like me to rub some lotion into your feet?   She nodded eagerly, and with great effort reached down to the side pocket of her recliner and pulled out a bottle of Aveeno. I smiled as I rubbed the lotion into the thick lines of her heels, like dried up rivers of some ancient landscape; in between her toes, the dried skin flaking off; into the tops of her feet, gently redistributing the fluid; along the bottoms, using as much lotion as her skin would drink.  * I'd just started my clinical rotations in nursing school and was figuring out what I co...

 "I'm going back to Vietnam," I told my husband, pulling on my scrubs. I was referring to my new patient, a man I'd seen the day before and left his home feeling like I would never truly be able to explain what I'd seen or how I'd felt, and that nobody would really understand except the three of us in the house: the man, his wife, me. I don't pretend to know what it's like to be at war, but I do know what it feels like to have my senses overwhelmed, to be completely spent physically, emotionally, mentally...and then to hop back into the regular world of homework, dishes, birthday cards. Whiplash. Re-entry. I knocked. His wife hugged me. "I'm so glad it's you again," she said. He was exactly as I'd left him the day before. Exhausted, in agony, puddles under his feet as his body filled with fluid that had nowhere else to go except to leak out through his skin.  In nursing, we call this weeping .  My mind was racing. What next? Where...