My first-connection

Irene.  I remember her name as being Irene.  She was old.  REAL old.  Old as dirt, maybe older.  Old people didn’t scare me.  Not like they did when I was little.  When I was little, I  was forced to play the piano for them.  I hated the piano.  I hated the teachers, the lessons and my mother for making me do something I hated… but that never mattered.  If it was a job assigned to me, I did it.  It was expected I did it well, so I made sure I didn’t disappoint the expectations others made for me.  It was the least I could do to show how grateful I was for  all that was given to me by my parents.

However, this isn’t about Me, this is about Irene, and my brief time spent with her.  She was the first patient I had been assigned by my Nursing School instructors.  As part of the clinical application of the R.N. program I was parentally assigned to complete, ALL students were expected to attend ALL In-House practice of whatever  lessons were being taught in the classroom.  It was a brilliant approach, since the best way to learn IS by doing.  “Listen.  Watch.  Then do.”  Easy enough, even a child can learn how to follow a leader.  I liked how everything was considered Mandatory… it left no room for excuse.  I was free to follow orders, and it never had to be questioned by anyone, especially by those who didn’t know how needy I was to be Told what to do next.  I felt safe, working among complete strangers in a hospital where autonomy and healing was the goal.  I just resented I was told to become a nurse, and not allowed to explore my love for reading and writing.  So I cheated.  I attended all my classes and clinical-obligations and lived at home, like the Good Girl that I was… but I spent most of the lecture hours writing letters to the friends I lost when I was forced to leave college.

Irene was my specially-chosen-just-for-me Lab Experiment.  The Nursing Goal that day was to initiate effective communication.  “Ask open-ended questions, and write down whatever response your patient provides.”  <what if the patient won’t talk?>  “Then start with Closed-ended questions, those which can be answered with a “yes” or “no” response”.  <what if the patient still won’t talk?>  Then document: “pt does not respond”.  <okey-doke!>  I was given a task, a goal, and I knew how to approach the situation.  I was free to continue my list of letters I wanted to complete that day in class.

 Oddly enough, I can still hear the litany of the lesson: “when you ask a detailed question using the Open-Ended technique, you are allowing another person to engage in a conversation.”  I was amazed how difficult the concept seemed to some:  “When you ask a question, make sure you listen to the response.”  Not everyone will respond to pain in the same way, so not all efforts will work the same with each person.  Medicine is subjective and objective, so success is based on a personal experience with more trial and error, than facts or rules.  The less clues a person is able to provide, the  deeper an investigative approach needs to made if a person wants to know how or where the source of pain began.  Only at the source, the point of origin, can pain be healed.  Made perfect sense, so I accepted that as Law.  While most people scribbled notes, I was free to continue with the list of things I wanted to do before the day was over.  School was always as simple as that for me…  sit, listen, then do something else.  Learning was easy, provided math calculations were not involved.

 I was 19 when I started Nursing School, but I already felt as old as some of the residents in that Nursing Home where Irene was sentenced to spend her last days on Earth.  St. Vincent’s Nursing Home.  It used to be a Hospital, in it‘s former Glory Days.  I think it may have been where my brother was born… or my father was born… I’m not sure. Details like that have lost meaning to me.  All I know is the Nursing Home was not very unusual, in comparison to the many other nursing homes I had been “invited“ to perform one of those God-awful wretched piano recitals I had to endure for the sake of My Mother.  Did I mention how much I hated those damn bloody piano lessons?

Not all Nursing Homes smell like urine, only the ghastly old and neglected ones do.  Montclair didn’t have smelly nursing homes, just really lots of residents living in them.  “Living”.  Now that’s an odd term to use to describe a Nursing Home, since the waiting-list to enter one is based on the number of bodies that are removed by the coroner’s car each day.

Irene’s room did not smell of urine.  That was good.  She was sitting upright in a chair, unrestrained.  That was REALLY good.  She even managed her own toilet needs.  THAT was EXCELLENT!  My work was already done for me.  All I had to do was sit down, and introduce myself.

“Hi, my name is Kerry, I’ll be your student nurse for the morning.  How are you feeling today?”

I don’t recall what we discussed, I simply remember it was a lot.  I also remember I never saw her again.  I remember her name was Irene.  And she made me feel like I was the best thing that came into her life that crisp sunny fall day.

Today I will mourn the loss of a connection I felt with a woman I never knew.

I was born in October, and my mommy named me Wanda Dawn.