My heart needed to heal more than I realized, and I feel as though I'm making the last several strides to get there. While I will never fully be "healed," my journey is no longer an uphill battle and I'm thankful for that.
It's funny how your brain and heart takes time to relax from your struggles...and WHAM! Just when you start to get comfortable, something rattles your cage to remind you you're not finished grieving.
Without sharing too many details, I have been in the middle of a situation in which I believe a family is giving up on a loved one rather than providing her with the proper means to be able to rehabilitate further. Just when I thought we had finally agreed on a plan to provide her with enough strength to participate in rehab, they decided to cancel it and initiate hospice care instead.
Much to my surprise, this crushed me. I truly am shocked at how I am reacting to this decision, because I knew in the back of my mind this may be the route they chose for their loved one. However, as a healthcare professional who knows personally the boundary of "too far gone" versus someone who has the potential to improve, I felt as though we could make some progress with her. I really believed in her and I was prepared to fight for her. Unfortunately, it seems as though I was the only one.
It is very crushing to be stopped in your tracks when you feel as though you're doing the right thing for someone. All I can think about is my mom.
You learn quickly working in the long-term care industry that many of these people do not have advocates. Knowing this, I do everything in my power to care for them and be aggressive in my care when it is appropriate.
Today, it was appropriate.
Realizing the intense sadness I felt for my patient when I realized I would have to put a stop to my treatment, I tried to examine what in the world caused me to feel this way. Plain and simple: I do not have a mom to stand up for anymore. And all I can do now is stand up for other people's moms. Sad. But true. The thought of my mom laying in bed without anyone to help her makes me sick, so instead of playing the whole "woe is me" card, I have decided to use this in my profession to the best of my capabilities. Unfortunately, a wrench can easily get thrown in your plans when the family decides to call the whole thing off.
Looking back on everything that has happened, I know now why I work in this field and why I care so much for my patients. It is all thanks to my mom, and although she has been gone for over a year and a half, she continues to work on me in different ways. I can't explain how immensely happy I am that we gave her a fighting chance, and although she went down, she went down with a good, hard fight. She wouldn't have had it any other way. If I am ever in her position, I hope to be half as strong and put up at least half the battle as she did.
My opinion of choosing to end her suffering has not wavered, and today only strengthened the choices we made to help her along the way. We pushed it just far enough to try and get her through her infection, but in the end, we had enough sense and love to let her leave the world with dignity and knowing she did a job well done.
Not a day goes by that I don't think about her smile or the way she used to look at me when one of our favorite songs would come on the radio in the car. I miss our shopping trips, our matinee movies, our drives to Amish country, and our Saturday mornings laying in bed watching the Food Network. I miss the smells in our kitchen, the annoyance of her hair dryer at 5:30 in the morning, and the sound of her high heels walking down the isles of the grocery store. I miss seeing her black Coach purse sitting in our kitchen, her reading glasses sitting on the night stand, and little cards or small, goofy surprises waiting for me on my bed when I got home from school.
I loved knowing that an any moment, I could call her on the phone, even if it was the sixth time we would talk that day. I miss her voice so much it is physically painful and to look at pictures of her doesn't nearly do her pretty face justice. I want to touch her and smell her hairspray and her perfume.
I want to lay on her chest in the ICU, even though she was already gone, because that was the last moment I would ever get to feel her again. I would take that moment rather than nothing at all, like now. There are so many monumental things I miss about her and so many little quirks of hers that I crave.
I hope that my patient's children who have made this decision for her care have enjoyed enough of the things I have enjoyed about my mom because when they're gone, they're gone for good.
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