“Honey, That’s Not My Job.”
What an encounter with a nurse taught me about truly seeing people.
Do you remember what kind of books you liked as a child?
Do you remember all your teachers’ names from elementary and middle school? What about junior high?
Do you remember who made it to your wedding or not?
I really can’t answer all those questions for myself. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t remember a lot of details about my previous life experiences. If you give me some context and I think about it for a while, I can painstakingly hash out a few more details. But to pull specific stories and examples out of my head can really be a challenge for me. I just don’t remember.
My 8-year-old daughter asked me today what some of my favorite books were to read when I was her age. I was a voracious reader all of my childhood (and still am), but I could only come up with a handful of books I read and enjoyed. If I tried to name off my school teachers from kindergarten to high school, there would be quite a few gaps. Same with my college instructors. I like to think I actually was paying attention because I always had good grades, but I honestly can’t remember some of my teachers’ names. I really am sorry, teachers. I have no trauma I’m trying to block out or hopefully don’t have some undiagnosed memory problem. I suppose I don’t routinely relive or dwell on most of what has happened to me in the past, and that often makes it harder to conjure up the details of what happened.
Sometimes it is comical to contrast that with my husband’s remembrances of his life. He can literally tell you specific assignments from his school days, and can recount astonishing detail from a trip to Washington D.C. that he took when he was six years old. We’ve argued a few times about whether so-and-so made it to our wedding. And when we pull out the photo album to settle the score, he is always right.
But despite it being almost a decade ago, I remember exactly what happened and exactly how I felt the day a nurse said to me, “Honey, that’s not my job.”
But let me back up a bit. In the fall of 2009, just four months after my wedding, my previously healthy mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As a 58-year-old schoolteacher, she thought she had picked up a stomach virus from one of her kids. But after almost two weeks of lingering abdominal pain, she made a doctor’s appointment, and within 48 hours, she had biopsy-confirmed pancreatic cancer and a referral to an oncologist. It was pretty quickly apparent that, like most pancreatic cancer victims, she did not have a good outlook. “Take chemo and you may get a few more weeks than if you didn’t. At best, a few more months,” said the doctors, so she took chemo and we knew we were measuring time together in weeks to months.
We were a fortunate family. All of us kids were adults by that point. My parents had sat my brother, my sister, and me down years earlier and had the hard but necessary conversation about exactly what they would and would not like done if they ever were faced with a catastrophic situation. They had good insurance coverage and were financially stable. The school system found a long term replacement for my mom over the weekend after her diagnosis. She spent two days transitioning her classroom to a new teacher and then “retired.” A family friend/photographer graciously came over and took professional photos of all of us for free. We were supported from all sides of society, which was incredibly beautiful. There was deep sadness, but there was no crisis, no fighting, no wringing of hands over petty things. We were a united family facing this head-on, but also very realistic about what was likely to come.
Fast forward a few months, and the disease unrelentingly took its brutal toll. My mother continued to decline. The nausea was crippling. The pain, extreme. She had never been a large woman, but now she was a whisper of a person. I somehow managed to complete my graduate degree to become a nurse practitioner while making frequent flights to cover the 800 miles to visit my parents. My sister is also a registered nurse, and we did the best we could to assist my parents in the complexities of cancer treatment. My brother did all he could while continuing on in college.
There is nothing glamorous about cancer. And when the cancer is in your abdomen, it is just downright gross. Eventually one of my mom’s tumors grew enough to where it was compressing her large bowel, making it more and more difficult for her to go to the bathroom. We had entered palliative care by this point, and while we knew any sort of procedure was only a band-aid at best, a large bowel obstruction is ridiculously painful and a horrible way to die. We agreed to allow the doctors to perform a limited procedure to place a colonic stent, just enough to open to bowels to allow evacuation, though it would do nothing to address the cancer. It was supposed to be an outpatient procedure.
It was so late in the day by the time the procedure was complete, the doctor decided to keep my mom in the hospital overnight to make sure all was well before sending her home. I had flown in that day to be around for as long as I could, and I took the overnight shift at the hospital as the most fresh-faced of my weary family members.
The stent worked. Reeaaally well. But with the effect of procedural drugs hanging on and the overall debilitated state of my mother, she wasn’t able to make it to a bedside commode or toilet. And without too much detail for the faint-hearted reader, it was a royal mess. But I already had years as a bedside nurse under my belt, so I was no stranger to “code brown” messes. I silently figured, “Why bring in any other nurses to get her and the bed cleaned up? She’s already humiliated.” I saw a pile of linens on a chair already in the room, so I got to work. A good twenty to thirty minutes later, the bed was neatly made with crisp hospital corners, and my mom was exhausted but sparkling head to toe. I had her wrapped in towels when I realized the only thing missing was a new gown. The whole event really wasn’t a big deal and if I had had a gown for her I wouldn’t have played this event over in my head countless of times over the last 9+ years.
I was just about to stick my head in the hall to ask for a gown when a nurse strolled in with a computer on wheels. I saw her RN name badge. I think she just wanted to lay eyes on her patient to ensure she was alive because she didn’t attempt to accomplish anything while she was there. Smiling, I briefly explained what had happened, but, no worries, I had already cleaned everything up and all I needed was a new gown!
Without even looking at me, she flippantly waved her hand and said, “Honey, that’s not my job. You’re going to have to wait for the aide to come around.”
And somewhere in England, Florence Nightingale turned over in her grave.
But I personally just stood there and looked back at her. For one of the few times in my life, I actually was shocked speechless. She punched a key or two on her laptop on wheels, and then she was gone. I stared at the door as it shut behind her.
I sat down on the chair. Did she really just say that to me? Getting a gown is beneath her? Only aides can hand out gowns?? She could have told me where they were and I could have gotten it. Did she call me honey?! I just saved her a half an hour of dirty work by doing her job for her! These thoughts and a few more rushed through my head in a matter of seconds.
I got up, wandered around the hall until I found a linen cart, grabbed a gown with printing just like the ones at the hospital where I worked in a different state, and snapped it on my mom so she wasn’t sitting there naked as a jaybird under the sheets. The rest of the stay was uneventful, and the next morning we went home, where my mom would die surrounded by her family a few weeks later.
I’ve thought a lot about the exchange with the nurse since it happened. She was rude, yes, but people have been rude to me before and since, yet it didn’t stick with me like this has. Maybe it hit home because I am a nurse and what she said just goes against so much of what is ingrained in me.
When I boil it down, I think what bothered me the most about that statement, besides its rudeness, was that we were totally unseen. She was checking the box to verify her patient was alive, but she didn’t see us at all. She didn’t see a suffering lady near the end of her life that just needed a little dignity, if a hospital gown can provide such lofty goals. She didn’t see a daughter who had traveled all day, weighed down by the whole tragic situation that was just so sad, who really had tried hard to make it better. She completely missed us. If my mom and I had even been acknowledged in the slightest way, I truly believe I would not have thought another thing about it.
Maybe it is a good thing this little exchange happened. I’ve told the story to dozens of nursing students and new nurses on orientation, admonishing them to just see their patients. I’m telling it to you now, hoping somehow this trivial story makes it outside that modest hospital and the world can be a slightly better place because of it. I’m telling the story to myself, once again, in hopes I won’t forget that small things can have a big impact, not just to a patient in my care but every person I come across.
Make eye contact. Just look at them and take a breath. Ask how they are. Do things that “aren’t my job” if possible. Try to get rid of the noxious attitude that tries so hard to delineate what my job is and what it isn’t. And even if I need to find someone else to carry out a task I can’t do right now, acknowledge another’s situation. Hold a little space for their experience. Channel my inner Mr. Rogers to really see the person in front of me and maybe ten years from now my words won’t hold a sting for them, but be something they remember with a smile on their face.
