Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul: Second Dose

by Jack Canfield

  Janeen felt sadness on the day the patient heard, “We have to amputate all ten toes.” But after surgery, she knew it was another miracle that the woman’s legs were saved.

  Saving the rest of her entailed a total of seventeen more surgeries. Many times, she had come close to dying. Once, a yeast infection developed in her blood, nearly killing her. Twice her ventilator alarm sounded, signaling that she wasn’t receiving oxygen.

  All of this brought unexpected emotions to the new grad. She worried the young lady would be forever dependent on the ventilator. All attempts to wean her off it had failed.

  But again Janeen’s prayer was answered. One day a doctor was changing her tracheal tube and was unable to insert the new one. He exclaimed, “I can’t believe it, your incision has closed, and you’re breathing fine!”

  Another celebration day arrived three months later when the patient was transferred from ICU to a recuperative unit.

  Janeen promised the patient and her mother, “I’ll come to visit.” And she continued visiting when the patient began rehabilitation two weeks later.

  After completing two more months of rehab, with her left leg one inch shorter than the right, the young woman finally hobbled out of Memorial Hospital. Now being called a “walking miracle,” she and Janeen kept in contact.

  A few months later, Janeen was thrilled to have her former patient as a guest at her wedding.

  Nine years passed, and again she was thrilled as she watched the “walking miracle” march down the aisle to also be wed.

  At the reception, Janeen enjoyed visiting with Sibylle, this time for a joyous reason.

  And to this day, as a writer and speaker, I’m still grateful that Janeen is my cherished friend! Through my nine more operations, Janeen has continued to be my prayer warrior and encourager.

  Vanessa Bruce Ingold

  John Doe

  I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty.. . . This is my highest and best use as a human.

  Ben Stein

  I was a home health nurse coming home after an assignment when I came upon a small white car that had flipped onto its top and was resting in the middle of a deserted, poorly lit county road. I jumped from my car just as a middle-aged man crawled out.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I think I’m okay. Just shook up, but I think I hit someone on a bicycle back there! I swerved to miss him and that’s when the car rolled.”

  The shaken driver pointed down the darkened road in the direction from where I had just traveled. I asked a passerby to call 911 and started down the roadside ditch in search of the bicycler. Approximately 200 feet later, I came across the body of a large, muscular, blond male, who looked to be in his midthirties, clad only in his tennis shoes and shorts, lying facedown in the grass and weeds.

  I checked for a pulse, but could not find one. I yelled for help to log-roll him onto his back so I could recheck for a pulse. Another passerby helped me turn him, being careful to keep his spine aligned. The injured man was bleeding from his mouth and ears. When I still couldn’t locate a pulse, I initiated CPR, and was rewarded with a return of a pulse by the time the rescue crew arrived. The man was taken immediately to University Medical Center, the only trauma-one center located in downtown Jacksonville, Florida.

  Several days later, I noted in the local paper that a young man fitting the description of the one I had resuscitated had died after being struck by a car while on his bicycle. When I went to visit my parents and brother in Brunswick, Georgia, I recounted my story of trying to save his life. This was at the height of AIDS awareness when its dire consequences were felt to be a certain death sentence. I have a nervous habit of biting the inside of my mouth, so I said to them, “I don’t know anything about the young man, except for his name. I should probably be tested for AIDS in six months or so.”

  I tried not to worry as I went on with my life, but the nagging threat remained.

  Several weeks later I received a phone call from a woman who identified herself as the wife of the man I had attempted to resuscitate.

  “How did you find me?” I asked, dumbfounded. No one at the scene had taken my name or my phone number.

  The woman explained that she had a first cousin who was an electrician at the navy base in another state where my brother, also an electrician, had been discussing the accident. My brother mentioned his sister had resuscitated a “John Doe” who’d been struck by a car while riding his bicycle, and the cousin realized that it was his relative who was the victim.

  “Thank you so much for trying so hard to save him,” the woman said through obvious tears. “I’m a 911 dispatcher, so I know a little about how that must have been for you.” She paused. “He was a wonderful man; I want you to know about him.”

  She went on to share how they’d been best friends since they were twelve years old. “He gave me a cigar wrapper as a ring to show his devotion,” she chuckled. “We were married for seventeen years. He was a baseball coach for our three boys and a volunteer fireman. Sometimes he had trouble sleeping at night and would take a bicycle ride to unwind; that’s what happened on the night of his accident.”

  I heard her catch her breath before she recounted how he’d never regained consciousness and was brain-dead. The family decided to removed life support and fulfill his wishes to become an organ donor.

  “Thanks for resuscitating him . . . you helped make his wish come true.”

  Then, as if she’d been reading my mind, she added, “We loved only each other, exclusively, our whole lives. You needn’t worry about anything affecting your health.”

  A wave of relief washed over me.

  Only nurses could believe that all these mysterious coincidences could not be coincidences at all.

  L. Sue Booth

  A Heart for Haiti

  It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

  Charles Dudley

  My dream became reality when the Boeing 737 landed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Fifteen years earlier, as a teenager, I’d come to this impoverished island on a mission trip. Ever since, I’d longed to return as a nurse to help these people with no access to quality health care.

  I packed as many questions as clothes for this trip. Will we be safe? Where will we stay? As a pediatric and neonatal intensive care nurse, will I be able to assist in surgery? How will my family manage without me for a week? Can I really make a difference?

  I quickly learned our hosts would keep us very safe. The Haitian pastor and his wife, who run Mountain Top Ministries, go the extra mile to put their guests at ease— even a spoiled American like me. We slept on comfortable beds and ate tasty, healthy Haitian food.

  The village of Gramo the, about eleven miles southeast of Port-au-Prince, had suffered extreme poverty for years. When Mountain Top Ministries began, the villagers, sustained by meager farming, had no school, no church, and no employment prospects. These talented, smart, family-minded people were trapped in a life with no opportunities— or hope. By the time our medical team arrived, the Haitian pastor had started a school, a church, and a small clinic. Employment and hope were on the rise.

  We worked in a cinder-block building with open windows and no electricity, treating children with scabies, worms, and other parasites. Adults came with high blood pressure, diabetes, and numerous medical and surgical needs. We brought with us medications unavailable in this part of Haiti.

  Our team of eighteen included three doctors, four nurses, and eleven nonmedical personnel to serve where needed. My good friend Karen, who had recently retired, came with a desire to help the forgotten poor. Both of us felt a little nervous. She had no medical training, and I wondered if I could step into the surgical assisting role. Soon we both felt comfortable with the diverse challenges.

  The third day of patient care, Sonia, a beautiful nineteen-year-old, presented with a huge infected c
yst on her neck. The mass, about the size of a baseball, protruded above her clavicle and extended to her larynx. Through our interpreter, we learned the lesion had appeared several years earlier. A Haitian doctor removed it, but it returned after a few months. Sonia then sought the care of the voodoo witch doctor who treated it with traditional methods. It worsened. Ostracized by her village, Sonia struggled to survive.

  I assessed her condition. Pus dripped from the infected cyst, producing a putrid odor. With no access to bandages, Sonia had covered it with a leaf to absorb the chronic drainage. But she couldn’t cover—or escape from—the smell.

  When the surgeon examined Sonia, he knew he must excise the cyst. Karen and I prepped and draped her neck. Dr. Kothari injected 1 percent lidocaine with epinephrine around the area. He held the scalpel, paused a moment, put on a mask with a full visor attached, and continued. As he made the horizontal incision, a stream of yellow fluid shot up, covering his entire visor.

  A powerful stench filled the clinic—and sent Karen running! The surgeon replaced his visor and completed the half-hour surgery. After he finished the last stitches, Sonia sat up and smiled. Through an interpreter, we explained the post-op instructions. I handed her the package of dressings, antibiotics, and pain medications, and gave her a hug. Then my own emotions surprised me. Although glad to have given her something she could not have otherwise received, I felt sad that I’d never see her again.

  One year later, my husband and I led another medical team to Haiti. During the week of clinic, we toured the village and noticed the church choir practicing, so we took a few minutes to relish a native Creole song. Drawn to a lovely voice, I observed a young lady in the front row. I saw a horizontal scar on her neck. There, right in front of me, stood Sonia!

  As soon as the song was over, I rushed up to talk to her. She smiled proudly, displayed her scar, and told us about the changes in her life since we helped her. She’d responded well after surgery, and the cyst did not return. She married and became a mother. Sonia also experienced spiritual healing with faith in Jesus and her eyes sparkled when she told us how she and her husband actively participated in church work.

  I smiled as a great peace and joy accompanied me back to the clinic. As I contemplated our work there, I realized the results were far more than medical. Not only was Sonia’s life enriched, so was mine.

  Anna M. DeWitt

  as told to Twink DeWitt

  [EDITORS’ NOTE: To learn more about and support Mountain Top Ministries, see www.mountaintopministries-haiti.org. ]

  MERCI

  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

  Margaret Mead

  She was five years old when she made the trip from Czechoslovakia to the United States of America with her mother, sister, and brother. Helen still remembers meeting her father, waiting for them at Ellis Island, as they came through on the Queen Mary. He fought against the Bolsheviks at the age of sixteen as a soldier in the Ukrainian army. Near the end of the Second World War he decided to immigrate to the United States, a country he called “the country of last hope.” He loved the freedom in the United States, but he and Helen’s mother spoke sadly of their native homeland where they left everything, family and friends, to escape a totalitarian regime. Helen grew up hearing so many horror stories about people in need because of war. That’s likely why she became a nurse.

  In early 1991, her operating room manager at the University of Virginia said, “Helen, I’d like you to take on a little project.”

  “Okay,” Helen naively agreed. “What’s up?”

  “Our nineteen operating rooms here are generating too much waste . . . clean stuff they haven’t used . . . and it’s very expensive to incinerate. With your twenty years in the OR, you have the knowledge and experience to figure out what to do with it all. ”

  So for a year, Helen collected clean medical supplies from all their operating rooms and donated them to missions. She researched the issue of RMW (regulated medical waste) and spoke to every expert she could find on this issue. She was appalled to learn that more than 2.4 million tons of hospital waste is generated in the United States annually, with the operating rooms being the largest waste generators.

  “This is gold waste,” she said, coining her own new phrase.

  Helen worked four ten-hour days in the operating room, then spent countless hours networking with people on behalf of missions. Before she could say, “How did I get myself into this?” she had formed MERCI: Medical Equipment Recovery of Clean Inventory.

  MERCI began receiving wish lists from many small mission groups. Helen never promised anything to anyone, but she did promise to work as hard as she could to fill their requests.

  For years she sorted supplies after work, every day and on weekends. In July 1995, she was given one day a week for her “little project.” By 1997, MERCI had a steady stream of volunteers helping to sort, and the results have been beyond their wildest imaginations.

  Since Helen started this “little project,” MERCI has captured and diverted more than 350 tons of clean medical supplies valued at $75 million, and sent them all over the world. Another 50-plus tons have been donated to the University of Virginia research labs and to surgeons’ mission trips.

  When a local private hospital switched to powder-free gloves, they donated several skids of powdered gloves for a physician to ship to his sister hospital in the Ukraine. “In the Ukraine,” he said, “doctors are doing rectal exams without any gloves.”

  When MERCI shipped 6,000 pounds of supplies to a hospital in Lithuania, a nearby hospital came up with 80,000 more pounds for them! Helen networked with a mission who paid to ship all 86,000 pounds. Soon after, another contact donated $200,000 of medical supplies to a Russian endeavor, then paid to ship the supplies there.

  When she heard a clinic in Haiti needed a sterilizer, Helen wrote for nine months to a supplier who finally donated one.

  Christian Relief, Advancing the Nations, Helping Hands, Operation Smile, Crosslinks, and Equipping the Saints are only a few of the many missions that have received medical goods from MERCI.

  A nurse who helped Helen sort supplies for ten years saw a need for a hospital in Bolivia. MERCI donated thousands of pounds to this effort. Eventually, with the help of donations, the nurse bought a hospital in Bolivia and had the grand opening in July 2002. The story got even better when a local pediatric surgeon and the hospital donated free services to perform an operation on a small Bolivian child who suffered with an imperforated anus.

  Over the years, Helen has presented the work of MERCI at the National Institutes of Health, and to the National Association of Physicians for the Environment, where MERCI was cited as a best practice. She has sat on a task force on Medical Waste Minimization per the request of her congressman. She spoke at Health Care Without Harm conferences, the Environmental Protection Agency Region III Environmental Colloquium, and to the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. She was asked to help with a humanitarian initiative and to submit a proposal on how a MERCI-like template can be used at the federal level.

  Before she retires in a few years, she’s on another mission— to get every hospital in the United States to adopt a MERCI program. Helen says, “Can you imagine the good they could do if every unit on every hospital joined in?

  “I pray our nation never comes under attack, has an influenza crisis, or suffers a grave natural disaster. FEMA, the Red Cross, and other relief organizations would not be able to provide enough first-aid supplies to the masses. But if there were a MERCI-like program throughout the United States, it would be the conduit for clean medical supplies to every local church in every community.”

  Helen’s MERCI program still has no budget and the office is still in her home. She still works in a small area off of a loading dock. But she’s confident that when her sister-and brotherhood of nurses learn about MERCI, they’ll have a warehouse, we
bsite, and worldwide relief!

  Helen French

  as told to LeAnn Thieman

  [EDITORS’ NOTE: To learn about MERCI and how it can be implemented at your health care facility, visit www.merci-medicalsupplies.com. ]

  A Relay of Control

  Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.

  Euripides

  It was with sadness and dread that I received a phone call from one of our hospital discharge planners telling me a patient, Joyce, had gone home and wanted me to call her. Joyce was a former coworker with me in another agency and was, ironically, their first hospice nurse.

  I knew Joyce had been living with breast cancer for the past five years and had undergone a bone marrow transplant and multiple courses of chemotherapy. I had renewed my relationship with her a few years earlier when she was chairperson for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. Our hospice team participated in this twenty-four-hour fund-raiser. Joyce’s energy and enthusiasm were contagious.

  I called this wonderfully vivacious and funny lady and agreed, with a heavy heart, to come to her home. She said she understood that I managed the hospice program and would be coming in that context.

  The next day I visited her and spent about three hours with her and her mother. Her husband, Steve, came home on his lunch break and we talked at length about Joyce’s disease and the services of hospice. Joyce was not ready to give up the fight. She was only forty-seven years old (my age), a wife, and the mother of three young children. She was still convinced she would beat this disease. About a week later, after several more calls from family and friends, Joyce agreed to hospice care. She asked if I would be her nurse and I reluctantly told her I could not, because as the manager, I wouldn’t be able to give her my full attention. However, I would come and see her as her friend.