Things Only a Nurse Like Me Will Tell You

Chapter 6
Death and Faith

“Please, love them enough to let them die,” and “allow them to die with some dignity”, these are my pleas. In all my years of Nursing the main thing I have learned is that we are ALL going to die. No one knows the time schedule, but it is inevitable. And there is no justice or rationale that I have seen. People who are rude and obnoxious as well as saints have the same life expectancy, and that is an unknown. When I put Death and Faith together it is because without Faith, Death is a feared and different thing. I know there are no atheists at Death, all with no faith are searching or scared, I see it daily as I am frequently with people at their Death. I think that is because your soul is ready and waiting to escape its failed vessel and ‘It’ knows the truth. I’m sure we all have felt things in your Soul, when it is an unsinkable faith in what you know to be the truth. That, I believe is in your Soul, many feel the seat of which is located behind your heart.
Since Death is inevitable and Faith is needed to be comfortable with dying I knew I needed to explain to you how I have developed a Faith, why I feel these things are at least possible, and how that even brings an expectancy or anticipation of Death, not fear of it. Not that I want to die now, I love my life and have much more to do and see, but I want to go forward too, and because of my beliefs and how I live with what I have learned, I expect only good things and joy at Death.
We have no way to predict when it will be our time. Sometimes we hasten health problems with excesses of any kind, but I have seen heavy smokers live until 90 and a 24 year old non smoker die from lung cancer.
In the last few years, 4 doctors in their 50’s have died of cancer that I’ve known. Fine men, givers, again, no justice. But the big difference I see is how they handled Death and so Life, or is it Life and so Death? Knowledge told these men they could not beat this, not this time. They came in for treatment of blockages and functional problems, but they died at home, surrounded by loved ones, with enough pain medication to keep them as comfortable and with as much dignity as death allows. And this is a big thing I will tell you, Doctor’s do not do as much to their love ones or themselves as you Allow and Expect to be done to you. They and we Nurses usually know when to say enough. But you too must know the truths to do well because it was knowledge that told them they could not beat this illness, this time, so they died with again as much dignity as Death allows, and we will discuss that later.
As I write this book the things that are happening get discussed in regards to the topics I am writing about. This week the back side of the unit was filled with ‘80 somethings’. All were trached and had feeding tubes placed into their stomachs. Some look like experiments gone wrong. Some have drug resistant bacteria and live in isolation. This week many are getting Herpes lesions every where they have sores and in ICU we use a lot of tape and any sore gets ugly with the black scabbing herpes causes. All are in pain and miserable. One family member, the Nurse assigned to a patient said, was a Nurse, and I said, “She should be slapped”. I said she knows better. She needs to love her loved one enough to let him die, because he is not living, just being kept minimally alive and in pain all the time with all we do. I can’t look her in the face. And the rest of the group is the same. All dignity lost. And we know they are not going to get better because of the seriousness of all their problems, what we call comorbidities, numerous factors that can kill you. Her father died after a few more weeks of torture, not better. An eighty year old body does not heal well, unless it is immediate, and that 99% of the time this is a truth. Every Doctor though has had that one who survived, for a time, so they prolong all. But rarely does one survive and again it is usually soon that that ‘survivor’ still dies. Plus it is job security for all of us to continue the torture until all is lost.