Days at the clinic are often filled with excitement,
curiosity, chaos, and lots of laughter with the nurses we work with and have
come to love. We’re often intrigued with some new or gross health condition,
all crowding around the doctor trying to help or nervously practicing our new
skills, such as taking blood or giving EKG’s. But some days, like today, are
heavy.
The morning started off with a little
boy who had fallen at school and split his forehead open. He needed sutures,
which the doctor gave, but something about the location or nature of the cut
left the child in extreme pain, thrashing and screaming in agony. We had to
hold him down to keep him still, as his mom began sobbing as his screams became
too much to bear. You know in your heart you’re helping him, but it sure
doesn’t seem like it when you hear a little boy in pain like that. You feel
helpless, listening to the screaming, and every bone in your body wishes you
could do something, ANYTHING, to ease it in the slightest.
Later on in the morning we heard a
woman hysterically screaming in the waiting room. The whole place was chaotic
when I went outside to see, and the nurses quickly brought her into the
emergency room to calm her down. She was having a panic attack, because her
father, who was very ill and had been waiting for hours to be seen, had just
lost consciousness in front of her eyes. Her mother was on her death bed at
home, and she thought her father would die in front of her today. She would
have no one left to take care of her in the world. To add to the fact, she was
pregnant, with no father in the picture. Once again there was nothing I could
really do to ease her pain. I can’t imagine feeling so alone in the world, and
dealing with so much tragedy and pain all so quickly. I am so lucky to have
healthy, loving and supportive parents, but also numerous friends and other
family who would always be there for me to make sure I was ok.
In the afternoon, as I was sitting
in Sister Castle’s room, a very tough looking young man came in. The kind of
tough you’d never expect to see cry. He was so shaken up, and could barely form
words. He had just witnessed a double murder, of two of his friends, a husband
shooting his wife and then himself. The man was shaking, and told us they left
behind a 13 year old son with no other family. Before he was finished, another
boy came in, probably around 15, with a shirt covered in blood. He was stabbed after
school, and was calmly asking for some sutures. The amount of pointless
violence we see here is incredible, and in its wake is broken, hurting people,
dealing with this kind of devastation on a daily basis.
As sad I was feeling by the end of
the day, I learned important lessons from Sister Castle. With each and every
one of these patients, you could see how she truly cared about their wellbeing
as people, not just as patients. While I love medicine and health care, I’ve
been turned off by how doctors treat patients, dehumanizing them or only doing
it for the money. Sister Castle is not only these people’s health care
providers, but she acts as a guardian to them getting them through their
hardest times. I’ve especially seen her do this for young women, many lacking
parents or guardians to support them and many pregnant with children from their
early teen years. These girls have no one, and feel so lost and alone, and she
provides comfort but is also very honest with them in the advice she gives.
Even when the clinic is jam packed and she has 50 folders waiting, she realizes
how important that moment is and will take the time to make sure they are ok
before they go. People truly come before herself, and that seems such a rare
quality in our individualistic society driven by success and productivity. When
I work in health care, I want to be the best medical professional I can be, by
investing and making relationships with my patients. I want to hear their
stories, their struggles their pain and make them feel taken care of the way
Sister Castle does for all her patients. I know that you can’t get too
emotional or attached to patients in the sense that it may cloud your medical
judgment, but I’ve learned through working at the clinic that being in some sort
of medical emergency can be one of the scariest and most vulnerable times in a
persons life, and taking the time to help ease their fears can make all the
difference in the world.
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