Day 24: Friends make life easier.

Clinical day 2, ugh! That pretty much sums up the day.

After clinical now, we go to the Med Center to another lecture/presentation, as if sitting on our butts for 4 straight hours in class, and then working 10 hours in clinical isn't enough......
We talked about grief and loss today. First of all, obviously not a happy topic. Then we did this exercise where we wrote down: Each item is on a separate piece of paper.
2 items (monetary things) that we are grateful to have in our life and that we care a lot about. I chose my car, and my childhood stuffed animal Snuffles. We then put those items in a brown paper bag.

2 things hobbies we enjoy/things we need to do for fun: Swimming and Painting.
2 people that are special in our life, i.e. family/friends: I sort of cheated and put "parents" as one, and Elise as the other because she is a very close friend.
2 physical abilities we have that we value in everyday use: speech and walking.
and 2 things we are hopeful for or are looking forward to: Nursing and Marriage.

We then put all of those items into the brown paper bag, shuffled them around and our presenter told us this story:

Today you came home from a routine doctors visit. You have wide spread cancer. There are no treatments, no cure, no last hopes, nothing to buy you more time. You have 4 months left to live.
One month has passed, and you are starting to feel weaker. You don't want to believe that you really are dieing, but you can feel it in your body. (she then instructed us to pull out 2 items in our bag) I pulled out "Marriage" and "parents". These two things are taken away from you. You no longer have these things for support. They are completely gone. Erase them from your mind. Crumple the paper and throw it on the floor!
Two months have passed, and you are having trouble doing your daily activities. Things are starting to feel more real. You begin thinking about all of the things you are not going to be able to do and things that you regret from the past. (pull out two more items): Snuffles and Painting.
Three Months have passed, and you are starting to lose hope. You have trouble remembering what happened that day, and cannot eat as much as you know you should. (take three things out of your bag): Swimming, speech, Walking. These are now gone, forever.
Month four finally approaches and you are trying to decide what is more embarrassing, the fact that you peed on yourself again, or that you do not know what day it is anymore. You are wondering if you will go crazy in your head before you die. What will happen? Does anyone know or care? (Pull 2 more things out of your bag): Car, Nursing. These are gone, and you can't even enjoy the thought of them anymore.

You now are left with one thing in your bag. This one thing is the only thing you have left for support, care, love and hope. Is this one thing enough for you to make it to the end? My last thing was "Elise."

When it came time to pull out my last piece of paper, I had completely forgotten what was left in the bag. I was completely devastated at Month 2 when I lost the two things that I think are the most important to me overall. Much to my surprise and relief, Elise's name came out of the bag. A wave of relief filled my body because I knew that this one last thing, one last piece of paper, was something that I could truly rely on for support and love.

I know this sounds cheesy but the way she told the story, we were all in TEARS at the end of this. None of us actually threw our papers on the floor. At first I thought it was because we didn't want to make a mess, but I really think it was a final attempt to keep the things we really cherish close to us, even if they are broken or taken away.

This exercise made me think about all of the things that I take for-granted in my life, and will hopefully make me a better nurse one day because I was able, for a VERY brief moment, be able to feel what the families in the hospital must feel and deal with.

I promise tomorrow will be happy again.
I love each and every one of you!