A Good Cry

Dolly's video "slayed 'em in the aisles" didn't it?
.....and it was meant to....as sometimes the best way to get a message over whether it be in a documentary, film, tv programme or even a  piece of art, is to set the emotional juices going.
I take after my father in this respect,  I can cry at the drop of a hat.
Having said this, it is only today that I realise that I have never actually cried in front of my family...not since I was a boy , no I prefer crying in the safety and  anonymity of a darkened cinema or in my own front room...and the floodgates will often be opened full and wide when the subject of my "release" is a sad tale of an animal. especially if accompanied by some emotional music..


yeap cheap sentiment will get me every time


Now at work, I can reign  the emotions in behind a thin veil of professionalism This is  a vital skill for a nurse to possess..especially on Intensive Care, where at times the patients can be literally "dropping like flies" but just occasionally, I feel that the showing of emotion in the work area can be therapeutic to patients and their relatives alike, especially when there has been a bond between nurse and patient.


I have blogged before about the time of how  a diminutive Scottish sister and I were  once asked to wrap the arms of an old lady who had suddenly died around the shoulders of her grieving husband in a last close embrace and I know I have written about the time I shed a tear watching an Alzheimer patient waltzing delicately around the day room with her husband, oblivious to the reality of her situation .


But today, in view of that sad little "Dolly" Video, I was reminded of a "little" moment that occurred almost as an aside , on the busy ward I managed a few years ago now.


The ward was busy,but because the staff on duty were motivated and worked well as a team, there was, as I recall a kind of energy in the air as the late morning jobs were being completed before lunches were delivered. We had received the first emergency admission of two booked for that day and because a junior nurse was practicing being "in charge" of the ward, I had been allocated the admission.
It was not a hard case in so much that the emergency turned out to be an elderly man who had been found by his neighbour at the foot of his stairs. The man had sustained a devastating cervical injury which was ascending. He was unconscious and his breathing was compromised, so put quite bluntly..... he was dying.


My job was simple. I was to make him comfortable,  I was to locate the family and take care of them all before and after the patient's death.
As it turned out the man had no family, only the neighbour who had found him, and I was surprised to see a rough looking young woman in her 20s turn up to the ward asking to see him, after all  , I had envisioned the neighbour to be a vital kind of  spinsterish lady perhaps being in her 60s.It  even crossed my mind that this woman was perhaps this old man's drinking buddy of sorts, especially given the state of her


The young woman, who had, she informed me , three kids of her own back home, called on him daily with a meal, the paper and perhaps a wee "tot" of something and had done this for the past year or so since the death of his wife. She informed me in her thick Barnsley  accent that there was no living relatives that she knew of, for me to contact and asked if she could sit with him for a while which of course I agreed.


When she saw him, by the look on her face, I knew she understood the extent of his injuries and she started to cry, letting her tears splash onto his hand which she held up to her face.
As she did so,I noticed that she had a homemade tattoo stating "MOM" on her forearm
I removed his oxygen mask , so that she could see him properly and sat down next to them both as his breathing became more erratic


" I don' really know him very well at all" she explained after a while,"But I wanted to come in"


I remember looking at her cheap skirt and at the tattoos again and  I felt a little ashamed of myself at jumping to the more negative of conclusions.


"All of  us should have someone there with us at the end eh" she added sadly " someone to cry over us? "
She was nice, she was sincere and she was caring.....


And I had to bite my lip just a little more when I nodded my agreement


I have said this before.....funny what you remember isn't it?