Patient: Oh! I thought you were taking me to give a speech, but I didn't write one.
My medical internship officially ended last Friday. It was 10 weeks full of working with elderly folks with diagnoses ranging from aphasia secondary to a stroke, to dementia, alzheimer's, and schizophrenia. And I loved every second of it! The conversation above was from one of the first few days of working with one of my most favorite patients. She was full of interesting conversation!
Going into this internship, I was not particularly excited. I had requested to go into a hospital, but what I got was a skilled nursing facility. I was most worried about going to this type of facility and having my patients die on me, which I thought would just be terrible considering the deaths of two family members this year, particularly my mom. Basically, I thought it would be too emotionally draining. Fortunately, (well, unfortunately for her) I only had one patient die, and it happened on my third day before I got too attached to her.
The patients that I was able to work with for therapy were normal people with normal lives. Most were working class folks, so they were stable in the sense that they were able to provide for themselves, but definitely not wealthy. Most had very little education, mostly due a lack of opportunity rather than a lack of ambition, but they had a lot of practical knowledge.
I had three patients in particular with whom I developed a close relationship. It is hard to not become invested in their lives when you see them everyday and the struggles that they must face. I think I may become a little too invested, not in a bad way, but in a way that I really care about them and want to do whatever I can to help them. It seems that the patients are often thought of as just that, another patient to take care of on your list. This is true for the the therapists, nursing, and doctors. It takes no more time to let the patients know that you care about them and are committed to your part in their recovery. My three favorite patients had such interesting life experiences, some good, but most were sad. One of the patients was discharged the week before I left. The other two were still there, and I had a hard time leaving them! One of them cried on my last day, and the other grabbed on to me and said she wasn't going to let me leave. Anyway, I loved these people. I wish I could just adopt them into my family, especially since they both had no family.
I think I get my caring nature for my patients from my mom. She always seemed to find those people who needed someone to be kind to them, and she was that person.
I spent my days laughing at all the crazy things my patients would say, and their funny personalities. Here is a sampling of my favorite patient quotes.
(whispering) "You know there are a lot of people missing legs here. I even saw one lady without an arm!"
Patient: You see that over there? Looks like they put a red light up over there.
Me: That's not a red light, that's a tail light!
Patient: You hear that? It sounds like trees. Wind blowing in trees.
Me: There aren't any trees in here.
Patient: I keep looking around and I don't see any. But I hear trees. You don't hear that?
Me: Ms. ___, that is the air conditioner!
(We were sitting in an office with no windows.)
Patient: My husband did not like me to wake him up. The only time he liked me to wake him up was.....um....was when it was time for him to get up to go to work!
Patient 2: I thought you were going to say sex.
That's all I can think of right now, but there are about 50 more funny conversations like these.
I know you were the highlight of each patient's day. They can tell when you care and when you are just there for a paycheck. Obviously you weren't there for a paycheck!
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