In the beginning, there was this nurse who had no idea how hard the ER was

Adjusting to the emergency department has been incredible...
...and incredibly challenging.

I feel like the patients I see are most often as their worst. I keep thinking to myself, "how in the world did you get like this? What happened to you, in your life, that made you skip out and decide not to be present anymore?

Sometimes I will get a person who is drunk, intoxicated often times by multiple different drugs or alcohol, and they are... for lack of a better word

...awful.

The other night my preceptor and I got a man who was brought to us by ambulance, due to a fall he took at the bar (after many a drink or two). He came in handcuffed to the stretcher because he was so combative.

-just a side note, thats not normal-

He was drunk, combative and didn't think he needed help, although he was bleeding all down his face and in his hair. He was so loud and obnoxious, the ER doc thought he might have a brain bleed due to his manners and the obvious head trauma he had sustained. So, the doc ordered a head CT.

The patient was NOT about to have it. He didn't think anything was wrong, he started drunk dialing everyone he knew, yelling "YOU BETTER GET THE F*%K DOWN HERE AND PICK ME UP."

As the night went on, and the hours that we had this guy increased, I started to lose my patience. (normally you try to hide these things, what's our motto at work? Put the patient first?... yeah I don't remember). But I was not the only one to lose patience, my preceptor was also losing it. Actually I take that back, she wasn't just losing it, she lost it. Bye bye.

The patient was sitting up in bed and yelled at my preceptor to look at him. She was sitting with her back turned toward him and didn't turn around. She just sat there minding her own business, doing her thing, trying to ignore him, hoping he would just fall asleep. I thought to myself, that was not a good choice... and I was right.

The patient started yelling at her, at the top of his lungs "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I HAVE BEEN THROUGH! DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO HAVE CANCER? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO WATCH YOUR WIFE GO THROUGH A DOUBLE MASTECTOMY??

...and thats when he started crying and completely lost it.


Everyone has a story. Everyone has been through so many life shaping events that trigger either a positive response or a negative response, sometimes a detrimental response. How am I to see past their rudeness? How am I to get past their grotesque outward appearance to see how soft they are on the inside, how much they are hurting or breaking?

Jesus give me eyes like you have, a heart like you have. Please give me enough patience to help them where they need to be helped the most.