Getting Out Of A Sound Of Squealing Brakes

(Schwartz 2). This interaction between the nurse and the patient’s mother is something that some people don’t get to hear about. This incident reveals that the nurses undergo as much as emotionally turmoil or frustration as the patient’s family members. Likewise, the author emphasizes that nurses are just human beings too and although they try to uplift the patient’s family in times of desperation, they also are just as involved in the patient’s life. Also seen in,“The Haunting”, the ER nurse gives some insightful learning experience.

As I helplessly watch my fifteen year old roommate fall to pieces in front of me, I feel everything around me slow to a crawl. Blood pounds my ear drums, I feel the color drain from my cheeks, and my feet take me forward as if they have a mind of their own. I fall to my knees and suddenly everything speeds up again – the pounding in my ear drums intensifies, my hands are trembling but I manage to grasp the side of the bed in an attempt to bring myself close to her. Her face is buried into her sheet. Muffled screaming escapes her as I whisper gentle reassurances in her ear, hoping with everything I have that she can hear me. I know she doesn’t. Even if she does, she can’t make sense of it right now. She’s stuck somewhere else, somewhere she revisits every day of her life and every time she closes her eyes to sleep.

he AIDS hospice reeked from disease and neglect. On my first day there, after an hour of "training," I met Paul, a tall, emaciated, forty-year-old AIDS victim who was recovering from a stroke that had severely affected his speech. I took him to General Hospital for a long-overdue appointment. It had been weeks since he had been outside. After waiting for two and a half hours, he was called in and then needed to wait another two hours for his prescription. Hungry, I suggested we go and get some lunch. At first Paul resisted; he didn’t want to accept the lunch offer. Estranged from his family and seemingly ignored by his friends, he wasn’t used to anyone being kind to him — even though I was only talking about a Big Mac. When it arrived, Paul took his first bite. Suddenly, his face lit up with the biggest, most radiant smile. He was on top of the world because somebody bought him a hamburger. Amazing. So little bought so much. While elated that I had literally made Paul’s day, the neglect and emotional isolation from which he suffered disgusted me. This was a harsh side of medicine I had not seen before. Right then and there, I wondered, "Do I really want to go into medicine?"

After a week working in the hospital, I went on home visits with nurses, doctors, nutritionists, psychologists and a monk. The first patient lives in a shabby wooden house. A great contrast could be seen between the room that the patient lives in and the rest of the house. “The patient is diagnosed with prostate cancer with bone metastasis. The room is specially built for him by the hospital and his family. He won’t live long.” A nurse told me. On another visit, I met a man with esophagus cancer.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up,” thought Susan, “these awful nights of not sleeping. I didn’t get to sleep last night until 2 am, and then I had to be up at 5:30 am to get to the hospital for clinical. That’s not enough sleep. I feel like I’m stumbling through the day.” She said a silent prayer that she would not harm anyone during her clinical shift and continued driving to the hospital.

It was another restless Friday afternoon in the small-town nursing home. Overworked nurses buzzed around, itching to start their weekend. “Ann,” a late-stage dementia patient, stared out her bedroom window. Her eyes focused on nothing in particular. As a hospice volunteer, I had been visiting Ann for three months. She spent our time together lost somewhere in her mind where I could never seem to reach her. I reminded Ann who I was and began one of our familiar conversation topics. As usual, she never spoke. As the visit went on, however, something changed. Ann slowly shifted her gaze toward me. I paused. She gently reached for my hand. Her hand felt weak, but her grip was firm. She looked into my eyes, and for a moment her face was clear with recognition. “You’re here,” she said. “…You are here.” She struggled to get out the words as she brought my hand to her face and kissed it. I was so touched I could not speak. For a moment, Ann connected with me. She trusted me. In that moment, I knew I had made the right choice.

It was June 12, 2016, one of the deadliest mass shootings at Orlando, FL. It wasn’t like any other day; after a tragic event I was called into work around 5:30am. I finally reached ORMC amidst of all the chaos, there wasn’t any pleasant welcome, every face mimicked a variety of emotions with some worried and sad, while others confused and suspicious. I was floated to the trauma unit to accommodate victims after surgery. I could sense the sturdy whiff of blood as I walked into the unit which I was not so familiar with. Even though my heart was aching by witnessing the sufferings of those innocent victims, I had a strong impulse to help and give my all. I took my assignment sheet and walked into my patient’s room. As he slowly opened his eyes, the nurse repeated the questions:

This book has an introduction, a total of 20 chapters, and a conclusion. King organizes her book by expressing how her daughter, Josie, passed away at age four due to a hospital error. She then gives contextual information about the family in the following chapter, leading up to when Josie was first taken to the hospital, and how Josie’s passing enabled King to revolutionize the healthcare industry regarding patient care. King narrates the novel in first person, and reveals her experience in a chronological order.

Enchanted by her serene radiance, I did not disturb her. Suddenly she began to speak in a whispered hum that was more like a song, unique in a dwelling full of ranting outbursts. She spoke of years long past, swimming in the pond with her sister and dancing in the moonlight. I could picture all in my head, like I was watching a movie. Then she began repeating the story she had just told me, and I realized that she was merely talking to herself. Although this discovery disenchanted me at first, I soon realized that, although the woman was talking to herself, she still had so many fantastic stories stored in her mind. The residents of the home all had some life flittering in them and numerous stories to share; they just need someone to listen to them. After my experience at the home I knew that one of my goals in life would always be o help make sure that people were receiving proper treatment, and not merely stuffed away and drugged up.

It is a cold grey afternoon with a dull sky and ragged clouds. The last leaf on the tree was finally blown off by the wind, the leaves crunched beneath your feet as you walk on it. The awful smell of dried leaves filled the air and out in the distance, the leafless tree’s branches wobbled around as the wind pushed and blow them around. The dark clouds look furious but me and my younger brother, Allie are happy as hell. We just got a new baseball ball gifted from my older brother, D.B.

Feelings of desperation and worry flourished my body as I watched my mother with tubes in her mouth getting rushed to the operating room. “Is mommy going to make it out alive?”. “Will I become an orphan?”. These are the exact thoughts that were running through my mind. In life one minute you could be decorating your Christmas tree and the other you're sitting in an uncomfortable chair of the

My supervisor, one of the head nurses, hurriedly pulled me to the corner of the bleach white hospital room and directed me to put on gloves, an eye mask, and a face mask. I felt as if I was preparing for war as I put on all of the required gear. The sound of expensive shoes click-clacked down the hallway indicating the arrival of two doctors who rushed into the room and shouted out orders to the staff while pulling the doors to the room shut along with the curtains. Two doctors, eight nurses, an intern, and a dying patient squeezed into the already claustrophobic ten by fifteen-foot room. The machine monitoring the patient’s vital signs continued to beep incessantly as my heart rate accelerated. Throughout my internship, I had never seen a patient in critical condition until that moment. I remembered my teacher’s advice if we were ever in a situation such as this: take a few deep breaths and sit down if you feel like you’re going to pass out. In that

On June 18th, 2015, I complained of sudden excoriating pain in my right ear. Naturally, I waited for the pain to ease, not thinking much of the situation. Unfortunately,

Crouched beside my father's hospital bed, I prayed for him to stay alive as he ran his trembling fingers through my soft brown curls for the last time. He focused on my big green eyes as they overflowed with salty tears and whispered: “Sabrina Jane, in no circumstance you will give up hope.”

My mom drove almost too close to the vehicle. I propped my head up on the paper wrapped pillow so that I could watch her through the small, back windows of the ambulance doors. The sirens were hushed, almost as if there wasn’t a problem at all. “Vitals are normal, 97.3° is her temp, only about 40 more minutes until we’re there,” the kind EMT was trying to lighten up the mood. My sirens might not have been screaming, but my mind was a broken machine that needed to be fixed before my whole body could work again.