Personal Narrative: My Month Intensive Care

Mercy Medical Center is where it all started. On August 4th, 2004, 6:47 p.m. I was born. My name all started as a simple idea 4 years before I was even born. It originated from an American singer-songwriter Shannon Hoon, the lead vocalist of Blind Melon. Eventually, Shannon had a daughter, and named her Nico Blue. My mom liked the name and decided she would name her first child that. Though my first name isn’t actually Nico, it’s Nicolynn. She added her middle name to the first half, leaving me with no middle name.

This course has taught me that it is difficult to say goodbye to the ones we love. The struggle to separate from the deceased occurs because we have a strong attachment with them. The grief response and expression for every individual is unique (Winokuer & Harris, 2012, p. 26). Thus, I cannot expect my clients to grieve in a similar manner. It is also important for a counsellor to identify what stage in the grief process the client is in. Although, there are many models of grief stages, they all follow similar midpoints. These midpoints are accepting the loss, dealing with the emotions surrounding the loss, creating a reason for the loss, finding a way to continue to live without the loved one, and creating an everlasting bond with the deceased.

Reaching across the center console of my car, I imagined the commute that I had into school. My 1992 Jeep Cherokee courageously braved the snowstorm of the year, with only one functional windshield wiper and a forlorn four wheel drive system. As I turned onto the Merritt Parkway, a Honda Civic swerved past me and proceeded to weave in and out of the afternoon traffic. Fast-forward sixty seconds and that Honda was now engulfed by the powder white trees which bound the highway. Instinctively, I pulled up behind the crash site, dialing 911 as I ran over to the mangled wreck. I peered into the car, my pupils the size of marbles, and the driver seemed uninjured; regardless, I proceeded to reassure the driver that Emergency Medical Technician’s/Paramedic’s

Finally, as he abruptly snapped out of his daze, he gazing at me with his deep brown eyes and sighed, "The doctors admitted my dad to Hospice today." Once those disheartening words left his mouth, his face became distraught, his eyes turned dark and droopy, his nose became stuffy, and his lips tensed tightly. Hunching over his long legs, tears began pouring out of his saddened eyes onto his freshly-ironed clothes. My heart crumbled as Grant Oubre, my consoler and companion, was crying beside me. I did not know how to comfort him much less myself; I was in complete and utter shock. As he pulled himself together, he glanced at me once again with his sagging eyes and melancholic expression as he said, "Hospice is where they make you comfortable

I have an amazing opportunity through my sister's employer, to volunteer to assist hospice patients on a regular basis. I volunteer to assist hospice patients and their families by offering compassionate companionship and assisting with errands. Hospice patent's needs are not always monetary but more often emotional support and companionship. Last year, for one of my projects, I volunteered to make Thanksgiving meal boxes and to deliver them to the home of the hospice patients. I, along with other volunteers, filled the boxes with traditional Thanksgiving meal ingredients including desserts that were donated by area businesses. It took us approximately four hours to fill almost one hundred boxes. After filling all of the boxes, I volunteered

For me healing was a process that began with trust. Those four years had stripped me of my trust. I simply did not trust

The clinic that I am doing my clinical rotation is a small family medical office with one physician assistant and one doctor. It is located in Collier County Naples, Florida. Naples is considered as one of the richest city in Florida with a diverse ethnic group like Caucasian, African America, Asian, Latinos, Haitian, and much more. They see any patients start from 6 years old. Most of the patients who come to the clinic don’t have a medical insurance. They are self-paid. My preceptor is a professor of physician assistant at Nova University in Florida over 20 years.

I was born on June 26, 2002 in Albany, NY. I lived there until I was about 5, then we moved to Edinboro. For about three years of my childhood I maintained to average an emergency room trip a year. First when I was in Kindergarten my brother accidentally shut a door on my face. The edge of the door knob hit my lip and cut it in half. I started gushing blood. I was crying because that bad boy hurt and then my mom asks, “do you want some Tang”. I didn't want the Tang because my lip was gushing blood. So we went to the emergency room and I got eight stitches. My next injury happened the summer of me going into first grade. We had this croquet set, and me and my brother were pitching an exercise to each other and hitting it with the croquet mallet.

Katlynn was out of the hospital after about a week and a half. All of us girls cleaned the house spotless upon her arrival. That may not sound like much, but we were young girls that lived on a farm, so being messy was pretty much our thing. Katlynn came home and we all showered her with hugs. The first week she was home we watched her like a hawk, trying not to make it noticeable. Since Kate got out of the hospital she has to take pills every morning and night, and she had to make a trip to Mason city twice a year. Today she only goes once a year because she hasn’t suffered a seizure since. There have been a few scares here and there, though. It’s been seven and a half years since that terrible day, and Kate’s doing great. She is at the age

It was the worst thing in my life. One sip of the wrong drink and my best friend, Brady, was in the Intensive Care Unit, with a small change of survival. How was I supposed to know that his ex-boyfriend was going to poison the water supply? No one is supposed to know about that, until it already happened.

At that point all I would ever hear from people was, “oh you poor thing”, or “I’m sorry!” The only thing I heard was people pitying me, but in contrary, those words and moments only sparked a strength that I never thought was achievable. I promised myself to turn those words that represented sorrow into drive to fuel that strength. The first memory that I realized that inner strength was when I was first told that I had cancer. I heard the door click open, five doctors appeared in their white coats, they would come in surrounding me at the hospital bed. I just laid there confused about why all of this was happening. None of them spoke for a minute. My guess is that they were trying to figure out how to tell a fourteen-year-old that she has cancer as if they expected me to start breaking down sobbing. Instead, my eyes refused to shed a single tear as just hearing the words, “ You have cancer.” Those three words turned my life upside down in a matter of a second. Then I proceeded to process them in my mind. Trying to calculate a solution as if it were a math problem. As if it was that easy, but I still managed to ask the question that I never

Even though it wasn’t an easy year for me for the past year. I have been constantly seeking for medical advice and hope for positive changes. I started to attend counseling sessions with Dawn Rabey

At this particular moment, a day in the dying months of the year 2015, I find myself crossing Rue de la Cathedral, the already icy November wind biting into the back of my neck, without a jacket. It’s the fourth time in a span of a couple hours, but I’m oblivious to my frigid surroundings. Once to the other side, I cross again, and again, pacing a dent in the ground under my feet.

The life changing event, along with the acquiring of a life changing disease, namely my diagnosis of Myasthenia Gravis a month before my mother had passed, rightly made me improve my relations with loved ones towards the better,

Many turning points have occurred in my life, but I would say one really sticks out for me. This was when my granddad died in 2010. I talked about this event and how it affected my life in a thought piece earlier this year, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to elaborate on such a life changing event.