He Touched Him
I believe it is safe to say that it has been a long time since I have posted here. Beware, this may be a long, lengthy post. But I may also run out of time as I will soon need to get ready for church.
I suppose you are wondering why I chose the title. I was reading the SS lesson this morning and the phrase that jumped out to me was when Jesus reached out and touched the man with leprosy. That just wasn't done in those days. You didn't touch unclean people; you didn't touch people with leprosy for sure, because maybe you would get the disease from them. I am not real sure what leprosy was in today's vernacular-if it truly was a contagious disease or just a dreaded disease because there was no cure. Obviously, it was awful if it made your fingers and toes fall off.
But Jesus took the risk, (well, for Him it was no risk) and He reached out and touched him. Which do you think had the greatest effect on the man: the touch of Jesus or the healing. Obviously, the healing allowed him to go back to his family and live a normal life, but the touch..... It showed compassion, caring, kindness, love, and on and on to someone who was down. Do we want to reach out and touch the downhearted and show them a little love and compassion or is it too easy to walk on the other side of the road and pretend we don't see? Those are just some thoughts from this morning-possibly impressed more on me from something I read from Max Lucado a while ago.
In other news, I hope I don't have to repeat my week ever again. In retropsect, it maybe wasn't too bad, but in the living it out, it felt kind of terrible. The main secretary is gone for 6 weeks and we have a temporary replacement. She does a great job, but it does make my life a little more hectic and for whatever reason, on Wednesday, I couldn't pull it together and stay focused. I didn't get a kit sterilized for a procedure and didn't realize it until the Dr. was ready to start. Not cool--so we sent them off to Menards and told them to stop in on their way back through. Then I accidentally sent home a bottle of 500 pills (opened and used) with someone and billed them and they had to come back and work through that whole mess. I'm not that great with quickbooks and so it was a bit of a hassle, but we got it finished and I went home!!! No wait, I went to get an oil change where they told me the front and back brakes of the car are wearing thin.
Friday, was another such day. I got into a strong disagreement with "Mattie" over her medication. It is always wonderful when the patient takes a notion on how her meds work and there is nothing that will persuade them otherwise. I told her very matter-of-factly that she cannot be adjusting this particular medication on her own. It's too dangerous: too much and she will bleed too easily, too little and she could throw herself a little stroke. But no, she remains convinced that her blood was too thin and therefore was flowing through her lungs too fast and was not able to pick up the oxygen her body needed and so that is why she was feeling tired and weak. I had never heard this philosophy before and I said that, but no, that is how the rats are killed on the stuff. Okay, I think I will just have the Dr. come and chat with you.
Then another little sick baby came in who was sent "Posthaste" to the hospital with a high fever and possible meningitis. I called the ER to give them a heads up and was yelled at over the phone. I said the fever was 104.9.
ER: Did you treat the fever?
Me: No
ER: What, you didn't treat the fever?
Me: No, we wanted to get him down to you
ER: Are you a nurse?
Me: Yes,
ER: Well, you always treat a fever. He could go into seizures. I'm sorry to yell at you like this, but you always treat the fever.
Me: well, I'm sorry
In retrospect, I could have handled it a lot better, like by saying the patient is vomiting, not keeping oral things down and we would have no other way of treating a high temp like that. And really Tylenol isn't going to do much for that fever anyway.
Also, in retrospect there are things you would like to have said to her that wouldn't have been nice. Like: "Sure, we could treat the fever, while the child dies of meningitis, but at least we treated the fever." or "You know there are much worse things we are worried about right now than a fever. You should know that a fever this high, means something very serious is going on. We are only a small clinic with limited resources and I would think you would appreciate us letting you know what is coming so you won't have a child dying on your hands because you made them wait in the waiting room for too long. Think of that law suit." Okay, these are things I would never say, but felt like it later.
Then another patient remains convinced that if you go in and take a biopsy to see if you have cancer, then if you have cancer, that biopsy will spread the cancer everywhere. So no, they are doing a lemon juice cleanse for his cholesterol (totally unrelated to the situation) and they are going to go see a natural doctor. Now, I'm not that opposed to natural, but I think the wisest course of action would be first to see if you have cancer. Just because your counts are elevated doesn't mean you have cancer. Let's find out what we are working with first and then if you want to go natural, be my guest. But don't go natural and then claim you cured your cancer when you don't even know if you had cancer in the first place.
I was ready to go home by the end of the day. I really wanted brownies, but that would have been bad on the supposed diet. So I came home, made some comfort mac and cheese and played Settlers with D. Guess what? He beat every game we played. I should have known better.
But on the bright side: we got an unexpected bonus check in the mail this week. D made supper Thursday night and it was very yummy.
Until next time:
I suppose you are wondering why I chose the title. I was reading the SS lesson this morning and the phrase that jumped out to me was when Jesus reached out and touched the man with leprosy. That just wasn't done in those days. You didn't touch unclean people; you didn't touch people with leprosy for sure, because maybe you would get the disease from them. I am not real sure what leprosy was in today's vernacular-if it truly was a contagious disease or just a dreaded disease because there was no cure. Obviously, it was awful if it made your fingers and toes fall off.
But Jesus took the risk, (well, for Him it was no risk) and He reached out and touched him. Which do you think had the greatest effect on the man: the touch of Jesus or the healing. Obviously, the healing allowed him to go back to his family and live a normal life, but the touch..... It showed compassion, caring, kindness, love, and on and on to someone who was down. Do we want to reach out and touch the downhearted and show them a little love and compassion or is it too easy to walk on the other side of the road and pretend we don't see? Those are just some thoughts from this morning-possibly impressed more on me from something I read from Max Lucado a while ago.
In other news, I hope I don't have to repeat my week ever again. In retropsect, it maybe wasn't too bad, but in the living it out, it felt kind of terrible. The main secretary is gone for 6 weeks and we have a temporary replacement. She does a great job, but it does make my life a little more hectic and for whatever reason, on Wednesday, I couldn't pull it together and stay focused. I didn't get a kit sterilized for a procedure and didn't realize it until the Dr. was ready to start. Not cool--so we sent them off to Menards and told them to stop in on their way back through. Then I accidentally sent home a bottle of 500 pills (opened and used) with someone and billed them and they had to come back and work through that whole mess. I'm not that great with quickbooks and so it was a bit of a hassle, but we got it finished and I went home!!! No wait, I went to get an oil change where they told me the front and back brakes of the car are wearing thin.
Friday, was another such day. I got into a strong disagreement with "Mattie" over her medication. It is always wonderful when the patient takes a notion on how her meds work and there is nothing that will persuade them otherwise. I told her very matter-of-factly that she cannot be adjusting this particular medication on her own. It's too dangerous: too much and she will bleed too easily, too little and she could throw herself a little stroke. But no, she remains convinced that her blood was too thin and therefore was flowing through her lungs too fast and was not able to pick up the oxygen her body needed and so that is why she was feeling tired and weak. I had never heard this philosophy before and I said that, but no, that is how the rats are killed on the stuff. Okay, I think I will just have the Dr. come and chat with you.
Then another little sick baby came in who was sent "Posthaste" to the hospital with a high fever and possible meningitis. I called the ER to give them a heads up and was yelled at over the phone. I said the fever was 104.9.
ER: Did you treat the fever?
Me: No
ER: What, you didn't treat the fever?
Me: No, we wanted to get him down to you
ER: Are you a nurse?
Me: Yes,
ER: Well, you always treat a fever. He could go into seizures. I'm sorry to yell at you like this, but you always treat the fever.
Me: well, I'm sorry
In retrospect, I could have handled it a lot better, like by saying the patient is vomiting, not keeping oral things down and we would have no other way of treating a high temp like that. And really Tylenol isn't going to do much for that fever anyway.
Also, in retrospect there are things you would like to have said to her that wouldn't have been nice. Like: "Sure, we could treat the fever, while the child dies of meningitis, but at least we treated the fever." or "You know there are much worse things we are worried about right now than a fever. You should know that a fever this high, means something very serious is going on. We are only a small clinic with limited resources and I would think you would appreciate us letting you know what is coming so you won't have a child dying on your hands because you made them wait in the waiting room for too long. Think of that law suit." Okay, these are things I would never say, but felt like it later.
Then another patient remains convinced that if you go in and take a biopsy to see if you have cancer, then if you have cancer, that biopsy will spread the cancer everywhere. So no, they are doing a lemon juice cleanse for his cholesterol (totally unrelated to the situation) and they are going to go see a natural doctor. Now, I'm not that opposed to natural, but I think the wisest course of action would be first to see if you have cancer. Just because your counts are elevated doesn't mean you have cancer. Let's find out what we are working with first and then if you want to go natural, be my guest. But don't go natural and then claim you cured your cancer when you don't even know if you had cancer in the first place.
I was ready to go home by the end of the day. I really wanted brownies, but that would have been bad on the supposed diet. So I came home, made some comfort mac and cheese and played Settlers with D. Guess what? He beat every game we played. I should have known better.
But on the bright side: we got an unexpected bonus check in the mail this week. D made supper Thursday night and it was very yummy.
Until next time:
my sympathies. next time call me about the brownies. this really was much worse than my whole aldis thing. But really, I smiled at most of it. And the key here is, yes, like you are doing, think back and learn from it. Bravo Nurse!
ReplyDeleteIf you get tired of me commenting, just yell.