Good Day,
My name is Blake*. I’ve had the misfortune of having some very bad complications stemming from a procedure, I’ve been here at Swedish for most of the month of March. It’s been hell. I’ve had four procedures, I desperately miss my cat and my life, and I’ve been crying a lot lately and feel like this may never end.
There has been one thing through all of this that has given me peace and comfort. Your simply amazing nursing staff has, I feel, truly gone above and beyond to not only be good nurses, but to combine that with also being amazingly kind and gracious people. From Sara Rose to Valerie to Yuzuki, from Megan to Grace to Xuon (Song), these people have been the saving grace during a time that feels like if not for their humanity, compassion, kindness, and willingness to be more than what the job required, could have very well broken me completely. By exemplifying the very best of what it means to care for someone, they’ve kept me mostly human when I’ve often felt like so much less.
That’s 6 people who I feel all did an amazing job. The odds of that are not good almost anywhere in healthcare, or anywhere else, much less via random draw. You’re doing something right here, so you as management deserve kudos too. Smart hiring and managing of the right kind of people should always be recognized. When I tell people of my experience here I’m not sure what I’ll say about the doctor, but I know exactly why I’d recommend coming here. Docs are docs, it’s the nurses who make or break the stay regarding a long-term illness, and in that regard I don’t think this particular part of Swedish can be beat. And it’s not like I’m some secret shopper patient, I’m Joe Schmo with a leaky brain, which means my experience with your nurses is most likely not unique. That makes my experience even more mind-blowing.
None of these people are in it just for a paycheck, and they’ve all taken opportunities to demonstrate that, repeatedly. They seem to be proud to be more than a body that gives meds and flushes IVs, more than someone assigned a rote task like draining 5ml of spinal fluid once per hour all night long. It was actually feedback from Valerie my first night after a lumbar drain procedure that affected THE positive change that stopped my crippling postural headaches and helped the on-call doc find the right amount of fluid to drain. That next morning was one of the most hopeful and best-feeling I’d had in awhile.
Valerie in general has been great. She was with me for one of the most painful nights of my life. She was constantly kind, encouraging, accommodating, and her attitude truly helped brighten a very dark night. She’s actually my nurse again tonight after another procedure today, and I could not be happier about that. She treats me like a person. Like a regular person, not some patient who’s butt she had to look at every hour on the hour all night. Her genuine humanity shows, and it has been worth more to me than any medicine, any reassurance from a doctor who is in one minute to emotionally devastate me with bad news and then gone in a flash until the next procedure.
I need to talk about Yuzuki for a moment. She’s been assigned to me the most. Yuzuki is possibly the dearest, sweetest, kindest, hardest-working-for-patients person I’ve ever met. Case in point – I am very sensitive to IV flushes. You know what she did just tonight before her shift ended? She made sure to leave a cranberry juice for me because she knows that helps with the awful taste, so I’d already have it ready when the night shift nurse came to do the flush. It’s such a kind and thoughtful act that it brings tears to my eyes. She doesn’t have to do that or any of the other dozens of things she’s done to make me feel a little better. I’m humbled and honored to have someone that thoughtful caring for me, and I don’t even know how to fully express my gratitude for the way she’s been with me during my stay here. I can’t even list all the ways she’s been good to me, that was a tiny example. But from being reassuring to encouraging to just telling me everything is going to be ok, she brings hope and kindness and comfort and humor and all the good things one needs when their life feels like a never ending set of terrible activities/torture experiments. If I were a millionaire I’d give her half of everything I owned (even though that might mean she’d stop being a nurse, which would sadly rob others of her amazing care). If she needed a kidney I’d be first in line to see if one of mine worked for her. Bone marrow, a lung, if she or her family needed it I would try to provide it. That’s how good she’s been to me, and how much I respect and appreciate her for it. How often can one say that about a person who is ostensibly a stranger who’s been randomly assigned to care for you? What a beautiful human being she is, and how fortunate I feel to be exposed to someone of her caliber. Regardless of how my care goes, however I end up, for the rest of my life she’s given me something to aspire to in the way I treat people in my own life.
Sara Rose was great too, reassuring and humorous, cheery when I was dour, kind when she could see I was scared. I couldn’t tell how new she was because she was just that confident in what she was doing. Amazing. Reassuring.
Song was assigned to me for a couple of days, and also took several opportunities to go beyond her assigned duties to show me kindness, to reassure me. She was consistent, accurate, kind, and she was the person who had to do most of the lumbar draining. She was like clockwork, which is very important with that type of task. She also took time to reassure me when she could see I was afraid and she took great care with my injections. She wished me well when her shift ended. I am very thankful for my time with her and for her kindness.
Megan was also awesome. Informative, talkative in a great way, and seemed to have a real common sense approach to nursing and bedside manor. And much like Sara, capable far beyond her experience.
Same with Grace, who I was assigned to very early on when I came to this unit. She treated me like a person and not a task. She was kind, understood my IV sensitivity, that quick injections made me ill as did the taste of the antibiotic she was administering. She let me sit in the chair and watch tv while she gave me the injection while she sat next to me. It felt like a very normal human moment (as normal as could be given the circumstances). It made me feel better about the scary looking cold unfamiliar yellow fluid going into my body.
Through all the pain and drugs and procedures and fear and uncertainty and disappointment and sadness, these moments and these good kind people have stood out against the awfulness. I wanted you to know, because I’ll forever be grateful for them.
*Name has been changed at the request of the patient