Saturday, 6 October 2007
post 43. hospital days
today, due to last minute scans (MRI friday at the hospital i guess) for some of my patients, i had some spare time in the morning. so ended up seeing another patient with my clinical supervisor and another fellow student.
the new patient we saw was a 50 odd year old male who had a stroke a few days ago. when we first saw him, he was lying in bed and was not able to express himself - he could not speak, although i think he could understand what we said, and his face was quite expressionless, almost a mask. i found it pretty hard to give instructions to him cos his face was just so expressionless and he just wasn't talking. try talking to a wall and you'll start to get the same sense of frustration. it's much harder when you know it's a person on the other end.
after doing some muscle assessment, our supervisor wanted us to stand him up and walk him. so that was what we did. stood him up from bed, and seeing that his balance was good, we decided to walk him a bit.
when we were just walking out of the room door, his daughter came walking around the corner. when she saw him walking, she started crying out, "Dad, Dad! You're walking!" and started crying at the same time. he walked up to her and she gave him this tight hug. then she turned around and called out, "Mom! Dad's walking!"
the man disengaged himself from his daughter and continued walking out of the doorway. just a short distance away from the room door was a pair of ladies, apparently just following behind the first daughter and got held up and was talking to his doctor. one was younger, obviously another daughter, and the other lady was his wife.
when he saw his wife, he let out this great wrenching sob, which really surprised me because i never expected him to be able to express anything, and stumbled to her. and this lady turned to him, and her face just crumpled up when she saw him walking towards her and she started crying. and they stood there hugging and crying.
it got emotional. he was crying, his wife was crying, his daughters were crying, his son showed up halfway, and they were all crying and hugging and were just so happy to see him walking. they kept repeating with this amazed, grateful joy, "You're walking! You're walking!" even my supervisor was tearing a bit. i must say though, it was pretty pretty emotional.
and because this was in the corridor, it kinda held up the flow of lunch-hour traffic, but nobody minded. not a single bit.
we walked him back to his bed and left him with his family. our supervisor was still tearing a bit, and one of the senior nurses teased her, saying she had been crying every single day she had been working with the patient. our supervisor said this was the rewarding thing about working in neuro and she still gets affected by it.
i can see why.
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