Got home from work a little while ago. That guy with the little girl? He is talking SO. MUCH. BETTER!!! He had a general consent form that had to be signed and he SIGNED IT with the hand he was barely able to move yesterday. HOLY SHIT! :) Then you know what he did? He signed it AGAIN. and again and again. The paper was covered in his signatures. I felt like I was teaching elementary school again when a student had a "light bulb" moment. I can't tell you how HAPPY I am for him. ♥
Let me tell you a little something about stroke patients. Usually they have a LONG road with a lot of work ahead of them, and that's if they don't die first. The reason why it was so hard going from being a cardiac RN to a stroke RN was because as a cardiac nurse.. we make things better. Oftentimes in the case of a stroke, we basically watch patients get sicker and sicker and are powerless to do anything to stop the progression of the stroke. (just to clarify, the clot busting drug tpa, if administered within 2 hours of stroke symptoms can actually reverse the effects of a stroke and it is MIRACULOUS. That's why the stroke campaign says "time lost is brain lost". Very rarely do I see patients get to the emergency dept fast enough to benefit from the drug, however.) Anyway, since we started getting the neurological patients, it's been very overwhelming for myself and the other cardiac nurses because now? we can't make things better like we used to. Heck even when I had a patient on hospice care, I had a sense of making things better by virtue of being able to be there for the patient and family. There CAN be a good death; a happy, dignified passing surrounded by love. A stroke is frequently devastating to patients and to families and it robs them of goodbyes and the person they knew long before the body gives out. So when I see a patient with resolving symptoms? It makes me very VERY happy.
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