I could not help but be touched by reading the article,
"From a Military Doctor" by Captain Stephen R.
Ellison, MD. Thank you for sharing it Doctor. I am a
nurse, not as qualified as you, but I dislike general
nursing, preferring the mental health field.
I am a level 8 Security Lockdown Ward Psychiatric
Nurse. Due to the new policies put in place here in
Australia, under the mental health umbrella, I found
myself working with the criminally insane, dementia
and old war veterans whose families wanted them
closer to where they lived, so they would not have to
travel half away across the country to see them.
Yes, they have put them all the same place. Why...
because of budgets and politics.
I can tell you one thing, every time we received a new
patient that was a war veteran who suffered from
dementia and I heard a doctor "sigh" in
disappointment, and mumble under his breath,
"That's all we need, another one to join the war that
never ends in their head." I wanted to scream and
choke the living daylights out of him/her.
It is so easy to just see the disease and forget
the sacrifice.
But when you look at it through my eyes, through
someone who works with these people 24/7 you see
the human being beneath the disease.
You know that it was the sacrifice that caused the
disease. And as you form relationships with them
(which happens no matter how many walls you put up),
you become aware that they are the way they are
now because the real Heroes are the ones that didn't
make it back alive; because the demons are still
breathing. Their guilt at being alive, being the last
one left is what haunts them for the rest of their lives.
So they go back to the battlefield in their mind and
they relive it again, and again, and again - to try to
save their mate - to try and become a Hero - to return
back home under the flag they fought under. The
medals, the parades, all the honour means nothing to
these tortured souls, because they don't see
themselves as Heroes
But they did fight a good fight, and they fought for us
to be free and to give us freedom of speech, thought,
and way of life as well as the right for doctors to sigh
because they have to spend an hour examining them
once a week, while we nurses spend 8 hours a day
with them every day. Sometimes, because of staff
shortages in my field of nursing, we work 16 hours
a day with them.
On a regular shift I walk into and out of their reality
at least 100 times, I have been in the trenches with
them; I have been pulled down to the ground with
them using their own body as shield to protect me
when they heard artillery and I heard thunder. To
each and every one of them I was a different person
from their past; I wore that personality with pride,
and gave them what comfort they needed.
But alas, I did see some new nurses come and go, and
hardly any stayed, and all they saw when they looked
at one of them was a crazy senile old man. And I am
ever so grateful that those fresh young nurses
straight out university did leave and run back to
General nursing because:
They didn't see the young man full of hopes and
dreams They never saw the 15 year old young
larrikin who lied about his age to get into the army
and serve with pride. They never saw the diggers
playing 2-up in the trenches They never saw the man
he was, the father he became and the memories and
guilt he carried with him. (The Demons that dreamed
with him) They didn't even see the proud grandfather
who carried his grand-child on his shoulders with
pride, and had a glistening tear in his eye when his
infant grand-child wrapped his tiny little fist around
his finger and stared up at him, and the fierce
protectiveness he felt towards that child. And they
never saw the guilt about the ones that never made it
back and would never experience any of what he had,
even if he no longer remembered any of it any more,
just the war and the guilt of surviving. They just saw
an old man who was nuts; who could not
communicate any longer; an old man who wet and
soiled his pants that they had to clean, whom they had
to feed, shower and dress; an old man who mistook
their actions as attacks and at times fraught them
with every ounce of his strength, and got a few good
punches in; an old man who didn't even recognize his
own family members anymore.
But they never once stopped to ask themselves why
do the family members still come? I will tell you why
they still come. Just because he has forgotten who
they are, and who he was to them, they never do.
Oh, yes there were many family members who
stopped coming - it was too hard for them to watch
their loved ones in this state. And that's when we
became their family; that's when we became their
daughters, sisters, grandmothers and wives, whatever
other role they created for us, including their buddy
who was burrowed down in that bunker with them
while enemy fire flew above our heads. We even
escaped from the camps together.
It was just a case of stepping into another reality for
a few minutes.
Sometimes the reality you stepped into was warm and
sweet, other times they would be begging you to
resuscitate a pillow that was one of their mates who
got hit, and you did it and just hoped you could pull it
off, without flipping him out so he kills you.
You stepped into that living hell of a reality and you
felt their pain anguish and desperation, with every
fibre of your body
And the whole time you are resuscitating the pillow in
the back of your mind you know that this old man has
been marked down by his own family as NFR (not for
resuscitation).
I became whatever they needed me to become and I
never left one alone when his time came. I was by his
side, I cleansed him, packed him, I tagged and
bagged him.
Then I would take 15 minutes off to find a corner to
cry for him.
After my shift ended and handover was complete,
every one of us nurses on that ward headed down to
the pub and celebrated his freedom with a toast to
him and rejoiced in knowing he was finally free.
Never did we leave their side and we always left a
door and all the windows open before he passed and
for 24 hours after that. The windows had bars on
them but they were no longer a barrier for one who
had no need for his body anymore.
©Copyright April 2005 by Tish Mathis
