I feel so grateful that today,
Father Rick’s birthday, I got to bring peace and happiness to a wonderful woman
who is spending the last years of her life very anxious and confused because of
her severe dementia. Tomorrow I will get to take her to the thing that brings
her the most happiness—mass. She is unable to tell me any details about her
life, not how many children she has or even where her room is, but every single
day she can tell me how much she loves to go to mass. When I ask her about
church, her eyes open up, she smiles and becomes more animated than at any
other time. I’m not Catholic, but after spending a year going to weekly mass
with Father Rick I can understand the joy and comfort that it brings. His
birthday has been on my mind all day and although I’m positive that he would never mention his birthday at this
morning’s mass, it would have been nice to be there today.
I've wanted to write a post for a
while now as my one year anniversary has come and gone. I had anticipated that
one year back was going to feel awful and disconnecting, but oddly it didn't. And
now that I've had some time to reflect on it, I know that it’s because I've
started nursing school. Every single day I get to remember exactly why I came
back to the States—to learn what I need to know to go work abroad again.
Learning pathophysiology is stressful and memorizing drug lists has been
tedious (to say the least), but then we’re studying HIV and I’m thinking about
Peterson or we’re learning about hydralazine and I realize why it is was so
crucial that I was able to source it for St. Philomene. I’m grateful beyond words
that I was able to start this next step of my life so soon after coming back to
the States.
In school, we have a lot of time
for small group discussion and sharing. There are lots of times that I
contribute with my experiences from working at the pediatric neurology clinic
or from the emergency department. But talking about Haiti is too hard and too
personal to share in a classroom setting. I think that nursing school has kept
me from feeling disconnected because behind every emotion I experience at
school, every minute I stay after class, every time a disease or medication (or
stupid glucometer!) is Haiti. And that tells me every single day that I’m on
the right path.
