“We’ll get you to do Emma’s treatment tonight?” the charge nurse said to me as she was doing her workload assignment plan. “It’s difficult, takes time, but Emma will put you at ease with it.”
It was Christmas Eve, and I was looking forward to the morning when my children would see what Santa had brought to them from the North Pole. Christmas is a hectic time for a young, working mother, and I was feeling fatigued. There had been so many Christmas Concerts to attend, parties to which we had been invited, shopping for Santa, baking special foods, and all that we do at Christmas time that I find so excessive. But it had to be done for the children, making their Christmas special. I was young and could withstand it better than I would today, thirty years later. When I was given my assignment to care for Emma, I detected a sigh of relief from the nursing staff who worked permanently on that unit. It caused me to become apprehensive about my duty assignment, and made me question precisely what I had to do.
During the holidays our hospital reassigned nurses to where the need was greatest, as they staffed the hospital, accommodating the statutory holidays of their employees. I had already worked a day shift on this particular unit, had heard about how involved Emma’s care was, as a carcinoma was gradually destroying her face, exposing blood vessels and leaving her prone to hemorrhage. I had never met the frail little lady at the end of the corridor.
So now I was working a night shift on this long term care unit, known as Progressive Care. Everything was different from the usual on this unit, because most patients wore their street clothes and ate meals in the unit’s dining room. I found it to be a gratifying experience. Many people would be going out of the hospital the next day, Christmas Day, to spend time with their families.
I read Emma’s chart and realized that going home was not an option for her. She was an eighty-year-old woman who suffered in silence with the advanced and disfiguring carcinoma. Many of us only knew what Emma looked like from her photographs. She required too much care to be eligible for a Nursing Home, so she stayed on Progressive Care, a place she now thought of as ‘home’.
Later I went to her room and introduced myself.
“Do you like my tree dear?”, she asked.
Yes, I told her, she had a wonderful tree with twinkling lights, a Christmas tree she could barely see, but the nurses would add an ornament and tell her about how the tree looked. She had her music tape player and kept the Christmas music quietly playing. Her nurses would change the tapes for her so she had music all the time. Before I started my treatment for Emma she asked me to change the music for her, and told me what she wanted to hear. I placed the tape in the player, and ‘Silent Night’, my favorite Christmas Carol, started softly playing. I glanced out the window at the glistening snow which was reflecting the Christmas lights that were part of the hospital’s effort to make it feel more like home. It truly was a ‘silent night’. At that moment I really felt Christmas, and it all felt so surreal.
I started to remove the huge bandages that covered Emma’s head and face. I was ill prepared for how disfigured she was, how involved her treatment was, and tried so hard not to let her know my shock and disbelief. A carcinoma had destroyed Emma’s face to the extent that half of her face was gone. I had never, ever, seen facial deformity like this. I found myself sweating, with my heart pounding. Emma could barely see, and spoke in a whisper. Tiny, frail and ill, she endured her treatments without complaint, and often reassured her nurses that she was OK, and not to be upset for her because it wasn’t too painful if her treatment was done gently.
“You’re not scared are you dear?”, she asked in a whisper. I assured her I was not.
“You’re new though, and young. Do you have children dear?” she queried. (To Emma everyone was ‘dear’). I told her about my children and how excited they were about Santa.
Then I felt hands on my face. Emma said she wanted to know what I looked like, and remarked that I had my hair pulled up under my nurse’s cap. She asked if she could touch my long hair, so I took off my cap and let my hair fall loose. She ran her hands through my hair, and proceeded to tell me about the long hair she had as a youth, how her husband had loved it, how he would tell her how lovely she was, how proud he was of her and their children, the Christmas traditions they kept, how she loved him and was relieved that he did not have to see her like this, having predeceased her years ago.
