Fellow Nurses Quotes

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In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers--or should I say, nurses?--will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
It was possible that this was just the latest assault in the ongoing campaign being waged by various nurses and fellow doctors to seduce him via baked goods.
Jane Seville (Zero at the Bone (Zero at the Bone #1))
No one I met at this time -- doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients-- failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.
George Orwell (Homage to Catalonia)
We are spread across the country now, old and dying or dead already, and we have mostly acclimatized to the absurdity of daily life in the fourth decade of the twenty-first century, although occasionally we regress and rant. To journals. Our fellow dinosaurs. To our children who bring their children to visit us in nursing
Blake Crouch (Perfect Little Town)
Nurse Noakes passed by and my fellow inmates all silent, like songbirds under the shadow of a hawk.
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
It's beyond everything what's being done in the district, according to what this doctor tells me. He's a very intelligent fellow. And as I've told you before, I tell you again; it's not right for you not to go to the meetings, and altogether to keep out of the district business. If decent people won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong. We pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no schools, not district nurses, nor midwives, nor drug-stores ---nothing [...] How can you think it a matter of no importance whether the peasant, whom you love as you assert...dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve the children, and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless in the hands of every village clerk, while you have at your disposal a means of helping them, and don't help them because to your mind it's of no importance." And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you are so undeveloped that you can't see all that you can do , or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever IT is, to do it.
Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
In its basic form, nursing can be seen as a duty, but beyond the incessant operational activities that lay the foundation of our daily work, the profession is all about grace. Helping people is a noble calling. It is a privilege to serve my fellow human beings. Fifteen years has seen many ups and downs at the workplace, but I have enjoyed serving the many patients who come into my care, and have prayed for the souls of those who were on the brink of death.
Katherine Soh (Nurse Molly Returns)
I once knew a fellow who committed robbery with violence, and he was sentenced to a long prison stretch and 12 strokes of the cat. He'd been injured during the robbery, so they put him in hospital to make him better so that they could make him worse. During the administration of the cat, he fainted after six strokes, and the doctor put him in hospital again. And he got very friendly with the nurses and the doctors, and after a while they got him well enough to go back and take the next six strokes. I saw him afterward and I said: "Oh, Jesus—that bloody law, that bloody judge!" But he said: "I don't want the fellow who made the law, and I don't want the fellow who passed the sentence. All I want is the fellow who held the bloody whip.
Peter O'Toole
Say!” Benedict exclaimed. “Why don’t you save her, Hastings?” Simon took one look at Lady Bridgerton (who at that point had her hand firmly wrapped around Macclesfield’s forearm) and decided he’d rather be branded an eternal coward. “Since we haven’t been introduced, I’m sure it would be most improper,” he improvised. “I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Anthony returned. “You’re a duke.” “So?” “So?” Anthony echoed. “Mother would forgive any impropriety if it meant gaining an audience for Daphne with a duke.” “Now look here,” Simon said hotly, “I’m not some sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered on the altar of your mother.” “You have spent a lot of time in Africa, haven’t you?” Colin quipped. Simon ignored him. “Besides, your sister said—” All three Bridgerton heads swung round in his direction. Simon immediately realized he’d blundered. Badly. “You’ve met Daphne?” Anthony queried, his voice just a touch too polite for Simon’s comfort. Before Simon could even reply, Benedict leaned in ever-so-slightly closer, and asked, “Why didn’t you mention this?” “Yes,” Colin said, his mouth utterly serious for the first time that evening. “Why?” Simon glanced from brother to brother and it became perfectly clear why Daphne must still be unmarried. This belligerent trio would scare off all but the most determined— or stupid— of suitors. Which would probably explain Nigel Berbrooke. “Actually,” Simon said, “I bumped into her in the hall as I was making my way into the ballroom. It was”— he glanced rather pointedly at the Bridgertons—“ rather obvious that she was a member of your family, so I introduced myself.” Anthony turned to Benedict. “Must have been when she was fleeing Berbrooke.” Benedict turned to Colin. “What did happen to Berbrooke? Do you know?” Colin shrugged. “Haven’t the faintest. Probably left to nurse his broken heart.” Or broken head, Simon thought acerbically. “Well, that explains everything, I’m sure,” Anthony said, losing his overbearing big-brother expression and looking once again like a fellow rake and best friend. “Except,” Benedict said suspiciously, “why he didn’t mention it.” “Because I didn’t have the chance,” Simon bit off, about ready to throw his arms up in exasperation. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Anthony, you have a ridiculous number of siblings, and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to be introduced to all of them.” “There are only two of us present,” Colin pointed out. “I’m going home,” Simon announced. “The three of you are mad.” Benedict, who had seemed to be the most protective of the brothers, suddenly grinned. “You don’t have a sister, do you?” “No, thank God.
Julia Quinn (The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1))
Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by," is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory _of_ what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another; what he felt when his school fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that "half," although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life, that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.
George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)
It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a bit controversial, they haven’t added it to the APA manual yet, but we’re seeing similar symptoms in your fellow vets. What you’re experiencing is a familiar response to trauma.” “I didn’t see combat.” “Frankie, you were a surgical nurse in the Central Highlands.” She nodded. “And you think you didn’t see combat?” “My … Rye … was a POW. Tortured. Kept in the dark for years. He’s fine.” Henry leaned forward. “War trauma isn’t a competitive sport. Nor is it one-size-fits-all. The POWs are a particular group, as well. They came home to a different world than you did. They were treated like the World
Kristin Hannah (The Women)
I shall get nothing from these fools,' he muttered; 'and I am very much afraid of being here between a drunkard and a coward. Here's an envious fellow making himself boozy on wine when he ought to be nursing his wrath, and here is a fool who sees the woman he loves stolen from under his nose and takes on like a big baby. Yet this Catalan has eyes that glisten like those of the vengeful Spaniards, Sicilians, and Calabrians, and the other has fists big enough to crush an ox at one blow. Unquestionably, Edmond's star is in the ascendant, and he will marry the splendid girl--he will captain, too, and laugh at us all, unless'--a sinister smile passed over Danglars' lips--'unless I take a hand in the affair,' he added.
Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo (Great Illustrated Classics))
We heard engines, and suddenly there were Jeeps in the courtyard, and these huge American fellows, like giants, with their Thompson guns over their shoulders, were already making friends with our nurses. I don’t know whether the Americans put their tallest men in the front line, or if this was by coincidence, but these fellows were close to two metres tall, all of them.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes 2)
It would be hard to find any legitimate point of view from which this feeling could be condemned. As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness. Of course it is not pure charity; it involves love of our neighbours in the local, not of our Neighbour, in the Dominical, sense. But those who do not love the fellow-villagers or fellow-townsmen whom they have seen are not likely to have got very far towards loving ‘Man’ whom they have not. All natural affections, including this, can become rivals to spiritual love: but they can also be preparatory imitations of it, training (so to speak) of the spiritual muscles which Grace may later put to a higher service; as women nurse dolls in childhood and later nurse children.
C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
And who would not risk its terrors to gain its raptures? Ah, what raptures they were! The mere recollection thrills you. How delicious it was to tell her that you loved her, that you lived for her, that you would die for her! How you did rave, to be sure, what floods of extravagant nonsense you poured forth, and oh, how cruel it was of her to pretend not to believe you! '''In what awe you stood of her! How miserable you were when you had offended her! And yet, how pleasant to be bullied by her and to sue for pardon without having the slightest notion of what your fault was! How dark the world was when she snubbed you, as she often did, the little rogue, just to see you look wretched; how sunny when she smiled! How jealous you were of every one about her! How you hated every man she shook hands with, every woman she kissed—the maid that did her hair, the boy that cleaned her shoes, the dog she nursed—though you had to be respectful to the last-named! How you looked forward to seeing her, how stupid you were when you did see her, staring at her without saying a word! How impossible it was for you to go out at any time of the day or night without finding yourself eventually opposite her windows!
Jerome K. Jerome (Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow)
Look, my soul, at the way one human being tries to inflict as much pain on another as possible; look at these people plotting to bring harm to their fellows; look at these parents molesting their children; look at this landowner exploiting his workers; look at the violated women, the misused men, the abandoned children. Look, my soul, at the world; see the concentration camps, the prisons, the nursing homes, the hospitals, and hear the cries of the poor. This grieving is praying. There are so few mourners left in this world.
Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming)
To Konstantin the peasant was simply the chief partner in their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the love, almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant—sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his peasant nurse—still as a fellow-worker with him, while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very often, when their common labors called for other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying.
Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
Palestinians have been welcomed nowhere—not, anyway, as full-fledged citizens. They remain Palestinians, generation after generation, a people who nurse an understandable grudge, who are contained either physically or culturally in camps in which hate festers. They have been wronged, no doubt about it—not just by Jews but by their leaders and their fellow Arabs as well. They are stuck in the amber of grievances. They want a nation they never had. They want to return to a place where most have never lived. It may seem like folly, but history argues otherwise. They have seen it done.
Richard Martin Cohen (Israel: Is It Good for the Jews?)
In the early 1970s, racial and gender discrimination was still prevalent. The easy camaraderie prevailing in the operating room evaporated at the completion of surgical procedures. There was an unspoken pecking order of seating arrangements at lunch among my fellow physicians. At the top were the white male 'primary producers' in prestigious surgical specialties. They were followed by the internists. Next came the general practitioners. Last on the list were the hospital-based physicians: the radiologists, pathologists and anaesthesiologists - especially non-white, female ones like me. Apart from colour, we were shunned because we did not bring in patients ourselves but, like vultures, lived off the patients generated by other doctors. We were also resented because being hospital-based and not having to rent office space or hire nursing staff, we had low overheads. Since a physician's number of admissions to the hospital and referral pattern determined the degree of attention and regard accorded by colleagues, it was safe for our peers to ignore us and target those in position to send over income-producing referrals. This attitude was mirrored from the board of directors all the way down to the orderlies.
Adeline Yen Mah (Falling Leaves)
I shall return to Kunana, walk around the old place and venerate the ground where lived and worked my mother-in-law whom I never saw. I shall go down to the field of carnage, bestride the old battlefield, and say: Here fell the noble Rolong woman who gave birth to my faithful Mhudi. Somewhere here lies the remains of the woman who mothered my wife and nourished every fibre of her beautiful form. Then I will call to her spirit and say: Come down from the heights and approve the feeble cares I am trying to bestow on the noble treasure thou hast bequeathed to me. My mother, O cradle of my wife! That after all my pains and nursing, thou shouldst have been hounded out of this life without receiving a pin from the worthless fellow who wived thy noble offspring! [159 – 160]
Sol T. Plaatje (Mhudi)
It was late; I’d been sleeping. I woke up to the sound of him crying. The ward was dark, with only the light from the nurses’ station bleeding in. ‘Kid,’ he said to me, and his voice… his voice was like a ghost. Like that part of him had already died and had come back for the rest. ‘Kid, this is worse than Topeka.’ He told me that once, in the war, he’d come upon a German soldier in the grass with his insides falling out; he was just lying there in agony. The soldier had looked up at Sergeant Leonard, and even though they didn’t speak the same language, they understood each other with just a look. The German lying on the ground; the American standing over him. He put a bullet in the soldier’s head. He didn’t do it with anger, as an enemy, but as a fellow man, one soldier helping another. ‘One soldier helping another.’ That’s how he put it.” Again, Jericho fell quiet for a moment. “He told me what he needed me to do. Told me I didn’t have to. Told me that if I did, he’d make sure God would forgive me, if that’s what I was worried about. One soldier helping another.” Jericho fell quiet. Evie held so still she thought she might break. “I found his belt in the dresser and helped him into the wheelchair. The hall was quiet on the way to the shower. I remember how clean the floor was, like a mirror. I had to make a new hole in the leather to tighten it around his neck. Even without his arms and legs, he was heavy. But I was strong. Just before, he looked at me, and I’ll never forget his face as long as I live—like he’d just realized some great secret, but it was too late to do anything about it. ‘Some craps game, this life, kid. Don’t let ’em take you without a fight,’ he said.” Silence. A dog barking in the distance. A puff of wind against the glass, wanting to be let in. “After, I took the wheelchair back and parked it in the same spot. Then I slipped under the covers and pretended to sleep until it was morning and they found him. Then I did sleep. For twelve hours straight.
Libba Bray (The Diviners (The Diviners, #1))
Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly at her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn't want her hair to look pretty,–that was out of the question,–she only wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her. But now, when Tom began to laugh at her, and say she was like an idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie's cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little. "Oh, Maggie, you'll have to go down to dinner directly," said Tom. "Oh, my!" ...But Maggie, as she stood crying before the glass, felt it impossible that she should go down to dinner and endure the severe eyes and severe words of her aunts, while Tom and Lucy, and Martha, who waited at table, and perhaps her father and her uncles, would laugh at her; for if Tom had laughed at her, of course every one else would; and if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat with Tom and Lucy, and had the apricot pudding and the custard! What could she do but sob? She sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead loves, and broken friendships; but it was not less bitter to Maggie–perhaps it was even more bitter–than what we are fond of calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. "Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by," is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another; what he felt when his school fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that "half," although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life, that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.
George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)
A very young child has no self-command; but, whatever are its emotions, whether fear, or grief, or anger, it endeavours always, by the violence of its outcries, to alarm, as much as it can, the attention of its nurse, or of its parents. While it remains under the custody of such partial protectors, its anger is the first and, perhaps, the only passion which it is taught to moderate. By noise and threatening they are, for their own ease, often obliged to frighten it into good temper; and the passion which incites it to attack, is restrained by that which teaches it to attend to its own safety. When it is old enough to go to school, or to mix with its equals, it soon finds that they have no such indulgent partiality. It naturally wishes to gain their favour, and to avoid their hatred or contempt. Regard even to its own safety teaches it to do so; and it soon finds that it can do so in no other way than by moderating, not only its anger, but all its other passions, to the degree which its play-fellows and companions are likely to be pleased with. It thus enters into the great school of self-command, it studies to be more and more master of itself, and begins to exercise over its own feelings a discipline which the practice of the longest life is very seldom sufficient to bring to complete perfection.
Adam Smith
And I've got good news for you! This gospel of clean and aggressive strength is spreading everywhere in this country among the finest type of youth. Why today, in 1936, there's less than 7 per cent of collegiate institutions that do not have military-training units under discipline as rigorous as the Nazis, and where once it was forced upon them by the authorities, now it is the strong young men and women who themselves demand the right to be trained in warlike virtues and skill—for, mark you, the girls, with their instruction in nursing and the manufacture of gas masks and the like, are becoming every whit as zealous as their brothers. And all the really thinking type of professors are right with 'em! "Why, here, as recently as three years ago, a sickeningly big percentage of students were blatant pacifists, wanting to knife their own native land in the dark. But now, when the shameless fools and the advocates of Communism try to hold pacifist meetings—why, my friends, in the past five months, since January first, no less than seventy-six such exhibitionistic orgies have been raided by their fellow students, and no less than fifty-nine disloyal Red students have received their just deserts by being beaten up so severely that never again will they raise in this free country the bloodstained banner of anarchism! That, my friends, is NEWS!
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
I became a very timid individual. I became introspective. I wondered what had made me act the way I had acted. Why had I killed my fellow men in war, without any feeling, remorse, or regret? And when the war was over, why did I con­tinue to drink and swagger around and get into fistfights? Why did I like to dish out pain, and why did I take positive delight in the suffering of others? Was I insane? Was it too much testosterone? Women don’t do things like that. The rapacious Will to Power lost its hold on me. Suddenly I began to feel sympathetic to the cares and sufferings of all living creatures. You lose your health and you start thinking this way. Has man become any better since the times of Theog­enes? The world is replete with badness. I’m not talking about that old routine where you drag out the Spanish Inqui­sition, the Holocaust, Joseph Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, etc. It happens in our own backyard. Twentieth-century America is one of the most materially prosperous nations in history. But take a walk through an American prison, a nursing home, the slums where the homeless live in cardboard boxes, a cancer ward. Go to a Vietnam vets’ meeting, or an A.A. meeting, or an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. How hollow and unreal a thing is life, how deceitful are its pleasures, what horrible aspects it possesses. Is the world not rather like a hell, as Schopenhauer, that clearheaded seer—who has helped me transform my suf­fering into an object of understanding—was so quick to point out? They called him a pessimist and dismissed him with a word, but it is peace and self-renewal that I have found in his pages.
Thom Jones (The Pugilist at Rest)
Copaface I'm quick learning lessons from the devil but can't decide whether I arrived or was contrived I view so many faces form a tower up above neglected inner wants and hungers for what I love cluttered bunched black eyed and voiceless I fill up the sugar cup to stay up at night in my black upabove where my face is a moon full of craters with crummy eyes and cyst-thighs a perfect beacon for the fictionettes who spread their legs wide open on the plasma embodiments of everything i hide about my self today hips rashed elastic crowded barely wrenched into my upmost ambition for attraction so I nurse fellow wilted and the withered shallow love smut love our love in my black upabove my face is a room full of mirrors with crummy eyes and blistered thighs a bent brain full of lies a beacon for the fiction body voodoo embodiments in morbid tense misplace your grace to chase your copaface
Sonny Moore
Last Comforts” was born when one nagging question kept arising early in my journey as a hospice volunteer. Why were people coming into hospice care so late in the course of their illness? That question led to many others that rippled out beyond hospice care. Are there better alternatives to conventional skilled nursing home operations? How are physicians and nurses educated about advanced illness and end-of-life care? What are more effective ways of providing dementia care? What are the unique challenges of minority and LGBT people? What is the role of popular media in our death-denying culture? What has been the impact of public policy decisions about palliative and hospice care? The book is part memoir of lessons learned throughout my experiences with patients and families as a hospice volunteer; part spotlight on the remarkable pathfinders and innovative programs in palliative and late-life care; and part call to action. I encourage readers – particularly my fellow baby boomers -- not only to make their wishes and goals clear to friends and family, but also to become advocates for better care in the broader community.
Ellen Rand (Last Comforts: Notes from the Forefront of Late Life Care)
Though this sudden setback of the plague was as welcome as it was unlooked-for, our townsfolk were in no hurry to jubilate. While intensifying their desire to be set free, the terrible months they had lived through had taught them prudence, and they had come to count less and less on a speedy end of the epidemic. All the same, this new development was the talk of the town, and people began to nurse hopes none the less heartfelt for being unavowed. All else took a back place; that daily there were new victims counted for little beside that staggering fact: the weekly total showed a decrease. One of the signs that a return to the golden age of health was secretly awaited was that our fellow citizens, careful though they were not to voice their hope, now began to talk—in, it is true, a carefully detached tone—of the new order of life that would set in after the plague.
Albert Camus (The Plague)
Visitors stream in and out of the rooms and corridors. There are families to see, questions to answer, a new admission from the ED. It’s one thing after another—randomly, it seems—bouncing from one story to the next. Mr. Gunther, headed for the NIH, leaves with his wife. She gives me a long look as they head toward the elevator. I wish her well; living with Pascal’s wager can’t be easy. Mr. Kinney, a dapper corporate attorney, is also getting out of here after a rough two weeks. His pancreas is totally destroyed, replaced by puddles of necrotic fluid, yet he refuses to accept the fact that his fondness for single-malt scotch is the reason why. His wife gives me a long look, too, then they’re gone. Jim, the Cardiology fellow, shows me the echocardiogram he just did on Mr. Warner, our guy with HIV. Nothing there, Jim says, no vegetation, no sign of endocarditis. We consider what this means, make a plan. Up on 10 Central, Mr. Mukaj’s bladder irrigation backs up painfully again but there’s nowhere else we can put him, no empty beds in the ICU or Step-Down Unit, no place where he can have his own nurse with him all the time. We bounce this around, too, decide to try this, then that, we’ll see. Mr. Harris, our patient with Marfan syndrome, a plastic aorta, and a septic hip joint, spikes a fever again. Not good. We make a plan. And so it goes, on into the evening. On days like this, doctoring feels like pinball: nonstop random events—intercepted here, altered there, prolonged or postponed by this or that, the bells and boinks sounding all around—and sometimes you can’t be sure whether you’re the guy pushing the buttons, manipulating the levers, and bumping the machine, or whether you’re inside the machine, whether you’re the pinball itself.
Brendan Reilly (One Doctor: Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine)
James was generous with his time to any friend who needed it—as well as to some, like Lawson, who did not! When one friend had eye trouble and could not read, James spent an hour each evening reading out his bookwork for the next day. He bucked up fellow students when they were depressed and on several occasions nursed others who were sick. He helped freshmen who were having trouble with their studies. He also found time to keep up a lively correspondence with his father, Aunt Jane, Lewis Campbell and others.
Basil Mahon (The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell)
It was then, after my presentations to thirty-two generals, that I first began to see how similar the approach to leadership problems was throughout our civilization. After two days of presentations, a three-star general, the commander of an entire Army corps—two panzer divisions—stood up and said to me, “You know, one of our problems is that the sergeant-majors coddle the new recruits, and we keep telling them that such helpfulness will not make them very good soldiers in the field.” And then he turned to his fellow officers and said, “But from what Ed has been saying here the past two days, we’re not going to have any more luck changing the sergeant-majors than they are having trying to change the new recruits.” Now this man had three stars on his shoulder; how much more authority would you want? He commanded more weapons of destruction than exploded in all of World War II; how much more power do you need? Yet neither his authority nor his power were enough to ensure a “command presence.” And I began to think about similar frustrations reported to me by imaginative psychiatrists who were frustrated by head nurses, creative clergy who were stymied by church treasurers, aggressive CEOs who were hindered by division chiefs, mothers who wished to take more responsible stands with their children but who were blindsided by their chronically passive husbands, not to mention my experience of watching nine eager Presidents sabotaged by a chronically recalcitrant Congress. Eventually I came to see that this “resistance,” as it is usually called, is more than a reaction to novelty; it is part and parcel of the systemic process of leadership. Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away; instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the “territory” is a family or an organization. And a leader’s capacity to recognize sabotage for what it is—that is, a systemic phenomenon connected to the shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system and not to the institution’s specific issues, makeup, or goals—is the key to the kingdom. My
Edwin H. Friedman (A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)
As he forced himself to retreat from the world of his sketch, Elijah realized the boys were trying to start a squabble over some lower order of card—a three? “I-unts” became increasingly vocal, interspersed with “It’s not your turn,” until Elijah had to set his drawing aside and scoop William up in his arms. “What you want,” he informed the child, “is a stout tickling.” He scratched lightly at the boy’s round tummy, provoking peals of merriment. William’s laughter, surprisingly hearty coming from so small a body, sounded to Elijah exactly as Prudholm’s had when that worthy was still small enough to tease and tickle like this. “Elijah…” Jenny’s tone bore patience and a warning. Don’t get the little ones all wound up, Elijah. You’re the oldest, and they look to you for an example of proper decorum. He lifted the happy little fellow up over his head and slowly lowered him. “Enough, my lad. Time to go with nurse and have some bread and jam. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Or maybe some of your mama’s delicious stollen. Mmmm.” “I want some of Mama’s Christmas bread too,” Kit announced. “Come along, Aunt Jen. We’ll share.” Elijah stood, passed Sweet William off to his nurse, and took Aunt Jen by the hand. “I’m sure your aunt longs to accompany you, Kit, but she must stay here and help me clean up this awful mess.” Kit’s gaze darted to the scattering of cards on the rug. To a small child, a deck held thousands of cards, none of which little hands found easy to stack. Such a pity, that. “I’ll save you a piece of stollen, Aunt Jen.” Kit took his nurse’s hand and towed her toward the door. “’Bye, Aunt, ’bye, Mr. Harrison.” “Au revoir,” Elijah murmured.
Grace Burrowes (Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait (The Duke's Daughters, #5; Windham, #8))
And now that mulch of dead imaginings beneath the feet of Temperance ladies, union-affiliated Vaudevillians and maimed men home from Europe has contaminated the groundwater of the upstart country's nightmares. Immigrants in their illimitable difference come to seem a separate species, taciturn and fish-eyed as though risen from the ocean waves that bore them in their transport, monstrous in their self-contained communities with bitter scents and indecipherable ululations, names, unsettlingly unpronounceable ensconced at isolated farms where beaten track is naught save idle rumour stagnant families nurse grievance, dreadful secrets and deformity in solitude; pools of declined humanity entirely unconnected to society by any tributary where ancestral prejudice or misconception may become the plaint of generations. Fabled and forbidden works of Arab alchemy are handed down across years cruel and volatile, trafficked between austere and colonial homes by charitable fellowships with ancient affectations or conveyed by fevered sea-captains, fugitive Huguenots or elderly hysterics formally accused of witchcraft. Young America, a sapling power grown suddenly so tall upon its diet of nickelodeons and motorcars, has sunk unwitting roots into an underworld of grotesque notions and archaic creeds, their feaful pull discernible below the weed-cracked sidewalk. Buried and forgotten, ominous philosophies await their day with hideous patience. Well! I think that's pretty darned good for a first attempt. A little over-wrought, perhaps, and I'm not sure about the style - I can't decide if its too modern of it's too old fashioned, but perhaps that's a good sign. Of course, I guess I'll have to introduce a plot and characters at some point, but I'll wrestle with that minor nuisance when I get to it. Perhaps I could contrive to have some hobo, maybe literally a hoe-boy or travelling itinerant farm labourer who's wandering from place to place around New England in the search for work; somebody who might reasonably become involved with all the various characters I'm hoping to investigate. Being a labourer, while it would lend a feasibility to any action or exertion that I wanted in the story, wouldn't mean that my protagonist was lacking in intelligence of education: this is often economically a far from certain country for a lot of people, and there's plenty of smart fellows - maybe even an aspiring writer like myself - who've found themselves leaving their homes and families to mooch around from farm to farm in hope of some hay-baling or fruit-picking that's unlikely to materialise. Perhaps a character like that, a rugged man who is sufficiently well read to justifiably allow me a few literary flourishes (and I can't help thinking that I'll probably end up casting some imagined variant of Tom Malone) would be the kind of of sympathetic hero and the kind of voice I'm looking for. Meanwhile I yawned a moment or two back, and while I'm not yet quite exhausted to the point where I can guarantee a deep and dreamless sleep, perhaps another six or seven vague ideas for stories might just do the soporific job.
Alan Moore (Providence Compendium by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Hardcover)
And now that mulch of dead imaginings beneath the feet of Temperance ladies, union-affiliated Vaudevillians and maimed men home from Europe has contaminated the groundwater of the upstart country's nightmares. Immigrants in their illimitable difference come to seem a separate species, taciturn and fish-eyed as though risen from the ocean waves that bore them in their transport, monstrous in their self-contained communities with bitter scents and indecipherable ululations, names, unsettlingly unpronounceable ensconced at isolated farms where beaten track is naught save idle rumour stagnant families nurse grievance, dreadful secrets and deformity in solitude; pools of declined humanity entirely unconnected to society by any tributary where ancestral prejudice or misconception may become the plaint of generations. Fabled and forbidden works of Arab alchemy are handed down across years cruel and volatile, trafficked between austere and colonial homes by charitable fellowships with ancient affectations or conveyed by fevered sea-captains, fugitive Huguenots or elderly hysterics formally accused of witchcraft. Young America, a sapling power grown suddenly so tall upon its diet of nickelodeons and motorcars, has sunk unwitting roots into an underworld of grotesque notions and archaic creeds, their feaful pull discernible below the weed-cracked sidewalk. Buried and forgotten, ominous philosophies await their day with hideous patience. Well! I think that's pretty darned good for a first attempt. A little over-wrought, perhaps, and I'm not sure about the style - I can't decide if its too modern of it's too old-fashioned, but perhaps that's a good sign. Of course, I guess I'll have to introduce a plot and characters at some point, but I'll wrestle with that minor nuisance when I get to it. Perhaps I could contrive to have some hobo, maybe literally a hoe-boy or travelling itinerant farm labourer who's wandering from place to place around New England in the search for work; somebody who might reasonably become involved with all the various characters I'm hoping to investigate. Being a labourer, while it would lend a feasibility to any action or exertion that I wanted in the story, wouldn't mean that my protagonist was lacking in intelligence or education: this is often economically a far from certain country for a lot of people, and there's plenty of smart fellows - maybe even an aspiring writer like myself - who've found themselves leaving their homes and families to mooch around from farm to farm in hope of some hay-baling or fruit-picking that's unlikely to materialise. Perhaps a character like that, a rugged man who is sufficiently well read to justifiably allow me a few literary flourishes (and I can't help thinking that I'll probably end up casting some imagined variant of Tom Malone) would be the kind of of sympathetic hero and the kind of voice I'm looking for. Meanwhile I yawned a moment or two back, and while I'm not yet quite exhausted to the point where I can guarantee a deep and dreamless sleep, perhaps another six or seven vague ideas for stories might just do the soporific job.
Alan Moore (Providence Compendium by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows Hardcover)
But what really caught her attention was the small article on page 3 about the first native professional nurse in South Africa: Cecilia Makiwane. Vera hadn’t heard of her before but in her heart she saluted this fellow nurse who came from a poor mission family and against all odds had passed the Cape Colonial Medical Council examination in December 1907 and was now actively encouraging other young native women to follow in her footsteps.
Barbara Townsend (Out of Mind: A Story of Robben Island)
But maybe his father was right. Maybe what had happened in 1918 could never happen again. "U.S. Reveals Detailed Flu Disaster Plans." Cole decided to make this the topic for his research report. Plans for manufacturing and distributing vaccines and other medications. Plans to quarantine the sick and to call up extra doctors and nurses and to replace absent workers with retired workers so that businesses wouldn't have to shut down. Plans to keep public transportation and electricity and telecommunications and other vital services operating and food and water and other necessities from running out. Plans to mobilize troops (for Cole this was the only exciting part) in the event of mass panic or violence. One day he would ask Pastor Wyatt why, despite all these plans, everything had gone so wrong. "Son, that is just the thing. That is what people did not--and still do not--get. There is no way you can count on the government, even if it's a very good government. The government isn't going to save you, it isn't going to save anyone. There's no way you can count on other people in a situation like we had. People afraid of losing their lives--or, Lord knows, even just their toys--they'll panic. Even fine, decent Christian folk--you can never know for sure what they'll do next. So I say, love your neighbor, help your fellow man all you can, but don't ever count on any other human being. Count on God." What Cole didn't know was that most of the plans he read about that night would have been sufficient only for an emergency lasting a few weeks.
Sigrid Nunez (Salvation City)
Alvarenga began to look forward to his strolls to the store—it not only calmed Córdoba but also allowed him to imagine life on land. Dr. John Leach, senior research fellow in survival psychology at the Extreme Environments Laboratory at the University of Portsmouth, England, suggests that by nurturing his sick mate, Alvarenga was building a foundation to maintain his own mental health. “If you’ve got a task to do, then you’re concentrating on that task, which provides a degree of meaning in your life. That’s one of the reasons that people like doctors and nurses have quite a high survival rate in concentration camps during wars,” says Leach. “If you’re a doctor or nurse in camp, you’ve got an automatic task, you’ve got a job that gives meaning to your existence, which is looking after others.
Jonathan Franklin (438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea)
nursing was a deeply interpersonal profession in which people had to depend on others—doctors, techs, fellow nurses—to do their job well.
Alexandra Robbins (The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital)
Wolves avoid people whenever possible. The number of attacks by wolves on humans is low. Most of the ones people hear about are undocumented stories from ancient times. There have been two cases in North America where individuals were killed by a wolf pack, but there’s conflicting evidence on even these two. Wolves have an amazing lack of interest in attacking people. Moose On the Loose Sandy Sisti My relationship with a moose cow and her calf began on May 21 when I stopped to photograph the pair. The calf was less than one day old. The moose cow had ventured to a secluded area to give birth. Her little calf was born on a small island in the middle of the Shoshone River, just twelve miles outside of Yellowstone’s East Entrance. Choosing such an isolated place isn’t unusual, since moose often give birth on islands in an effort to keep their helpless calves safe for the first few days of their lives. Unfortunately the extremely warm weather in 2014 caused the mountain snows to melt rapidly, flooding parts of the Shoshone River. While watching the pair, I couldn’t help but notice that the rising water was swallowing up their tiny island. Only a few bare patches were left where the moose could bed down. At the same time the flooding was stranding the cow and her newborn calf. The young fellow could barely stand and when he was able to get to his feet a few times a day to nurse, it was obviously quite an effort. I worried that this drama would end badly, so on that very first day I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t spend any more time with the cow and her calf for fear of the heartbreak I would feel if tragedy struck. I stuck to my vow for four days, although I would always quickly glance over at the mother and calf each time I drove past. The pair was stuck on a small bit of land far from the opposite shore. I couldn’t imagine how the little calf could ever make it across the rushing floodwaters to freedom and to an area where his mother could graze. For those first few days, the calf didn’t move much. He spent most of his time sleeping alongside his mother or standing to nurse as the river continued to rise. When the calf was five days old, I was surprised to see him up and about as I drove past on my way home from Yellowstone. Although he wasn’t yet steady on his feet, he was able to follow his mother around their island as she grazed. I spent six hours watching the pair that day and from that moment on I knew I could no longer keep my vow to not get emotionally involved. I grew attached to the little family and became very concerned that the calf would never be able to safely swim across the river to the mainland. A friend of mine had already contacted Wyoming Game and Fish and informed them of the situation. He was told that nature must be allowed to run its course. So all I could do was watch and wait. By Day Six of the calf’s life the moose cow had eaten all of
Carolyn Jourdan (Dangerous Beauty: Encounters with Grizzlies and Bison in Yellowstone)
What is his line?’ ‘Ah, that’s the question! Very likely he hasn’t one at all. It seems to me there’s a good many young fellows in that case nowadays. They have education, they have money, and they don’t know what the deuce to do with either one or the other. They’re a cut above you, Mr. Jack; it isn’t enough for them to live and enjoy themselves. So they get it into their heads that they’re called upon to reform the world — a nice handy little job, that’ll keep them going. The girls, I notice, are beginning to have the same craze. I shouldn’t wonder if Paula gets an idea that she’ll be a hospital-nurse, or go district-visiting in Bethnal Green.
George Gissing (Thyrza)