Medication Nurse Quotes

The first wave of homesickness caught Connie by surprise. She had not heard or felt its approach until it hit her hard, knocking her to the ground.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget this day,’ Connie said. ‘I want to soak up every single moment, so that I can remember it when I’m old. Remember that I…we, did this. I want to have stories to tell when I’m old. I want to have done things.

Girl, are you on medication?” Nurse Debra asked. “No, of course not,” Madison answered impatiently. “Maybe you should be,” Debra muttered.

and she's a nurse. do you know how hard nursing school is? it's like medical school. so she's obviously smart.

Charley talking to Cookie ‘'You know those women in nursing homes that have to be restrained around the clock because they mix up everyones medication and steal all the bedpans?'' ‘’Yes'' I said wondering what I was walking into ''That’s going to be you!'' She was probably right, if I live that long

Everyone has creative potential. Creativity involves using your imagination and inventiveness. Your unique expression of yourself is your creativity...Creativity can be magic when visiting people who are ill.

I guessed that he was one of those ambitious young physicians who more and more fill the profession, opportunists with a fashionable hoodlum image, openly hostile to their patients. My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race.

The difference between "active" and "busy" is that the former includes reflection and is directed, whereas the busy life feels out of control and does not seem purposeful or meaningful.

You wanted to become a doctor to help people and feel better at the end of your job, I think, watching them, as the nurse takes my hand. But I don't think you do feel better at the end of the day. You look like humans have constantly disappointed you.

Coti, did you go to medical school?” Kellen asked. “Does fucking a chick while she was in nursing school count?

The term 'deinstitutionalization' conceals some simple truths, namely, that old, unwanted persons, formerly housed in state hospitals, are now housed in nursing homes; that young, unwanted persons, formerly also housed in state hospitals, are now housed in prisons or parapsychiatric facilities; and that both groups of inmates are systematically drugged with psychiatric medications.

Perhaps the most difficult part about identifying a medical serial killer is that no nurse or physician or medical worker wants to believe a peer would do such a thing—would kill instead of save lives.

It is unfortunate that the modern healthcare system has devolved into a mass production line of sickened people attending very short appointments with overworked doctors that are delivering substandard care that is influenced by drug companies.

She beeped rudely at him. "I have noted in your file that you are refusing medical assistance against my advice. If you die during the night, your surviving family will not be able to bring a lawsuit against me." He laughed wildly. "You're my surviving family." "Oh. Well. Engaging Empathy Protocol. That was very nice of you to say. You are wonderful. Disengaging Empathy Protocol. Idiot. I am going to sleep now. Do not bother me unless you are on fire. Even then, I will do little to help you." She plugged herself in next to Rambo and was silent.

You never know what’s lurking in the bloodstream, or skulking under the foreskin, or squatting in the liver, or flitting hither and thither from branch to branch in the bronchial forest.

What if she stepped on a needle and it went right into her foot and Roberta would not feel it and the needle would rise and rise and rise through the veins leading up to the heart and then the needle would STAB HER IN THE HEART and Roberta would DIE and it would be VERY PAINFUL this according to nurse mother a medical expert on Freaky Ways to Croak... The mother shouted that she knew several people who died from the Rising Stab of the Unfelt Needle or RSUN she has seen cases of it many times and not ONE PERSON HAS SURVIVED IT.

PTSD seems to have an even higher prevalence and greater severity following violence or disaster that is man-made; natural disasters, "acts of God," seem somehow easier to accept. (...). This is the case with acute stress reactions, too: I see it often with my patients in hospital, who can show extraordinary courage and calmness in facing the most dreadful diseases but fly into a rage if a nurse is late with a bedpan or a medication. The amorality of nature is accepted, whether it takes the form of a monsoon, an elephant in musth, or a disease; but being subjected helplessly to the will of others is not, for human behavior always carries (or is felt to carry) a moral charge.

I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere (for they are equally jargons); of the jargon, namely, about the "rights" of women, which urges women to do all that men do, including the medical and other professions, merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women, and should be "recalled to a sense of their duty as women," and because "this is women's work," and "that is men's," and "these are things which women should not do," which is all assertion and nothing more. Surely woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God's world, without attending to either of these cries.

One Chief Astronaut used to make a point of phoning the front desk at the clinic where applicants are sent for medical testing, to find out which ones treated the staff well—and which ones stood out in a bad way. The nurses and clinic staff have seen a whole lot of astronauts over the years, and they know what the wrong stuff looks like. A person with a superiority complex might unwittingly, right there in the waiting room, quash his or her chances of ever going to space.

The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through rapid changes of light to show morning, noon, and night - throb off and on furiously with day and dark, and everybody is driven like mad to keep up with that passing of fake time; awful scramble of shaves and breakfasts and appointments and lunches and medications and ten minutes of night so you barely get your eyes closed before the dorm light's screaming at you to get up and start the scramble again, go like a sonofabitch this way, going through the full schedule of a day maybe twenty times an hour, till the Big Nurse sees everybody is right up to the breaking point, and she slacks off on the throttle, eases off the pace on that clock-dial, like some kid been fooling with the moving-picture projection machine and finally got tired watching the film run at ten times its natural speed, got bored with all that silly scampering and insect squeak of talk and turned it back to normal.

Q: Your warehouse workers work 11/5-hour shifts. In order to make rate, a significant number of them need to take over-the-counter painkillers multiple times per shift, which means regular backups at the medical office. Do you: A. Scale back the rate ---clearly, workers are at their physical limits B. Make shifts shorter C. Increase the number or duration of breaks D. Increase staffing at the nurse's office E. Install vending machines to dispense painkillers more efficiently Seriously---what kind of fucking sociopath goes with E?

As a Minnesota agency nurse said, “We are not just bed-making, drink-serving, poop-wiping, medication-passing assistants. We are much more.

When using the medical profession, you must remember that it is influenced by many corporations that may not want your health issues to be fully understood and correctly treated.

The most important thing that I learned from a decade of using the medical profession is that you need to supervise your doctors.

You should be suspicious of a medical profession that is in the business of treatments, not cures.

I hated shots. And since I couldn’t remember the last one, I was due. She bustled off and returned with the nurse and a tray holding two hypodermics and several other pointy medical things.

Today, though, doctors and nurses have replaced family and friends, an unintended consequence of the advancement of medical science. We fear death because we don’t know it, we don’t see it, and we don’t touch it. And what we don’t know, we’ve painted in broad strokes of darkness and negativity. The death negative narrative wouldn’t be so strong if we only had the ability to see, touch, and hold our dying and our dead.

A modern hospital is like Grand Central Station—all noise and hubbub, and is filled with smoking physicians, nurses, orderlies, patients and visitors. Soft drinks are sold on each floor and everybody guzzles these popular poisons. The stench of chemicals offends the nose, while tranquillizers substitute for quietness.

Ever met a sympathetic doctor? No ways. They’re always impatient, glancing at the watch, calculating the price of your sickness against the price of another pair of shoes for the bitch wife with the reluctant cunt.

What does it take to unwind the unwanted? It takes twelve surgeons, in teams of two, rotating in and out as their medical specialty is needed. It takes nine surgical assistants and four nurses. It takes three hours.

She's not my nurse but she comes up to Gran and Gramps just the same. "Don't you doubt for a second that she can hear you," she tells them. "She's aware if everything that's going on." She stands there with her hands on her hip. I can almost picture her snapping gum. Gran and Gramps stare at her, lapping up what she's telling them. "You might think the doctors or nurses or all this equipment is running the show," she says, gesturing to the wall of medical equipment. "Nuh-uh. She's running the show. Maybe she's just biding her time. So you talk to her. You tell her to take all the time she needs, but to come on back. You're waiting for her.

Even though our journey as parents of a medically fragile child began with emotional turmoil, it has since become a purposeful odyssey that brings meaning and depth to our lives. This is the road we were born to travel.

According to the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation statement, approximately 10,000 American military women were stationed in Vietnam during the war. Most were nurses in the Army, Air Force, and Navy, but women also served as physicians and medical personnel, and in air traffic control and military intelligence. Civilian women also served in Vietnam as news correspondents and workers for the Red Cross, Donut Dollies, the USO, Special Services, the American Friends Service Committee, Catholic Relief Services, and other humanitarian organizations.

Ironically, the memory of the women heroes of World War I was largely eclipsed by the very women they had inspired. The more blatant evil enacted into law by Nazi Germany during the Second World War ensured that those who fought against it would continue to fascinate long after the first war had become a vague, unpleasant memory—one brought to mind only by fading photographs of serious, helmeted young men standing in sandbagged trenches or smiling young women in ankle-length nursing uniforms, or by the presence of poppies in Remembrance Day ceremonies.

Parents of medically fragile children find themselves becoming experts in lots of different areas, including laws and regulations, research and treatments, and the various specialists that support the health of their children.

No one seemed to know how my broken arm got infected. Pretty quickly I stopped asking questions about it. I was worried I would find out that there were other basic medical facts that nurses didn't know; like where skin comes from, or how surgery works.

I have noticed over the past three years that most African Christians depend on their pastor or preachers for directions in life than their lecturers, politicians and nurses. That tells why most people refuse certain medical priorities with regards to their pastor's messages. I think if every pastor should have entrepreneurial knowledge coupled with spiritual integrity, Africa will shake!

Although Garfield was dangerously ill, the idea of taking him to a hospital was never considered. Hospitals were only for people who had nowhere else to go. “No sick or injured person who could possibly be nursed at home or in a medical man’s private residence,

Coach Slader caught up followed closely by a trail of curious students all as surprised as I at this turn of events.Coach spoke in a delicate voice, like he didn’t want to spook a dangerous animal. “Jayden, what are you doing?” “She needs medical attention.” The guy didn’t pause stride. “Yes, but—” “I’m taking her to the nurse.” “Okay, but—” “She’s too weak to walk.” I huffed. “I am not. Put me down.” In one swift movement the boy stopped, dumped me on my feet and stepped back. My knees buckled and before you could say “Bob’s your uncle” he scooped me up again and kept walking. A chorus of giggles erupted behind us. “See,” he said.I put my arms around his neck and shut up.

Several years ago, researchers at the University of Minnesota identified 568 men and women over the age of seventy who were living independently but were at high risk of becoming disabled because of chronic health problems, recent illness, or cognitive changes. With their permission, the researchers randomly assigned half of them to see a team of geriatric nurses and doctors—a team dedicated to the art and science of managing old age. The others were asked to see their usual physician, who was notified of their high-risk status. Within eighteen months, 10 percent of the patients in both groups had died. But the patients who had seen a geriatrics team were a quarter less likely to become disabled and half as likely to develop depression. They were 40 percent less likely to require home health services. These were stunning results. If scientists came up with a device—call it an automatic defrailer—that wouldn’t extend your life but would slash the likelihood you’d end up in a nursing home or miserable with depression, we’d be clamoring for it. We wouldn’t care if doctors had to open up your chest and plug the thing into your heart. We’d have pink-ribbon campaigns to get one for every person over seventy-five. Congress would be holding hearings demanding to know why forty-year-olds couldn’t get them installed. Medical students would be jockeying to become defrailulation specialists, and Wall Street would be bidding up company stock prices. Instead, it was just geriatrics. The geriatric teams weren’t doing lung biopsies or back surgery or insertion of automatic defrailers. What they did was to simplify medications. They saw that arthritis was controlled. They made sure toenails were trimmed and meals were square. They looked for worrisome signs of isolation and had a social worker check that the patient’s home was safe. How do we reward this kind of work? Chad Boult, the geriatrician who was the lead investigator of the University of Minnesota study, can tell you. A few months after he published the results, demonstrating how much better people’s lives were with specialized geriatric care, the university closed the division of geriatrics.

Another historical peculiarity of the place was the fact that its large mansions, those relics of another time, had not been reconstructed to serve as nursing homes for that vast population of comatose and the dying who were kept alive, unconscionably, through trailblazing medical invention.

Hopkins was one of the top hospitals in the country. It was built in 1889 as a charity hospital for the sick and poor, and it covered more than a dozen acres where a cemetery and insane asylum once sat in East Baltimore. The public wards at Hopkins were filled with patients, most of them black and unable to pay their medical bills. David drove Henrietta nearly twenty miles to get there, not because they preferred it, but because it was the only major hospital for miles that treated black patients. This was the era of Jim Crow—when black people showed up at white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even if it meant they might die in the parking lot. Even Hopkins, which did treat black patients, segregated them in colored wards, and had colored-only fountains. So when the nurse called Henrietta from the waiting room, she led her through a single door to a colored-only exam room—one in a long row of rooms divided by clear glass walls that let nurses see from one to the next.

How, then, do we know when a patient is giving up “too early” when we feel that a little fight on his part combined with the help of the medical profession could give him a chance to live longer? How can we differentiate this from the stage of acceptance, when our wish to prolong his life often contradicts his wish to rest and die in peace? If we are unable to differentiate these two stages we do more harm than good to our patients, we will be frustrated in our efforts, and will make his dying a painful last experience.

The doctrine of vocation deals with how God works through human beings to bestow His gifts. God gives us this day our daily bread by means of the farmer the banker, the cooks, And the lady at the check-out counter. He creates new life – the most amazing miracle of all – by means of mothers and fathers. He protects us by means of the police officers, firemen, and our military. He creates. Through artists. He heals by working through doctors, nurses, and others whom He has gifted, equipped, and called to the medical professions.

my husband is a retired K-9 officer.

the bright, clipped voice that all nurses seem to share, like it’s part of their medical training.

There is a lot of inconvenience in the corporate medical system.

      How to use this book: This book is divided into two sections; individual medications and medication classes.

We know that media vita in morte sumus or, “in the midst of life we are in death.” We begin dying the day we are born, after all. But because of advances in medical science, the majority of Americans will spend the later years of their life actively dying. The fastest-growing segment of the US population is over eighty-five, what I would call the aggressively elderly. If you reach eighty-five, not only is there a strong chance you are living with some form of dementia or terminal disease, but statistics show that you have a 50-50 chance of ending up in a nursing home, raising the question of whether a good life is measured in quality or quantity. This slow decline differs sharply from times past, when people tended to die quickly, often in a single day. Postmortem daguerreotypes from the 1800s picture fresh, young, almost lifelike corpses, many of them victims of scarlet fever or diphtheria. In 1899, a mere 4 percent of the US population was over sixty-five—forget making it to eighty-five. Now, many will know that death is coming during months or years of deterioration. Medicine has given us the “opportunity”—loosely defined—to sit at our own wakes.

I’ve worked in the medical field for years as a nurse. I try to know the ins and outs of the health-care system, but nothing challenges a person as much as when his or her own family members become ill.

As another example, in many healthcare settings, up to 35 percent of nurses are the parents of school-age children, and up to 20 percent of those would have to stay home with their children because they have no childcare alternatives. So, closing schools can have the effect of losing 20 percent of our vital nursing workforce in a time of medical crisis, before we even consider those that we will lose to illness itself.

Many doctors focus almost exclusively on processing information: they absorb medical data, analyze it, and produce a diagnosis. Nurses, in contrast, need good motor and emotional skills in order to give a painful injection, replace a bandage, or restrain a violent patient. Therefore we will probably have an AI family doctor on our smartphone decades before we have a reliable nurse robot.9 The human care industry—which takes care of the sick, the young, and the elderly—is likely to remain a human bastion for a long time. Indeed, as people live longer and have fewer children, care of the elderly will probably be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the human labor market.

Are we really supposed to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives at the ripe old age of seventeen?” “Don’t you want to know?” “I guess? I wish I could live ten lives at once.” “Ugh. You just don’t want to choose.” “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to get stuck doing something that doesn’t mean anything to me. This track I’m on? It goes on forever. Yale. Medical school. Residency. Marriage. Children. Retirement. Nursing home. Funeral home. Cemetery.

Growing up, those of us who had to put a hyphen before "American" got scoffed at for sending money home to cousins in the old country or supporting aging parents here on green cards. But you used to shake your head and tell me how, back home, nobody put their parents into nursing homes or let their kin go hungry. The same thing lives on among Sami's queer and trans friends of color, he tells me, crowdfunding for medical care and housing online, or in the group chats he tells me about where friends help one another escape abusive relationship or housing crises with safety planning and couches to sleep on. We take care of one another because no one else will, eh says. But every time is a gamble.

Twenty-five years had whisked by with its challenges and triumphs. Ida now had a medical school, a nursing school, and a large hospital, but still there was much more to be done. Ida found herself wondering what her next challenge would be.

I picked up a mug with the complicated name of a medication stamped across the side, and a slogan about Treating Today for Tomorrow. They're handed out to places like this by visiting drug companies. Last time I went in the office to borrow the Nursing Dictionary, I counted three mugs, a mouse mat, a bunch of pens, two Post-it note booklets and the wall clock - all sporting the brands of different medicines. It's like being in prison and having to look at adverts for fucking locks.

We are increasingly the generals who march the soldiers onward, saying all the while, “You let me know when you want to stop.” All-out treatment, we tell the incurably ill, is a train you can get off at any time—just say when. But for most patients and their families we are asking too much. They remain riven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve. Our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once. They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come—and escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want.

Using your wealth to purchase other people’s loyalty is a game as old as humanity itself. Rich men use their wealth to attract women, unscrupulous employers use material incentives and disincentives to manipulate their workers, and wealthy countries like the USA use their national wealth to keep their citizens loyal to the cause of aggressive and genocidal Imperialism. But historical longevity and common practice don’t make the manipulation or exploitation morally or ethically right. Organized religions are inherently POLITICAL organizations. There is a fundamental difference between the financial enterprise and political machinations of an organized religion versus a mass of independent unaffiliated believers, philosophers, and mystics who do not support any organized religion. Christianity and Islam are known as proselytizing religions because they make an organized and systemic effort to gain converts, and they often provide services, products, or employment to attract converts. Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism show far less zeal about gaining converts, which is why you almost never hear about Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist missionaries. Modern medical and nursing schools usually teach their students the moral principle that the provision of medical services should never be used as a means to proselytize or promote a religion, but that does not deter many Christian health care providers from doing exactly that. Most of the medical and charitable organizations based in Christian countries are fronts for Christian proselytizing activities.

There are simply no doctors and nurses left on that continent. It’s an absolute tragedy! African doctors should stay in Africa.” “Why shouldn’t they want to practice where there is regular electricity and regular pay?” Mark asked, his tone flat. Obinze sensed that he did not like Alexa at all. “I’m from Grimsby and I certainly don’t want to work in a district hospital there.” “But it isn’t quite the same thing, is it? We’re speaking of some of the world’s poorest people. The doctors have a responsibility as Africans,” Alexa said. “Life isn’t fair, really. If they have the privilege of that medical degree then it comes with a responsibility to help their people.” “I see. I don’t suppose any of us should have that responsibility for the blighted towns in the north of England?” Mark said. Alexa’s face reddened. In

Tiffy: So … in your professional opinion … Me: As a palliative care nurse? Tiffy: As a vaguely medical person … Oh, no. These conversations never go well. People always assume they teach us all the medicine in the world at nursing school, and that we remember it five years later.

The reality was that all manner of instructions could be given, but people needed to eat and they needed supplies. Some considered feeding the soul as important as feeding the body, so they, too, disregarded the order to not attend Mass. Father Pedro himself had refused to accept that the illness was capable of entering the church, much less spread and grow during the sacred ceremony. But this disease did not respect holy places, rituals, or people, as the pig-headed and dead Father Pedro must now know, wherever he was. Nor did the disease respect medical personnel. The town’s already limited hospital, founded by the ladies of high society, had closed its doors after the death or desertion of its nurses and the rest of its staff. Now Linares’s doctors and any surviving medical staff who dared do so roamed the town, like Cantú, visiting houses where they were not welcome.

Conquergood considered his relationship with the Hmong to be a form of barter, “a productive and mutually invigorating dialog, with neither side dominating or winning out.” In his opinion, the physicians and nurses at Ban Vinai failed to win the cooperation of the camp inhabitants because they considered the relationship one-sided, with the Westerners holding all the knowledge. As long as they persisted in this view, Conquergood believed that what the medical establishment was offering would continue to be rejected, since the Hmong would view it not as a gift but as a form of coercion.

Psychologists now also talk about the nocebo effect. Words and expectations can impact our bodies to heal or harm us. And in recent years doctors have started to do research that recognizes the validity of this nocebo effect. The nocebo effect for doctors means that they acknowledge there is power in the words they speak, power to encourage healing or power to unintentionally impede the healing process.1 Think about it. You are with a nurse, and she says, “You are a high-risk patient.” Medical science is now saying these kinds of statements can negatively impact the physical health of patients. I love

California nurse Jared Axen was holding a dying hospice patient’s hand when he began to sing an old hymn. The woman, who didn’t speak English, hadn’t been responsive in days. But when Axen sang to her, she squeezed his hand, a response that soothed the woman’s family. Six years later, Axen, a classically trained musician, sings to some of his patients every day. “It gives them their humanity back,” he said. “Music is a common language that helps me connect with my patients.” Many patients also claim to feel better and to need fewer pain medications, Axen said. “It’s become a vital tool for my patients and their families.

In this country, we think of dying primarily as a medical event. It’s much more than that. It’s about relationships: to ourselves, those we may be caring for, or those caring for us. Caring for the dying can be an intense, intimate, and deeply enlivening experience. Death can be an extraordinary mirror through which we see ourselves.

Psychologists often make a distinction between mistakes where we already know the right answer and mistakes where we don’t. A medication error, for example, is a mistake of the former kind: the nurse knew she should have administered Medicine A but inadvertently administered Medicine B, perhaps because of confusing labeling combined with pressure of time. But sometimes mistakes are consciously made as part of a process of discovery. Drug companies test lots of different combinations of chemicals to see which have efficacy and which don’t. Nobody knows in advance which will work and which won’t, but this is precisely why they test extensively, and fail often. It is integral to progress.

Eat carbohydrates and blood sugar rises. Every first-year medical student knows this, every nurse or diabetes educator knows this, every person with diabetes who performs finger-stick blood sugars before and after meals knows this. Eat any food with more than just a few grams of carbohydrates and blood sugar will rise; the more carbohydrates you eat, the higher blood sugar will rise. Everyone also knows that foods like butter do not raise blood sugar, nor will a fatty cut of meat, olives, green bell peppers, broccoli, or chicken liver. And since the 1980s, when the sharp upward climb in type 2 diabetes (and obesity) began, the only component of diet that has increased is carbohydrates, not fat or proteins.4

Type A reactions are dose dependent, common, and related to the pharmacological effects of the drug. Type B reactions are allergic or idiosyncratic reactions; they are not dose dependent and are usually not predictable or preventable. Type C reactions are related to the cumulative dose of the medication; they are dose and time related, and they are relatively uncommon.

As we stood on our doorsteps and clanged our pans, politicians were handing out billion-pound contracts to their mates. As we put rainbows in our windows, nursing home residents were being all but murdered by their idiotic policies. And throughout, as NHS staff put their lives at risk, as they worked double and triple shifts, as the PPE cut into their faces, as they moved out of their family homes for months on end, the ghouls in charge seemed far more concerned with their own appearances and legacies. And there’s still nothing approaching an assurance that the NHS won’t be sold off in five years’ time, plunging us into an unfair insurance-based system that mostly benefits the former politicians who stuff the boardrooms of private medicine.

The autopsy revealed that Dean’s right cerebral artery had burst. “Daddy was strong, but he had a tiny weak spot there was no way of knowing about,” Amanda said. She took out an old nursing textbook and showed Oriana a drawing of the vasculature of the brain. “Right in there, that’s the place, do you see?” Oriana nodding yes, but not allowing the medical facts to impede her father’s imminent return as an angel.

Well, it’s not swollen,” he stated, rewrapping the bandage, “or bleeding or leaking, so I think it’s okay.” “I know. I’m training to be a nurse,” I replied. “Thanks though.” “Explains the curiosity and attitude.” “What?” I snapped. “I’m a trainee paramedic.” “Oh.” I looked away, chewing my lower lip. “Right.” “There’s a sense of rivalry between Emergency Medical Technicians, paramedics, and nurses—I don’t know the reason behind it.” “I know.

Without direction, the respiratory technician goes to the head of the bed. She takes the tubing, attaches it to the oxygen, and turns it on as high as it will go. She provides a seal with her hand cupped over the plastic mask, over the nose and mouth of the toddler, and methodically provides oxygenated air. Doyle’s tiny chest rises and falls while I listen with my stethoscope. I am reaching for another breathing tube. “Fib!” Dr. Pedras feels for a pulse while another places gelled pads on her chest.

blur in my memory.” She wagged her head and clucked her tongue sadly, which I found very annoying. “Well, at least you’re better now. That’s what counts, right?” She shuffled through my file. “I see your doctor has filed a medical certificate for gym.” “Yeah.” “Okay, no problem. I’ll see that the nurse and Coach Procter get copies. And you have a prescription request, which has been approved. The nurse has to dispense medicine to you, but you probably already know that.” “Uh, yeah,” I said dryly. She seemed

The stack of her medical files that confronted me at the nurses’ station was about four feet high, taller than the shrunken little girl herself. Laura’s story, like that of the children of Waco, helped us learn more about how children respond to early experience. It illustrates how the mind and body cannot be treated separately, reveals what infants and young children need for healthy brain development and demonstrates how neglecting those needs can have a profound impact on every aspect of a child’s growth.

But no matter how carefully we schedule our days, master our emotions, and try to wring our best life now from our better selves, we cannot solve the problem of finitude. We will always want more. We need more. We are carrying the weight of caregiving and addiction, chronic pain and uncertain diagnosis, struggling teenagers and kids with learning disabilities, mental illness and abusive relationships. A grandmother has been sheltering without a visitor for months, and a friend's business closed its doors. Doctors, nurses, and frontline workers are acting as levees, feeling each surge of the disease crash against them. My former students, now serving as pastors and chaplains, are in hospitals giving last rites in hazmat suits. They volunteer to be the last person to hold his hand. To smooth her hair. The truth if the pandemic is the truth of all suffering: that it is unjustly distributed. Who bears the brunt? The homeless and the prisoners. The elderly and the children. The sick and the uninsured. Immigrants and people needing social services. People of color and LGBTQ people. The burdens of ordinary evils— descriminations, brutality, predatory lending, illegal evictions, and medical exploitation— roll back on the vulnerable like a heavy stone. All of us struggle against the constraints places on our bodies, our commitments, our ambitions, and our resources, even as we're saddled with inflated expectations of invincibility. This is the strange cruelty of suffering in America, its insistence that everything is still possible.

But because of advances in medical science, the majority of Americans will spend the later years of their life actively dying. The fastest-growing segment of the US population is over eighty-five, what I would call the aggressively elderly. If you reach eighty-five, not only is there a strong chance you are living with some form of dementia or terminal disease, but statistics show that you have a 50-50 chance of ending up in a nursing home, raising the question of whether a good life is measured in quality or quantity.

In a town in Liberia, a young woman named Fatu Kekula, who was a nursing student, ended up caring for four of her family members at home when there was no room for them in a hospital—her parents, her sister, and a cousin. She didn’t have any protective gear, so she created a bio-hazmat suit out of plastic garbage bags. She tied garbage bags over her feet and legs, put on rubber boots over the bags, and then put more bags over her boots. She put on a raincoat, a surgical mask, and multiple rubber gloves, and she covered her head with pantyhose and a garbage bag. Dressed this way, Fatu Kekula set up IV lines for her family members, giving them saline solution to keep them from becoming dehydrated. Her parents and sister survived; her cousin died. And she herself remained uninfected. Local medical workers called Fatu Kekula’s measures the Trash Bag Method. All you needed were garbage bags, a raincoat, and no small amount of love and courage. Medical workers taught the Trash Bag Method, or variants of it, to people who couldn’t get to hospitals

You have to imagine what it was like to be on the receiving end of vicious antagonism: sneering, contempt, ridicule, slights about one’s intelligence, integrity and motives. In those days, women even ran the risk of dismissal for their opinions. And this treatment came from other women, as well as men. In fact, “in-fighting” between various schools of nurses who had some sort of training in midwifery was particularly nasty. One eminent lady – the matron of St Bartholomew’s Hospital – branded the aspiring midwives as “anachronisms, who would in the future be regarded as historical curiosities”. The medical opposition seems to have arisen mainly from the fact that “women are striving to interfere too much in every department of life”.* Obstetricians also doubted the female intellectual capacity to grasp the anatomy and physiology of childbirth, and suggested that they could not therefore be trained. But the root fear was – guess what? – you’ve got it, but no prizes for quickness: money. Most doctors charged a routine one guinea for a delivery. The word got around that trained midwives would undercut them by delivering babies for half a guinea! The knives were out.

[referencing African girls with no medical care while giving birth and the devastating fistulas they are left with untreated] Instead of receiving treatment, these young girls--often just girls of fifteen or sixteen--typically find their lives effectively over. They are divorced from their husbands and, because they emit a terrible odor from their wastes, are often forced to live in a hut by themselves on the edge of the village. Eventually, they starve to death or die of an infection that progresses along the birth canal. The fistula patient is the modern-day leper," notes Ruth Kennedy, a British nurse-midwife.

1) Levophed—a common blood pressure medication. Used to be called “leave ’em dead” because people used it for the sickest of the sick in sepsis and those patients still frequently died, but it has now come back into favor. We were maxed. 2) Vasopressin—another BP med. Not titratable. Left on normal dose. 3) Phenylephrine, aka Neo, from its brand name, Neosynephrine—another BP med—maxed. Pharmacy was mixing higher concentrations of this for us, so that we could give it in less fluid volume for the patient’s sake. 4) Sodium Bicarb—also high-concentrated dose for fluid reasons—given to attempt to combat patient’s acidosis. 5) Fentanyl—pain control—not maxed. 6) Versed—an amnesiac—hopefully makes you “less aware” of WTF is happening to you. Also not maxed, because they were also on…. 7) Nimbex—a paralytic we give to patients to make them “ride the vent” so that they don’t fight it and can save energy, as the vent does the work of breathing for them. 8) Heparin—blood thinner, to reduce the clotting that covid can cause. 9) Amiodarone—heart med, stops arrhythmias. 10) Insulin—which requires hourly insulin checks to titrate effectively. Unfortunately, many covid patients are also on steroids, which means their blood sugars fluctuate all over the place.

As nurses, we’re supposed to compartmentalize, to be detached, to mentally separate our professional lives from our personal lives, like sorting medication into a pill sorter, clearly divided with thick plastic tabs. We were taught this in nursing school, though it’s not that easy and it’s not something that can be taught—to care for and about our patients, but to not let ourselves get emotionally attached because attachment, they say, leads to burnout, which causes nurses to leave an already hemorrhaging profession. It’s hard because as nurses, it’s in our nature to be compassionate, and these two things—detachment and compassion—are at odds with one another.

Consider this scenario: A man gets a stomachache after each meal. To “treat” this problem, he takes (either by prescription or by self-medication) some antacid or other nostrum. Then he gets a headache (which may or may not be a side effect of the stomach medication); to “treat” the headache he takes aspirin, which further irritates his stomach. Three years later he develops an ulcer, for which he takes another medication, plus large amounts of milk and cream (although an outmoded treatment, it is still being used today). Meanwhile, he is still taking antacids for his indigestion and eating the same way he always had. Eventually, he has an operation to remove his ulcer. He continues with his high-dairy diet. Soon thereafter he develops arteriosclerosis and high blood pressure and begins to take antihypertensive medication. The side effects of the latter include headaches, dizziness, drowsiness, diarrhea, slow heart rate, mental confusion, hallucinations, weight gain, and impotence. When his wife leaves him for a younger man, he takes antidepressants and sleeping pills. He has a heart attack and undergoes an operation to repair a heart valve. Painkillers keep him going as he slowly recuperates. A year or two later, he finds himself with an irreversible neurological disease such as ALS or Alzheimer’s, and he wonders what could have gone wrong. All that’s left for him to do is wait to die, which he can do in a nursing home, drugged into complaisance and painlessness.

Egg-laying hens, for example, have a complex world of behavioural needs and drives. They feel strong urges to scout their environment, forage and peck around, determine social hierarchies, build nests and groom themselves. But the egg industry often locks the hens inside tiny coops, and it is not uncommon for it to squeeze four hens to a cage, each given a floor space of about 10 by 8.5 inches. The hens receive sufficient food, but they are unable to claim a territory, build a nest or engage in other natural activities. Indeed, the cage is so small that hens are often unable even to flap their wings or stand fully erect. Pigs are among the most intelligent and inquisitive of mammals, second perhaps only to the great apes. Yet industrialised pig farms routinely confine nursing sows inside such small crates that they are literally unable to turn around (not to mention walk or forage). The sows are kept in these crates day and night for four weeks after giving birth. Their offspring are then taken away to be fattened up and the sows are impregnated with the next litter of piglets. Many dairy cows live almost all their allotted years inside a small enclosure; standing, sitting and sleeping in their own urine and excrement. They receive their measure of food, hormones and medications from one set of machines, and get milked every few hours by another set of machines. The cow in the middle is treated as little more than a mouth that takes in raw materials and an udder that produces a commodity. Treating living creatures possessing complex emotional worlds as if they were machines is likely to cause them not only physical discomfort, but also much social stress and psychological frustration.

Another common practice, the reps told us, was to take fancy meals to the entire doctor’s office (one of the perks of being a nurse or receptionist, I suppose). One doctor’s office even required alternating days of steak and lobster for lunch if the reps wanted access to the doctors. Even more shocking, we found out that physicians sometimes called the reps into the examination room (as an “expert”) to directly inform patients about the way certain drugs work. Hearing stories from the reps who sold medical devices was even more disturbing. We learned that it’s common practice for device reps to peddle their medical devices in the operating room in real time and while a surgery is under way. Janet and I were surprised at how well the pharmaceutical reps understood classic psychological persuasion strategies and how they employed them in a sophisticated and intuitive manner.

Every day, on his right and left, another soul escapes toward the sky, and it sounds to him as if he can hear faraway music, as if a door has been shut on a grand old radio and he can listen only by putting his good ear against the material of his cot, although the music is soft, and there are moments when he is not certain it is there at all. There is something to be angry at, Werner is sure, but he cannot say what it is. “Won’t eat,” says a nurse in English. Armband of a medic. “Fever?” “High.” There are more words. Then numbers. In a dream, he sees a bright crystalline night with the canals all frozen and the lanterns of the miners’ houses burning and the farmers skating between the fields. He sees a submarine asleep in the lightless depths of the Atlantic; Jutta presses her face to a porthole and breathes on the glass. He half expects to see Volkheimer’s huge hand appear, help him up, and clap him into the Opel. And Marie-Laure? Can she still feel the pressure of his hand against the webbing between her fingers as he can feel hers?

He shared his place with a Dr. Tubeside, whose practice consisted largely of injecting people with "vitamin B12", a euphemism for the physician's own blend of amphetamines. Today, early as it was, Doc still had to edge his way past a line of "B12"- deficient housewives of a certain melancholy index, actors with casting calls to show up at, deeply tanned geezers looking ahead to an active day of schmoozing in the sun, stewardii just off in some high-stress red-eye, even a few legit cases of pernicious anemia or vegetarian pregnancy, all shuffling along half asleep, chain-smoking, talking to themselves, sliding one by one into the lobby of the little cinder-block building through a turnstile, next to which, holding a clipboard and checking them in, stood Petunia Leeway, a stunner in a starched cap and micro-length medical outfit, not so much an actual nurse uniform as a lascivious commentary on one, which Dr. Tubeside claimed to've bought a truckload of from Fredericks's of Hollywood, in a variety of fashion pastels, today's being aqua, at close to wholesale.

Christianity has been the means of reducing more languages to writing than have all other factors combined. It has created more schools, more theories of education, and more systems than has any other one force. More than any other power in history it has impelled men to fight suffering, whether that suffering has come from disease, war or natural disasters. It has built thousands of hospitals, inspired the emergence of the nursing and medical professions, and furthered movement for public health and the relief and prevention of famine. Although explorations and conquests which were in part its outgrowth led to the enslavement of Africans for the plantations of the Americas, men and women whose consciences were awakened by Christianity and whose wills it nerved brought about the abolition of slavery (in England and America). Men and women similarly moved and sustained wrote into the laws of Spain and Portugal provisions to alleviate the ruthless exploitation of the Indians of the New World. Wars have often been waged in the name of Christianity. They have attained their most colossal dimensions through weapons and large–scale organization initiated in (nominal) Christendom. Yet from no other source have there come as many and as strong movements to eliminate or regulate war and to ease the suffering brought by war. From its first centuries, the Christian faith has caused many of its adherents to be uneasy about war. It has led minorities to refuse to have any part in it. It has impelled others to seek to limit war by defining what, in their judgment, from the Christian standpoint is a "just war." In the turbulent Middle Ages of Europe it gave rise to the Truce of God and the Peace of God. In a later era it was the main impulse in the formulation of international law. But for it, the League of Nations and the United Nations would not have been. By its name and symbol, the most extensive organization ever created for the relief of the suffering caused by war, the Red Cross, bears witness to its Christian origin. The list might go on indefinitely. It includes many another humanitarian projects and movements, ideals in government, the reform of prisons and the emergence of criminology, great art and architecture, and outstanding literature.

I acknowledge readily that the Grant Study is not the only great prospective longitudinal lifetime study. There are others, three of which are better known than ours. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Berkeley and Oakland Growth Studies (1930–2009) from the University of California at Berkeley include both sexes and began when the participants were younger; they provide more sophisticated childhood psychosocial data but little medical information.5 These cohorts have been very intensively studied, but they are smaller and have suffered greater attrition than ours. The Framingham Study (1946 to the present) and the Nurses Study at the Harvard School of Public Health (1976 to the present) boast better physical health coverage, but they lack psychosocial data.6 These are wonderful world-class studies, invaluable in their own ways, and more frequently cited than the Grant Study. But even in this august company the Grant Study is unmistakable and unique. It has been funded continuously for more than seventy years; it has had the highest number of contacts with its members and the lowest attrition rate of all; it has interviewed three generations of relatives; and, most

Army studies indicate that if a wounded soldier arrives alive at a combat support hospital where surgeons and nurses can treat him, the chances of his surviving are extremely high—greater than 90 percent. “Surviving,” of course, doesn’t necessarily entail keeping arms or legs or retaining the ability to function independently back home. The leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield is bleeding. Having a leg blown off by an IED, for instance, can be fatal if quick steps are not taken to control the blood loss. Even deadlier is internal bleeding, a problem for which medics generally don’t have a good answer. A soldier who is bleeding internally needs to be evacuated and delivered to a surgeon immediately if he is to have any hope of survival. The second-leading cause of preventable death is something called tension pneumothorax. If a bullet punctures a soldier’s lung, air can leak from that hole into the “pleural space,” or cavity outside the lungs. That air can build up and eventually interfere with the functioning of the heart. This can be a relatively simple problem to correct: a medic can simply stick a big needle in the soldier’s chest to relieve the pressure in the pleural space.

Yet the homogeneity of contemporary humanity is most apparent when it comes to our view of the natural world and of the human body. If you fell sick a thousand years ago, it mattered a great deal where you lived. In Europe, the resident priest would probably tell you that you had made God angry and that in order to regain your health you should donate something to the church, make a pilgrimage to a sacred site, and pray fervently for God’s forgiveness. Alternatively, the village witch might explain that a demon had possessed you and that she could cast it out using song, dance, and the blood of a black cockerel. In the Middle East, doctors brought up on classical traditions might explain that your four bodily humors were out of balance and that you should harmonize them with a proper diet and foul-smelling potions. In India, Ayurvedic experts would offer their own theories concerning the balance between the three bodily elements known as doshas and recommend a treatment of herbs, massages, and yoga postures. Chinese physicians, Siberian shamans, African witch doctors, Amerindian medicine men—every empire, kingdom, and tribe had its own traditions and experts, each espousing different views about the human body and the nature of sickness, and each offering their own cornucopia of rituals, concoctions, and cures. Some of them worked surprisingly well, whereas others were little short of a death sentence. The only thing that united European, Chinese, African, and American medical practices was that everywhere at least a third of all children died before reaching adulthood, and average life expectancy was far below fifty.14 Today, if you happen to be sick, it makes much less difference where you live. In Toronto, Tokyo, Tehran, or Tel Aviv, you will be taken to similar-looking hospitals, where you will meet doctors in white coats who learned the same scientific theories in the same medical colleges. They will follow identical protocols and use identical tests to reach very similar diagnoses. They will then dispense the same medicines produced by the same international drug companies. There are still some minor cultural differences, but Canadian, Japanese, Iranian, and Israeli physicians hold much the same views about the human body and human diseases. After the Islamic State captured Raqqa and Mosul, it did not tear down the local hospitals. Rather, it launched an appeal to Muslim doctors and nurses throughout the world to volunteer their services there.15 Presumably even Islamist doctors and nurses believe that the body is made of cells, that diseases are caused by pathogens, and that antibiotics kill bacteria.

In March 2002, the National Academy of Sciences, a private, nonprofit society of scholars, released a high-profile report documenting the unequivocal existence of racial bias in medical care, which many thought would mark a real turning point. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care was so brutal and damning that it would seem impossible to turn away. The report, authored by a committee of mostly white medical educators, nurses, behavioral scientists, economists, health lawyers, sociologists, and policy experts, took an exhaustive plunge into more than 480 previous studies. Because of the knee-jerk tendency to assume that health disparities were the end result of differences in class, not race, they were careful to compare subjects with similar income and insurance coverage. The report found rampant, widespread racial bias, including that people of color were less likely to be given appropriate heart medications or to undergo bypass surgery or receive kidney dialysis or transplants. Several studies revealed significant racial differences in who receives appropriate cancer diagnostic tests and treatments, and people of color were also less likely to receive the most sophisticated treatments for HIV/AIDS. These inequities, the report concluded, contribute to higher death rates overall for Black people and other people of color and lower survival rates compared with whites suffering from comparable illnesses of similar severity.

My Future Self My future self and I become closer and closer as time goes by. I must admit that I neglected and ignored her until she punched me in the gut, grabbed me by the hair and turned my butt around to introduce herself. Well, at least that’s what it felt like every time I left the convalescent hospital after doing skills training for a certification I needed to help me start my residential care business. I was going to be providing specialized, 24/7 residential care and supervising direct care staff for non-verbal, non-ambulatory adult men in diapers! I ran to the Red Cross and took the certified nurse assistant class so I would at least know something about the job I would soon be hiring people to do and to make sure my clients received the best care. The training facility was a Medicaid hospital. I would drive home in tears after seeing what happens when people are not able to afford long-term medical care and the government has to provide that care. But it was seeing all the “young” patients that brought me to tears. And I had thought that only the elderly lived like this in convalescent hospitals…. I am fortunate to have good health but this experience showed me that there is the unexpected. So I drove home each day in tears, promising God out loud, over and over again, that I would take care of my health and take care of my finances. That is how I met my future self. She was like, don’t let this be us girlfriend and stop crying! But, according to studies, we humans have a hard time empathizing with our future selves. Could you even imagine your 30 or 40 year old self when you were in elementary or even high school? It’s like picturing a stranger. This difficulty explains why some people tend to favor short-term or immediate gratification over long-term planning and savings. Take time to picture the life you want to live in 5 years, 10 years, and 40 years, and create an emotional connection to your future self. Visualize the things you enjoy doing now, and think of retirement saving and planning as a way to continue doing those things and even more. However, research shows that people who interacted with their future selves were more willing to improve savings. Just hit me over the head, why don’t you! I do understand that some people can’t even pay attention or aren’t even interested in putting money away for their financial future because they have so much going on and so little to work with that they feel like they can’t even listen to or have a conversation about money. But there are things you’re doing that are not helping your financial position and could be trouble. You could be moving in the wrong direction. The goal is to get out of debt, increase your collateral capacity, use your own money in the most efficient manner and make financial decisions that will move you forward instead of backwards. Also make sure you are getting answers specific to your financial situation instead of blindly guessing! Contact us. We will be happy to help!

As we were getting Mia’s things ready for her discharge, her nurse started to excuse herself to get a wheelchair to transport Mia to the car. Instantly, Mia said, “I’m not riding in a wheelchair.” “Yes, you are, Mia. It’s a hospital regulation,” I said, believing that was true. “Mom,” she protested, “they said I’m supposed to walk as much as possible. I’m walking to the car.” I saw a certain look in Mia’s eyes as she made this announcement, the look that says “I am going to push hard for this.” I knew she was determined, and I would fight a losing battle to try to talk her out of it. “I’m walking out of here,” she said again. I guess the medical staff noticed that look too because they allowed her to try to walk, with a nurse close beside her. Seeing that little girl limp her way down the hall, holding Reed’s hand, was one of the proudest moments of my life. I was absolutely amazed by her spunk and determination. I grabbed my cell phone from my purse and snapped a picture. She is such a fighter, I thought as Jase and I followed her. Visually, she looked roughed up, as though she had been through about fifteen rounds in a boxing match. But in that moment, she showed a level of toughness and resilience I have never seen in a child. Remembering the information we were told on that first visit to ICI when Mia was seventeen days old, that she would need physical therapy to help her walk again after this surgery, I thanked God as I watched our daughter walk right out of the hospital twenty-four hours postoperation! When we got into the car, Jase asked Mia, “Well, what do you think about that?” “I’m a little tired, but I made it,” she replied. Indeed she did.

AS SHE HEALED, the women changed tactics and stopped their berating. Now they brought their embroidery and crocheting, and finally they used Ethel Fordham’s house as their quilting center. Ignoring those who preferred new, soft blankets, they practiced what they had been taught by their mothers during the period that rich people called the Depression and they called life. Surrounded by their comings and goings, listening to their talk, their songs, following their instructions, Cee had nothing to do but pay them the attention she had never given them before. They were nothing like Lenore, who’d driven Salem hard, and now, suffering a minor stroke, did nothing at all. Although each of her nurses was markedly different from the others in looks, dress, manner of speech, food and medical preferences, their similarities were glaring. There was no excess in their gardens because they shared everything. There was no trash or garbage in their homes because they had a use for everything. They took responsibility for their lives and for whatever, whoever else needed them. The absence of common sense irritated but did not surprise them. Laziness was more than intolerable to them; it was inhuman. Whether you were in the field, the house, your own backyard, you had to be busy. Sleep was not for dreaming; it was for gathering strength for the coming day. Conversation was accompanied by tasks: ironing, peeling, shucking, sorting, sewing, mending, washing, or nursing. You couldn’t learn age, but adulthood was there for all. Mourning was helpful but God was better and they did not want to meet their Maker and have to explain a wasteful life. They knew He would ask each of them one question: “What have you done?” (122-123)

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Missy and I haven’t spent a lot of time asking God why Mia was born with her difficulties. We have accepted that it’s yet another opportunity to glorify Him. A couple of years after Mia was born, one of the nurses at St. Francis Medical Center in Monroe called Missy. The nurse told her that there was a couple at the hospital, and they had just given birth to a baby with a cleft lip and soft palate. The couple was really struggling with the shock, and the nurse told Missy she remembered how we handled it. Missy and I went to the hospital and talked to the parents. Missy told the nurses to call us whenever a similar situation occurred. A few months later, Missy and Mia were in Dallas for a checkup. The nurse from St. Francis called Missy and told her there was another baby born with the same condition. Since Missy was out of town, she called me. “Jason, you have to go up there,” she said. “I can’t do this,” I said. “The parents are devastated,” she said. “You have to go.” “I can’t,” I said. After I hung up the phone, I thought about the situation for several minutes. I remembered how Missy and I felt when Mia was born, and I knew the parents at the hospital needed all the support in the world. I called Missy back and told her I was going. When I walked into the hospital room, the parents were there with some family members. Everybody was crying, and it seemed like the normal joy of a child being born was missing. They looked at me like, “Who is this guy?” I was so quiet I could have heard a pin drop. Their new son was with the other babies in the nursery, and I could see him through the glass wall that separated the waiting room and the nursery. I’d brought along before-and-after photos of Mia. I took them out of my pocket and held them up. “I have a girl named Mia, and when she was born she looked a lot like him,” I said. “All I can tell you is that you can make it through this. It is going to be okay.

Hey cupcake!” he says, like he just had a great idea. “I’m so glad you’re here.” “Me too,” I say. “I thought you were ready to kick me to the curb.” I was. But when I found out he was hurt, it nearly gutted me. “Would if I could,” I say. “Do you think you could fall in love with me, cupcake?” he blurts out. I’m startled. I know he’s medicated, so I shouldn’t put any stock into his words, but I can’t help it. “You should get some rest,” I say. Tap. Tap. “So, that would be a no.” He whistles. Then he scrunches up his face when it makes his head hurt. “I’m in trouble,” he whispers quietly. “What?” He squeezes my hand. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you, cupcake,” he says. “I just wish you could love me back.” “You’ve had a lot of pain meds,” I say. Suddenly, he grabs the neck of my shirt and jerks me so that I fall over his chest. His lips are right next to mine. “Listen to me,” he says. “Okay,” I whisper. “I don’t have much going for me, but I know what love feels like.” “How?” “It just is, cupcake. You don’t get to pick who you fall in love with. And God knows, if my head could pick, it wouldn’t be you.” I push back to get off his chest, because I’m offended. But he holds me tight. “You’re not easy to love, because you can’t love me back. But you might one day. I’ll wait. But you got to start taking my calls.” He cups the back of my head and brings my face toward his. A cough from the doorway startles us apart. I stand up and pull my shirt down where he rucked it up. “Visiting hours are over,” a nurse says. “She’s not a visitor,” he says. She comes and inserts a needle into his IV, and his eyes close. He doesn’t open them when he says, “She’s going to marry me one day. She just doesn’t know it yet.” His head falls to the side and he starts to softly snore. His hand goes slack around mine. I pull back, my heart skipping like mad. “They say some of the most ridiculous things when they’re medicated.” The nurse shakes her head. “He probably won’t remember any of this tomorrow.” Pete

I said to myself, This is going to be quick. I also thought: I’ll take the epidural now! Because the contractions were starting to demonstrate what the pain of birth is all about. The obstetrician came in. I smiled, ready for my shot. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said. “Your platelets are really, really low.” “Okay,” I said. I knew what platelets were-blood cells whose job it is to stop bleeding-but I had no idea why that was significant. “So, my epidural?” “You can’t have any medications.” “Come again?” “No drugs, no medications,” she said. “No epidural. I’ve called around to different anesthesiologists, and no one will touch you.” “No epidural?” “Nothing.” There are girls from third-world countries who do it with no drugs, I reminded myself. My mother elected for natural childbirth. How bad can it be? I got this. It started to hurt. I thought to myself, I am not going to cuss. Hell no! I am about to be a mother. I am bringing our baby into a positive environment and must be a good role model. Wow! The contractions built up quickly. My pristine vision of perfect, calm, quiet childbirth disappeared. A banshee snuck into the room and took over my body. Arrrgggh!!! No cursing! There was a rocking chair in the birth room. I went over and sat in it and began moving back and forth. Chris put on a CD by Enya that we’d brought to listen to: peaceful, pleasant music. I took a deep breath. Jeez, Louise! That one was a monster! Then, a breather. I’m doing goooooood! Breathe. Breathe… Wow! Then I said some other things. The banshee had a mind of her own. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I apologized to the nurses as I recovered from the surge of the contraction. “It’s okay,” said Chris. The pain surged again. Dang! Jiminy! And other things. Chris would watch the monitor. Suddenly he’d turn to look at me. “What?” I asked. “That was a strong one.” “Uh-huh.” The funny thing is, the stronger the contractions were on the monitor, the less they seemed to hurt. Maybe when things are really bad you focus more on being tough. Or perhaps my brain’s pain mechanism simply went on strike when the agony got too much.

Astonishment: these women’s military professions—medical assistant, sniper, machine gunner, commander of an antiaircraft gun, sapper—and now they are accountants, lab technicians, museum guides, teachers…Discrepancy of the roles—here and there. Their memories are as if not about themselves, but some other girls. Now they are surprised at themselves. Before my eyes history “humanizes” itself, becomes like ordinary life. Acquires a different lighting. I’ve happened upon extraordinary storytellers. There are pages in their lives that can rival the best pages of the classics. The person sees herself so clearly from above—from heaven, and from below—from the ground. Before her is the whole path—up and down—from angel to beast. Remembering is not a passionate or dispassionate retelling of a reality that is no more, but a new birth of the past, when time goes in reverse. Above all it is creativity. As they narrate, people create, they “write” their life. Sometimes they also “write up” or “rewrite.” Here you have to be vigilant. On your guard. At the same time pain melts and destroys any falsehood. The temperature is too high! Simple people—nurses, cooks, laundresses—behave more sincerely, I became convinced of that…They, how shall I put it exactly, draw the words out of themselves and not from newspapers and books they have read—not from others. But only from their own sufferings and experiences. The feelings and language of educated people, strange as it may be, are often more subject to the working of time. Its general encrypting. They are infected by secondary knowledge. By myths. Often I have to go for a long time, by various roundabout ways, in order to hear a story of a “woman’s,” not a “man’s” war: not about how we retreated, how we advanced, at which sector of the front…It takes not one meeting, but many sessions. Like a persistent portrait painter. I sit for a long time, sometimes a whole day, in an unknown house or apartment. We drink tea, try on the recently bought blouses, discuss hairstyles and recipes. Look at photos of the grandchildren together. And then…After a certain time, you never know when or why, suddenly comes this long-awaited moment, when the person departs from the canon—plaster and reinforced concrete, like our monuments—and goes on to herself. Into herself. Begins to remember not the war but her youth. A piece of her life…I must seize that moment. Not miss it! But often, after a long day, filled with words, facts, tears, only one phrase remains in my memory (but what a phrase!): “I was so young when I left for the front, I even grew during the war.” I keep it in my notebook, although I have dozens of yards of tape in my tape recorder. Four or five cassettes… What helps me? That we are used to living together. Communally. We are communal people. With us everything is in common—both happiness and tears. We know how to suffer and how to tell about our suffering. Suffering justifies our hard and ungainly life.

As she explained to her students, patients often awoke from very bad illnesses or cardiac arrests, talking about how they had been floating over their bodies. “Mm-hmmm,” Norma would reply, sometimes thinking, Yeah, yeah, I know, you were on the ceiling. Such stories were recounted so frequently that they hardly jolted medical personnel. Norma at the time had mostly chalked it up to some kind of drug reaction or brain malfunction, something like that. “No, really,” said a woman who’d recently come out of a coma. “I can prove it.” The woman had been in a car accident and been pronounced dead on arrival when she was brought into the emergency room. Medical students and interns had begun working on her and managed to get her heartbeat going, but then she had coded again. They’d kept on trying, jump-starting her heart again, this time stabilizing it. She’d remained in a coma for months, unresponsive. Then one day she awoke, talking about the brilliant light and how she remembered floating over her body. Norma thought she could have been dreaming about all kinds of things in those months when she was unconscious. But the woman told them she had obsessive-compulsive disorder and had a habit of memorizing numbers. While she was floating above her body, she had read the serial number on top of the respirator machine. And she remembered it. Norma looked at the machine. It was big and clunky, and this one stood about seven feet high. There was no way to see on top of the machine without a stepladder. “Okay, what’s the number?” Another nurse took out a piece of paper to jot it down. The woman rattled off twelve digits. A few days later, the nurses called maintenance to take the ventilator machine out of the room. The woman had recovered so well, she no longer needed it. When the worker arrived, the nurses asked if he wouldn’t mind climbing to the top to see if there was a serial number up there. He gave them a puzzled look and grabbed his ladder. When he made it up there, he told them that indeed there was a serial number. The nurses looked at each other. Could he read it to them? Norma watched him brush off a layer of dust to get a better look. He read the number. It was twelve digits long: the exact number that the woman had recited. The professor would later come to find out that her patient’s story was not unique. One of Norma’s colleagues at the University of Virginia Medical Center at the time, Dr. Raymond Moody, had published a book in 1975 called Life After Life, for which he had conducted the first large-scale study of people who had been declared clinically dead and been revived, interviewing 150 people from across the country. Some had been gone for as long as twenty minutes with no brain waves or pulse. In her lectures, Norma sometimes shared pieces of his research with her own students. Since Moody had begun looking into the near-death experiences, researchers from around the world had collected data on thousands and thousands of people who had gone through them—children, the blind, and people of all belief systems and cultures—publishing the findings in medical and research journals and books. Still, no one has been able to definitively account for the common experience all of Moody’s interviewees described. The inevitable question always followed: Is there life after death? Everyone had to answer that question based on his or her own beliefs, the professor said. For some of her students, that absence of scientific evidence of an afterlife did little to change their feelings about their faith. For others,