I really appreciate the comments I’ve gotten after blogging about the pain treatment center. It really is a nice place to work and I’ve learned that chronic pain patients require a special kind of care.

But the day that I worked there I also took part in healing a different kind of pain.

I went to the waiting room to bring the next patient in. As soon as I looked at her I knew that I knew her from somewhere else in the hospital. But was she a MICU patient? I didn’t think so and yet I couldn’t get it out of my head that I somehow knew her from the MICU.

I started her paperwork and I immediately told her she looked familiar to me.

“Do you work in the SICU?” she asked. “My husband was there for about two months.”

“No, but I believe I took care of your husband in the MICU, right before he was transferred to the SICU.”

Bingo!!! I knew that I had seen her in the MICU. It was exactly a year ago. Her husband had a very long and difficult illness that had stricken him quite acutely. I started to ask how he was even though I had a nagging feeling that he was no longer alive.

“He died after being in the SICU for 2 months.”

“Oh… I am so sorry….”

I started to continue with her paperwork, vital signs etc. She was my first patient of the day and I was trying to get in the swing of things. I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing, though. Finally I just pushed it all aside and asked her how she had been doing since her husband died.

She paused. “It’s been so hard…”

And from then on we began a real conversation.

We talked about her husband, and how much she missed him. I told her that he must have made an impact on me, because I remembered taking care of him like it was yesterday, even though it was a year ago. She told me how she was coping. How her kids were coping. Plans she was making for the future. Time was suspended. I felt very conscious of the fact that I should be speeding her along in the process of preparing her for her procedure and yet I felt so very certain that this was the reason I was called to work in the pain center on this particular day. I was meant to have a brief conversation with this woman to let her know that I remembered her husband, and that I appreciated what a struggle it was on her and her family for him to get sick so suddenly.

Is it conceited of me that I feel as though my conversing with her made a difference in her life? Perhaps. But for some reason I feel very certain that our brief conversation brought her some comfort, and believe it or not, I do tend to be a humble person.

Later she returned from her procedure and I took one last set of vital signs, and prepared her for discharge. We talked a bit more and I gave her a big hug on the way out, and as she left I felt a profound sense that I had done what I was called upon to do on that particular day.

It is patient encounters like this one that make me believe that nursing truly is a vocation. Every once in awhile, it’s a great feeling to know that you are exactly where you are supposed to be in the great big old universe.