Thank you for having the courage to share this. It really touched me.
As a nurse on a unit specializing in heart failure and heart transplant, your story about your roommate also really struck a chord with me. It's so interesting to get to know all of our transplant patients' families, especially the ones who have waited for a while for their hearts. We have one patient who is currently waiting after suffering a massive heart attack last fall. He has 4 kids and his youngest daughter is about 14. The family even brought in a copy of an essay she wrote for school about her dad and the night he had his heart attack and ended up emergently having a Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) placed and it was very interesting to read how she had perceived everything. Sometimes we get so caught up in the medical aspect of it all that we forget how everything effects the families on such a personal level. Their family is really awesome but I know it's a huge strain not having their dad at home and having to watch him wait for so long and develop lots of complications that have made his wait even longer. This man is such a great, funny, sarcastic guy and I don't know what I'm going to do if everything doesn't turn out ok for him. For better or for worse, we get very attached to some of our patients and this man reminds me a lot of my dad.
Weirdly enough, my junior year in college, two of my close friends lost their dads to cancer and another guy on our floor lost his dad suddenly in a car accident. It was a very hard year.
One of those friends got married right out of college and she had a mother/daughter dance at her wedding instead of the father/daughter dance. =)
Sorry to go on and on in your journal. It just was a very thought provoking entry and, apparently, I have a lot rolling around in my brain.
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Date: 2007-10-15 05:01 am (UTC)As a nurse on a unit specializing in heart failure and heart transplant, your story about your roommate also really struck a chord with me. It's so interesting to get to know all of our transplant patients' families, especially the ones who have waited for a while for their hearts. We have one patient who is currently waiting after suffering a massive heart attack last fall. He has 4 kids and his youngest daughter is about 14. The family even brought in a copy of an essay she wrote for school about her dad and the night he had his heart attack and ended up emergently having a Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) placed and it was very interesting to read how she had perceived everything. Sometimes we get so caught up in the medical aspect of it all that we forget how everything effects the families on such a personal level. Their family is really awesome but I know it's a huge strain not having their dad at home and having to watch him wait for so long and develop lots of complications that have made his wait even longer. This man is such a great, funny, sarcastic guy and I don't know what I'm going to do if everything doesn't turn out ok for him. For better or for worse, we get very attached to some of our patients and this man reminds me a lot of my dad.
Weirdly enough, my junior year in college, two of my close friends lost their dads to cancer and another guy on our floor lost his dad suddenly in a car accident. It was a very hard year.
One of those friends got married right out of college and she had a mother/daughter dance at her wedding instead of the father/daughter dance. =)
Sorry to go on and on in your journal. It just was a very thought provoking entry and, apparently, I have a lot rolling around in my brain.