Weird

Disclaimer: This post is weird. Very weird. I hope it's not offensive. This is just me, being me, about growing up in a funeral home. We were serious when we needed to be. Other times, well, when you grow up around something it just becomes part of you. Let me know what you think. So here we go.

So. Some of you newer blog followers sent me some messages about my last post - namely, the part where I mentioned I grew up around death.

Yeah, I should probably explain that to you who don't know me very well.

Funeral Home Girl.

That's me.

It freaked all the kids out at school, who thought I was weird and scary and bizarre.

Bizarre, sure. But weird and scary?

Come on.

Just because my sister and I played hide-and-seek in the casket room and had full-on funerals for our Barbies after sending them to their deaths (Sis - remember Boulder Barbie? Microwave Barbie? Convertible of Death Barbie?) doesn't mean we're weird.

Ok. Maybe just a little.

One of my friend's dad's owned a car dealership - she had her favorite car picked out

Me? The golden oak casket with the pink and purple quilt design in it.

Or cryogenics. Or donating my body to science.

All acceptable dinnertable conversations.

Dinnertable conversations - in between dad taking bites of spaghetti (with his tie flipped over his shoulder and wearing a dishcloth so sauce wouldn't get on his dress shirt) between running back and forth from the kitchen to the funeral home lobby during visitation nights.

Visitation nights - nights when I got out of practicing the piano because the family paying their respects next door could hear it through the wall.

No running up and down the stairs during visitations, either.

No crazy, colorful Christmas lights all over the house. Just very tasteful and respectful candles in the windows and greenery around all of the columns outside.

No sidewalk chalk on the sidewalk in front of the house - the sidewalk leading to the funeral home entrance. The back driveway was ok...that was the loading and unloading area. I used to ride my bike on the ramp.

Generations of family has lived in my childhood home. My room used to be my cousin Laura's room, and before that, it was my Auntie Mary Eleanor's. Now, whenever my sister and her family visit my parents, my niece Adelyn uses that same room.

Circle of life.

In any case, we knew when to be respectful, and we knew when it was ok to laugh.

Like when dad would use his skull from mortuary school to help decorate the basement for our Halloween parties.

"This is what happens when you smoke, kids."

Which is why I've never smoked. Or went out drinking...no ethical or moral dilemma with that one, just the memory of seeing a cirrhosis-y liver when I was nine.

Thanks, Dad.

Father-daughter dates consisted of Taco Bell on the way to the St. Louis County medical examiner's office. I think my sister lost her Taco Bell after seeing a foot in a bucket at the morgue, which promptly ended her trips with dad. But to me...

It. Was. Awesome.

I wanted to grow up and be Dr. Mary Case - the forensic medical examiner who took time out of her busy day to let me hold an actual human brain...one of eight she had lined up in buckets filled with a saline solution on a stainless steel counter. Everything was so clean and precise and fascinating. Dr. Case had me hold that amazing brain and name every single part, since that happened to be the part of human anatomy I was studying in college at the time.

Maybe also why I looked a little too excited in high school anatomy.

(Picture of me smiling with my lab partner and our dissected cat deleted. Just picture the innards of a cat and an awesome 90's perm with poofy bangs. There you go.)

Everywhere I go, when people find out where I grew up, it never fails to lead to all sorts of questions.

Like, "Have you ever worked with your dad?"

Um, hello. Who did he have running all over town to get death certificates signed at doctor's offices the minute she turned 16 and got her driver's license?

Better yet, who got to learn how to drive...in a hearse?

With another totally fashionable early 90's hairstyle while wearing a white turtleneck under what could only possibly be my grandmother's pink sweatshirt?

Man, I was awesome.

Who also, while learning to drive in a hearse, ran over a curb in front of a parking lot full of people at the Assembly of God church right after a post-funeral luncheon?

My other favorite question: "Weren't you ever scared?"

Of what? What in the world is there to be scared of? If anything, our house was always just nice and quiet. There are no ghosts. No ghouls. No scary noises at night...unless you count dad snoring so loud that the walls shook.

Dad also used the business to promote non-funeral events.

Nothing like the Funeral Home marquee in the front yard announcing your personal life to the entire town of Sullivan.

Plus your mother making you all pose for multiple pictures while everyone driving by slowed to look.

 

Me and my girls. The first time they ever spent the night, I think they were a little freaked. I also think seeing my dad walk around in his underdrawers contributed to that.

 

Good times.

No one likes to talk about death, but we sure are curious about the behind-the-scenes aspect of it.

So bring your questions. I'm obviously not shy.

Grew up around death. Worked with my dad around it. Now helping comfort others as they make their journey towards it.

My life...consisting of end-of-life issues from birth to...well, you know.

Today I love: Being ok with being weird. Being ok with talking about the hard stuff. Being ok with eating a full meal while talking about the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility (aka "The Body Farm) and/or reading "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" (a really, really good read).

I know. I know. We've already established the fact that I'm weird.

Grateful

I'm feeling like I'm in a serious, reflective mood tonight - might be the storms, might be the couple patients of mine that I can't stop thinking about that might not make it to the end of the week.

Life. Fragile. One shot.

So here's what's been on my mind lately.

When I first started nursing, I thought I was going to save the world.

 

CPR. ALS. Codes. Adrenaline.

I slowly become less scared of people who came onto my floor mid-heart attack.

I learned to administer morphine. Adjust IV fluids. Interpret EKGs and telemetry monitors.

How to prep them for stents or open-heart procedures.

I slowly became less scared of codes - especially with my team of awesome nurses back in Mississippi. We worked so well together that we could just look at each other and know what each other was thinking. And the doctors...my first code consisted of our ER doctor telling me, "The only way you're going to learn is to get on up there!" He coached me through the chest compressions with patience and understanding.

I loved it. Loved loved loved my heart patients.

But roughly six months ago I decided to switch specialties.

A specialty that's usually met with a sad face and an "oh, how hard/sad/awful" response.

I'm a Hospice nurse.

I also like to think of it as being a geriatric and end-of-life care specialist.

Not everyone can do it.

Not everyone can face death every day.

Not everyone can come to terms with the fact that death doesn't mean a medical failure.

What do I do as a hospice RN?

• As a Case Manager, I manage medications, diets, wound care, therapy, equipment, appointments, tests, caregivers and CNA's for my patients. I oversee every single aspect of their care. I work closely with our social workers and chaplains. We are a team, and it's a fabulous one.

• I get to be a support to families. I get to watch the weight lift off their shoulders when I explain to them the disease process and what signs and symptoms to watch for - things that people in the hospital were too nervous to talk about.

• I get to assess and care for patients who are critical - without the support of an on-site team. My hospital is in the trunk of my car...that's where I carry all of my supplies, my syringes, my wound care bandages, my catheters, my oxygen tubing. Being a road RN means you better make sure you're assessment skills are 110% - because it's you and you alone making the call on what you see when you walk into that house.

• I have to prove myself as a competent and knowledgeable nurse to our hospice physicians. Like I mentioned above, I have to know my stuff forwards and backwards in order to call the doctors for new orders - whether it be to transfer a patient to the Hospice House for inpatient care, start Crisis Care inside the home, or calculate pill vs. liquid vs. injectable narcotics if my patients can't swallow anymore. If your doctor trusts you, it goes a long way when you call them sixteen times a day on your symptomatic patient.

• Speaking of, just because a patient is on hospice doesn't mean we just sit back and wait for them to die. If they start to have shortness of breath, we're in there with oxygen, nebs, breathing treatments, morphine, etc. so they're not struggling. If their pain is out of control, despite the pain meds their on, we're in there adjusting dosages or adding meds for breakthrough until we can get them comfortable. A lot of my patients come onto our service completely alert and oriented, so many of my visits consist of education and keeping them stable as long as their bodies allow.

• I get to be present with my families in their most raw and emotional moments. I'm the one they rely on to pronounce the time of death of their loved one. I'm the one comforting the family, bathing the body, calling the funeral home, getting all the paperwork done...all the family has to do is, well, whatever they want. One family of mine made calls to other family members to inform them of the death, then they sat back, broke out the photo albums and bottles of wine. They were able to reminisce and talk about their loved one without the stress of having to take care of arrangements and paperwork and waiting for the funeral home to show up - that's what I was there to do.

• People are people. People are not a diagnosis. I refuse to go into someone's house and treat them like a cancer patient. An ALS patient. An Alzheimer's patient. By coming onto hospice, they're telling me they're done with treatments and chemo and millions of pills - they just want to feel like a human again in their own house. So you know what? We do that. We sit and talk and laugh (Yes! We laugh!) and just try to live as normal as the disease process allows. Yes, there are going to be days that aren't as pleasant. There are days you have to have your game face on and get down to business. But you also look your patient in the eyes, don't talk over them, don't talk down to them. You smile, you talk about grandkids and pets and favorite vacation places. It's all about creating relationships and trust.

I love my job. I think the best decision I ever made was getting out of the mad-house hospital and get into Hospice. I grew up around death. I'm comfortable with the subject. I feel like I've found a specialty I'm good at.

Hospice just reminds me that we're all headed somewhere. Life is fragile, and can end in so many different ways. We don't get to choose, but we can decide how we respond to those situations. I've seen every emotion on my patients and families faces - anger, denial, peace, acceptance, rage, combativeness, love, grief. Hospice is definitely emotional - maybe why I've turned to this blog tonight to get out some of my feelings.

Thanks for letting me get it out.

Today I love: Being able to walk. Being able to eat. Being able to hug my husband and pet my dogs. Life. Living. Purpose.