Families

It never ceases to amaze me the myraid of family types we get. It is never easy to have a loved one sick or in the hosptial. I do know this first hand as I have a chronically sick child that has been hospitalized 4 times in her almost 3 years of life.

Here is a sampling of the families we had the last shift I worked:

We had a lady who spoke little English and so her family stayed with her for much of her hospitalization. They sacrificied their own home life to help provide for her. They were quite nice to us and helped us in any way they could.

We had a man who was estranged from his family and though he had been in the hospital for over a month we have been unable to get ahold of any family to let them know what he has been through.

We had another family who saw how busy we were with the relvolving door of transfers out to get admits in and felt bad for us so brought us a "snack" which was really a pizza enough to feed us all.

Then we had a family of a man dying. And it was an unexpected death that was going to occur so they were just entering the stages of grief. His first day there everyone was nice and everything was thank you etc. Then it all changed and we could do nothing right in their eyes. It made for a miserable shift. I can understand a family member being upset with me if I've done something wrong to their loved one or made a mistake. But when I have taken care of them like I would my own family member and you are yelling at me just because you need someone to take your grief out on I just don't deal well with that. I know it's not personal but I'm not a punching bad ya know.