Your @$$ Should Go To Jail....

Trayvon Martin is dead. He is not coming back. There is nothing to be done about that.

George Zimmerman was acquitted. He won't be tried again. And contrary to the thoughts of those who subscribe to the tenants of street justice, there is nothing legitimate that can be done about that.

Therefore, I am going to skip the ins and outs of Trayvon's murder untimely death and Zimmerman's circus trial...to defer my attention to idiots that somehow made this all about them and how the "Da Man" continues to keep them down.

Let's start with Michael Vick.

STFU about that already. Some folks are mad screaming about how Vick got time for fighting dogs and Zimmerman got off for murdering a child.

Ok. I see your point about Zimmerman getting off. I am with you all the way on that one.

But tell me what the hell that has to do with Michael Vick's millionaire ass funding a dog fighting ring? No. For real. Because I am confused.

He bought the dogs. Fought the dogs.

Am I right so far?

The spot got hot. His boy got pinched. And he snitched on Vick's ass.

So the way I see it, not only was he guilty of the crime for which he was accused, but he was also guilty of poor judgment and surrounding himself with the wrong kind of motherfuckers.

Those 19 months he served? Maybe he didn't deserve them on behalf of what did to those dogs. I don't know. I don't really care. But I figure he deserved at least that for being so damn stupid.

See, here's the thing.

The fact that Trayvon's killer walked free yesterday, does not negate the responsibility you must take for your own actions.

If you sell drugs and get caught?

Your ass should go to jail.

If you shoplift a slab of ribs from Piggly Wiggly?

Your ass should go to jail.

If you get caught buying prostitutes?

Your ass should go to jail.

Write a bad check at Wal-Mart?

Your ass should go to jail.

Commit an act of domestic violence?

Your ass should go to jail.

Skip out on child support?

Yep. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Just cooperatively take your ass to jail.

Get caught smoking weed in a public place?

Your ass should....
Well, wait a minute.
Imma pump the brakes on that one. Because should it become legal in South Carolina one day, I don't want to seem like a hypocrite.

But in the meantime, you will probably have to take your ass to jail.

My point is that we know that there are certain people more vulnerable to our nation's justice system than others. Sadly, that demographic is skewed to those that are young, black and male. The scales are already unequally stacked, but when we make conscious decisions to exacerbate that vulnerability what do you think we look like to the so-called "Man?"

Ripe-ass "nigger" fruit. That's what. And yes. They will grab at the easy-to-get, low hanging fruit first. But don't think won't find a way to climb that tree to pluck the fruit from even the highest branch. Because I don't care who you are, in these United States of America, there are some things that even money can't buy.

So all this thugged-out, misplaced, "Free-Boosie," "Pray for Gucci" type righteous indignation that some of y'all have over the Trayvon Martin verdict? Please cease and desist. Because if a movement is to really happen, y'all won't do a thing but fuck it up with this stupidity.

And I'm not saying that you should stop fighting for what you believe. I'm just saying that maybe you should save it for an occasion more appropriate to your cause.

You know? Like the next time one of your homies gets pinched for robbing a Subway for a one if its giant party subs to take to a Labor Day cookout in the projects.

Awwww. It's okay.

You're welcome.

Who Needs Fancy When We Got Yancey?

First off, Happy New Year!! Without going into the what I will's and the what I won'ts, boasting about keeping squares out of our circles (which by the way is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life, if for no other reason than the fact that some of your circles are so jacked up anyway) and being about "that" life, lets just do some better things with ourselves in the Deuce-O-Thizzle. 2013 for the "izzle" challenged...

And no, taking 2 (or 6) of your paychecks to buy a pair of shoes just to be able to say you "bloodied the streets of (insert city here)" does not qualify.

Also, and before I forget, I need a favor. To a reasonable extent, I do subscribe to the idea of flaunting it if you got it. But to flaunt what you don't have? Or what you have too much of? I spent a reasonable amount of time out in the community over the holiday season...

And some of y'all?

You do too much. Or maybe not enough. Either way, please stop.

In the club, in the street, at Super Wal-Mart. Just stop.

And on a Tuesday night, whether its a holiday or not, if you make the conscious decision to put on green hot pants, a yellow crocheted shirt, a head band, plastic pumps, and a bad lace-front, then make your way to a rural community juke joint, get drunk, and shake your behind while staring at your reflection in the dance floor mirror all night, with frequent trips outside and for "smoke breaks" with the locals, you probably also had plans to be going home with enough money to cover your light bill, a fill-in and an eyebrow arch for next week's outing. But that's just how I see it.

So for that, and all the other ratchetness over, under and in between...

Whether you need to put some more clothes on....

Or if its just that you need to take off what you have on and burn it...

Please stop. Y'all are disrupting the scenery on this walk I'm trying to take with the Lord.

Anyway, for all the foolishness I saw transpire, (which by the way was of great entertainment value, thanks a bunch) I saw some really beautiful things during the few days that I was at home.

Namely the Annual Brown's Ferry Community New Year's Parade in Oatland. Its never what I would call fancy. Or even very well-organized. But ironically and awesomely, that sums up the spirit of the community as a whole.

We aren't fancy. We aren't well organized. But somehow, we always manage to take care of business...and each other.

In one of my earlier blogs or maybe a Facebook post, I mentioned how it was culture shock to me how broken the healthcare system in Columbia as compared to Georgetown.

Columbia boasts an elaborate conglomerate of primary care offices, hospitals and specialty consortiums. A well-oiled machine. Ready to take care of the least of us...

As long as you have the means to pay for it.

In the years that I worked in Georgetown, 2 small hospitals and no "free clinics" to boast, I never had the occasion to see a patient turned away from a doctors office or the ER for lack of insurance or the ability to pay.

But then, in a community full of people who have always just done what they need to do to get things done, I should not have expected anything less.

Its like Choppee High School. Not fancy. Not well-organized.

But research the archetypes my alma mater produced. You should be amazed.

See, for some reason while I was here, I paid really close attention to some things that I think I've taken for granted all these years.

Like my Mom and Dad waking up together at the crack of dawn every weekday morning to go to work. And although my Mom has always had the distinct privilege of working at her leisure, my Dad has been doing it everyday for the last 40 years. Middle of the night phone calls to come to work to repair a machine, crazy hours during shut downs, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for weeks at a time on some occasions. In it all, I've never heard so much as a grumble from him about a dang Monday or a "Hump Day," or a "Thank God its Friday." 

Or watching my 85 year old Kin Maggie, entertain a house full of a dysfunctional family, at her sweat and expense, grateful for whatever she gets, forgiving, freehanded and open-hearted to a fault (cuz anybody else would have had the Grinch (and his dog) put on a permanent ban from the premises). And I've never, in my 35 years of life, heard her say what anybody "owed" her. My Grandmother would be working 40 hours a week today if her body would let her. Just like the rest of us, God might not be through with her yet, but the work He's put into her is more thorough than what the rest of us could ever imagine.

And then there was my sweet Aunt Lila Mae. I won't go into her story. Just know, my Dude brought her back from the brink. Just like every year, we watch the parade from her front yard. I remember looking over and seeing a lady all bundled up in a heavy knit sweater and a knitted hat using a walker, making her way out of the house towards the edge of the front yard. I had not seen Aunt Lila outside or really walking since she got sick, so my heart did a little backflip when I realized it was her. Her voice was strong. She was more like her usual jokey self. And though she's not back at her 100%, her testimony is that she's back.

See there are several places in the bible that speak of God as the author of all things. Scholars through history argue about whether God, in his goodness, could also be responsible for the evil that men do.

Me? My argument is much less sophisticated.

Plus, ain't nobody got time to even think about all that.

What I am going to say is that of all the things of which I know God is the author, sob stories and pity parties don't make the list.

Those are manufactured exclusively in the hearts and minds of faithless men.

And after a time, no one wants to hear you talk about how wrong you've been done...

Or how bad you feel...

Or how many pills you take a day...

Or what you need and don't have...

Stop asking, "Why me?"

Hell. Why not you? Mess around and exempt yourself from His will if you want...

Your head hurts? Mine, too. To the point where I want to just get it chopped off guillotine-style...

You suffered loss and death in your family? Who hasn't?

You have bills? Shit. Me too. I have 5 degrees. And I owe Uncle Sam $50,000 for just one of them...

Are you upset because your baby momma/daddy put you on child support? Just be glad the court didn't require you to cover the cost of childcare. That $600+ a month might cut into your weed budget...

Life isn't easy. But it's fair.

Yes. Times have changed.

But God hasn't...

Look how far He has brought all of our people before us. And through way more than we may ever have to face...

But if He decides today, that He isn't going to do anything else for me, its ok because He has already done enough.

Especially since He let me live, one more time, to see Yancey McGill throwing that candy from his Cadillac like he was making it rain at Crush on a Saturday night...

Hallelujah?

Amen.

Towanna

Match My Hustle...

Ok. Time got away from me.

But consider this my holiday blog entry. Hope it holds you over until the New Year.

Before I go there, though,  I have a couple of things I need to get of my chest.

#1 F*** Publix

I wrote a letter to the Publix Foundation asking them for a donation so that we could put on a holiday dinner for my patients at the shelter. You know? Just to give them a respite from that grool that they get served everyday.

So a couple of weeks ago, I get a letter from their corporate headquarters telling me that due to the overwhelming requests that they had received just like mine, they would not be able to honor my request.

Cool. That much I can understand. But the letter goes on to say that my request also fell out the Foundation's funding priorities which are education and...

Wait for it....

The plight of the homeless and hungry...

Well damn. I didn't know it had gotten that hard out here in deez screets.

How homeless and hungry do you have to be, to be considered homeless and hungry??

#2  Jacking holiday decorations seems to be the new millenium hustle. The problem is that I can't see where it could be very lucrative. Plus, (and my faithful blog readers will say it with me) ain't nobody got time for that.  The time it took you to take all those lights and wreaths down could have been spent ringing a Salvation Army bell outside Wal-Mart for $8.00 an hour. And the plastic Black Baby Jesus you kidnapped out of his manger? I mean, why? WHY?!!!

Ahh. I feel much better.


But my real purpose for this entry is a little different than usual.

Its not so much about my patients.

Its more about my patience. And how its been tried by folks saying what they can't do and what they aren't supposed to do.

I want to take you back to April 11, 2012, Day 1 of the homeless clinic operation.

It was me and KB in one room the size of bathroom with 17 patients lined up in 3 foot wide hall waiting to be seen. We worked 14 hours that day. We scheduled the patients. Checked them in. Took their vitals. Charted their health histories. Ordered their medications. Picked their medications up. Delivered their medications . We picked up our own supplies. Stocked our own exam room. Cleaned our own exam rooms. Did our own referrals. Drew our own labs. Took our own labs out for courier. Called our own patients to give them lab results. Drove our own cars. Burned our own gas.

We went home that night and did it all over again...everyday for the next few weeks.

Just the 2 of us.

And we did it gladly.

Because someone had trusted us enough to give us the opportunity to build a thing from scratch. This was our baby. From the cradle to whatever grave it might eventually end up buried in if we failed, it was our baby.

So you have to excuse me if I become indignant and even a bit belligerent, when I hear someone say, "I can't do that."

Or "I don't do that."

Or "That's so-and-so's job."

Please excuse my over-inflated ego if I am offended to hear you say that a thing can't be done because it would require an extra bit of work on your part.

I voluntarily sacrificed a cushy role as a traditional healthcare provider, in an over-staffed, well-equipped office to run what some people would consider a losing race.

I'm in it up to my eyeballs. Bathing in it. Reeking of it at the end of a long day. Brainwashed. Sprung off it. Its cool, though.

Because I'm clear on what I'm doing here.
But I understand that you may not be.

So I give you permission to avoid the mistakes I made on the way to having this life consume me.

Don't fall in love with it.


Dismiss the idea that you might find your purpose in it.

Resist the urge to let its potential overwhelm you with hope.

But do me this one solid while you pass through here:

Understand what it means to so many others and respect it enough to always match my hustle....


You see, I consider myself to be an artist.

So I'm sensitive about my shit.

This message is meant for who this message will reach....
Towanna

This ain't FUBU...

Imma just get right to the point.

Some of us have no idea what the hell we are playing at.

I get on my FB timeline this morning and more than anything else, I see some of us with our ghetto shout outs and street-themed photo mock-ups of President Obama and it makes me sick.

Political cleverness requires that one be informed about the issues. And yes, I do throw innuendos about black culture into politics. Escalades, BBQ and my man, 2Chainz, for example. But I am completely cognizant of the context in which I mesh these subjects into politics and it is always to illustrate a larger point. That, my confused, misdirected people, is one thing....

But its a whole other thing to act like this man is somehow just a homie who made it out of the hood and one-upped the white man in a presidential election.

We get mad at the white folks for saying that we only voted for him because he's black.

But then we turn our black asses around and perpetrate a fraud against the fabric of who President Obama really is as a man and as President of the United States.

For some reason, whenever one of us "makes it" out, we have some kind of sick need to keep them on our level. To keep the perception that they are "down" with us.

I don't want no "down ass" President. Black or white.

As long as he is President, I don't need (or want) to know that he likes 2Chainz. I don't give a damn if he wears Jordan's or rocks Ray-Bans. I don't ever want to see him at anyone's backyard cookout unless its his family's or at least somebody in his tax bracket. He don't need to know the dang "Wobble" or the "Electric Slide." Beyond his wedding band and a good watch, I don't ever want to see him rocking any "bling." And I would hate to know that he ever drove a vehicle with anything other than factory rims on it.

My dude is President of the United States. Not Hood Ambassador.

Tupac and Biggie gone. Some of y'all want to try to make us believe otherwise, but I'm almost sure they ain't coming back.

See the way it sounds, some of us feel like President Obama being re-elected is some kind of pay back for what you think D. White Man has done to you.

Sad part is you overlooked what the hell you've done to yourselves.

D. White Man, who I don't really know, might have done a few dirty things to me in my lifetime. But guess what? D. Black Man, who I know very well, has done some dirty stuff, too.

But color don't matter. ANYBODY that gets in the way of my progress can get it. Twice.

I ain't never been no slave.

I don't never plan to be one.

I ain't never been a nigger.

And I don't never plan to be one.

It's not what they call you. It's what you answer to.

Y'all sit right there and pay too much attention to these right wing, Tea Party, extremist mother-effers and let them get under your skin and pull you into their efforts to divide this country and make it harder for President Obama to do what people with good sense elected him to do.

Black folks make up roughly 12% of the population of the United States. Study your damn math and you'd realize that there is no way that just black folks had a hand in his re-election.

This ain't FUBU. When is the last time you seen somebody rocking FUBU anyway?

Its white folks out here, struggling just like us. Unconcerned with color. And only concerned about feeding their families. Just like us. Dummy.

Let me put y'all on to something.

Its Mr. Barack Obama, President of the United States.

Not Mr. Barack Obama, Black President of the Black United States.

What I am saying does not excuse the poor behavior of those who disrespect the man and the office with their hateful, racist remarks.

But until we recognize that as his supporters, we downgrade him in the same way when we try to paint him simply as "one of us," we have no right to be upset.

Y'all better get right.

*drops mic...*

On second thought...

*picks mic up, exits stage left*

Just in case I need to come through here again.

Towanna

Duality: Run Your List

Where do I begin?

Its been a while, so I have a few things on my mind that wanted to include in this entry. But I figure that since the election is only 5 days away, I'd hop on my medical/political soap box.

This one is for the ages.

When most folks finish reading this blog entry, they will probably shrug their shoulders. And keep it moving.

Some of you will silently mumble "Hallelujah" or "Amen." And keep it moving.

And the rest of you will become offended. Wonder who I think I am. Make a mental note of all the skeletons that you think are in my closet and go off to Twitter, Facebook....or Dunbar, and consume an unreasonable portion of precious time trying to justify your feelings.

I'm not judging anyone. But the truth applies to even the greatest among us.

So stop playing.

And get something from what I am about to say.

If you lived in this world for any reasonable amount of time, you've probably formed an opinion about abortion, one way or the other. So that you get a good understanding about my perspective on the situation let me quickly share my stance with you.

Personally, I think that the miracle of being pregnant and giving birth is not one everyone will be able to experience and I think it to be horribly arrogant to so easily dismiss it. It's not an option for me. And personally, if I had to offer advice, it would be to choose life.

But professionally, my only goal is to educate and inform them of their choices. And professionally, I have no dog in another woman's fight.

Simple as that.

And people will say, "Oh, what about "Thou shall not kill." Well, what about the other nine? Matter of fact, what about all the other things that the Bible forbids, that we do anyway?

Let me run my own list.

Fornication. --- check
Lust --- check
Greed --- check
False witness -- yup
Covetousness (that's "hating" to the folks that don't know) -- check

Technically, I've stolen things. And yes, taking supplies from work is stealing. Its called "industrial theft."

I'm sure I've disrespected my mother and father as various points in my life in different ways, shapes and forms. Its the only way to explain all the ass whippings I got growing up.

Violated the Sabbath? Yes. On night shift at Waccamaw Community Hospital. All the time.

Excessive anger.

Grudge holding.

Raise your hand if you pay 10% tithe every payday? I know there are some of you out there. I admit that I'm inconsistent. It means that I am effectively robbing God.

I am a sinner. Whose probably going to sin again.

But I've gotten better at this thing by and by...

Enough about me, though.

Now.

Run your list.

You don't have to share.

I just want you to have your own reference point for where I am coming from. God made us imperfect. We live in an imperfect world. I don't know about you. But its an everyday struggle for me to do my best by Him.

But back to this...

Don't get me wrong. People who use abortion as their primary form of birth control are not covered under this particular argument.

Nor is the patient who used to come to me on an almost monthly basis to get the morning after pill when I worked at the health department. By the 3rd time I saw her, I told her plainly that I had judged her insane for indiscriminately having unprotected sex. Because any woman who knows how to have a baby, also knows how to NOT have one. (You young college guys, with those bright futures ahead of you remember that when
these females act like it was an accident).

When President Obama endorsed gay marriage, the religious community was in an uproar.

And I get that.

But what these church folks need to get is that President Obama, every president before him, and every president after him, has to live with the same duality that every other human being on the face of this earth will struggle with before our time here is done.

We love the Lord. We live to serve.

But we also live in the flesh.

President Obama did NOT endorse gay marriage as an affront to God's doctrine. In my opinion, his endorsement of gay marriage took nothing away from who he is as a God-fearing man. It was from my perspective, merely part of the earthly oath of office he took to uphold the constitution of the United States and advocate for liberty and justice for all.

So if a Hispanic man, with a deep-voice, and a beard, wants to buy a white man with a deep-voice, and a beard, a diamond ring, stand up with him at the alter, kiss him in the mouth with tongue, then call that "marriage?" Cool. If the Hispanic man wants to put his white husband on his health insurance, adopt a little black baby girl, and pay a Japanese surrogate to try for a baby boy, then call that "family?" That's what's up.

Right or wrong?

They will have to figure that our one day in a major way.

But, you see, what they eat won't make me go #2. For real.

As a medical provider, my message to a gay teenager having unprotected sex is the same as what I would give to a heterosexual teenager having unprotected sex.

But the message to MY teenager, gay or straight, having unprotected sex might be delivered with fists attached.

My message to a 30 year old pregnant patient, with a good job who is considering abortion would be the same as the message I'd give to a 15 year old pregnant patient, on welfare who was considering abortion.

But my message to my pregnant daughter (of any age) who was considering abortion would be to tell her to erase the thought from her mind. And if she decides to keep the child, I would acknowledge the fact that my intervention would obligate me to be a major part of my grandchild's upbringing (although, shouldn't that be the case for grandparents, anyway?)

But if my daughter decided to go through with an abortion, the consequences are solely hers to bear because I know I'd shown her what I believed to be the right thing in the situation.

Indeed. I see the conflict from where I stand.

But in my purpose, I am steadfast in the belief that God has made prior arrangements for me to be able to have compassion for my fellow man despite their sin and still work for His glory. Had He not made those same arrangements for Jesus, where would any of us be? Where would I be?

But your salvation is between you and the Lord.  Not you, me, Blue Cross, Congress, Nicki Haley and the Lord.

Love is given in spite of...

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord...

#duality

Towanna

Never Scared....

Long time. Almost 3 weeks.

My cousin Nooney's passing took a little something out of me, I guess.

So this blog is going to be a little bit rambling.

KB posted a scripture from Ecclesiastes 1:18 on her Facebook page the other day:

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

It took me back to a conversation I had with my cousin that does the Throwing Salt blog not too long ago about how there are people in the that the Lord wired with an all too heightened sensitivity and insight into where the things that happen in this world can take us.

Take a young child for instance. You know some people are so very proud of the fact that they have a 4 or 5 year old that is not afraid of anything. And then there are people who are frustrated at the fact that their 4 or 5 year old is afraid of everything. What most people don't know is that those children who tend to have a greater fear of things are thinking about the consequences of an action or an event in an abstract manner, which requires a higher level of brain function. Some child psychologists identify this fear as one of the traits of a gifted child.

I remember when I was little,  my preschool class went on a field trip to the fire station. At the end of the tour of the station, we got the opportunity to get sit inside one of the fire trucks. All of my classmates lined up and jumped right in. I, on the other hand, just couldn't bring myself to climb into the big menacing red thing. Why? Because in my mind, as soon as I jumped into the seat between those two bearded firemen, they were going to get a call to go fight some raging inferno, they wouldn't have time to let me out of the truck, and I would end up in the midst of a deadly fire somewhere in McClellanville. Far away from Brown's Ferry School. Mrs. Pressley. And my Mama. Irrational? Yes. But also pure imaginative genius at that age.

That hasn't changed a whole lot in my adult life. Its the reason why I don't swim in the ocean. Its why I don't  let my child use the escalators in the mall. Why I don't just make friends, but choose my friends. And yes, there is a big difference. 

Its usually not about what is happening. But more about what could happen. 

Do I agree that my thoughts are irrational at times? Yeah. I do. Part of it is that I am an anxious personality. Its like when I ask my supervising physician about a treatment plan for a patient and tell him that I am uncomfortable with giving a certain medicine or doing a certain procedure. His first question is always to ask me, "Why?"

My answer is always, "What happens if I screw up?" His response is always, "What happens if you don't?"
Easy to say when you've been doing this for 40 years, right?

You want to know the worse thing about all of this, though?

Its watching a majority of the world go about their business as usual, seeming to not have any clue about what's really going on. Am I the only one that understands how bad things can really get? Sometimes it makes me think that maybe I have ties to Illuminati. I've long suspected that my grandmother has affiliations. Maybe I'm the next legacy. Maybe one day, I'm going to blindfolded and  kidnapped to some secret, medieval palace in Upper Bavaria where they will untether me from the secrecy and let me loose to save the world.

Nice right?

But if I really believed that, it would mean that I am insane.

And on most days, I am sure that I am not.

Instead, I choose to believe that God needs histrionic, emotional people like me. Insightful people like my blogging cousin. Powerful people like KB. Super-tender hearted people like HL. Who, for the fact that our thoughts are skewed from the norm, feel things maybe more deeply, probably differently, maybe even on a different plane. So that what perceive ourselves to know, reveals to us, directly, the sorrow in the world that needs to lifted.

I used to think of  it all as "fear." It was a bit disappointing before I knew what it really was. But then I realized its not fear. Its "knowing."  And there is a price that comes with that "knowing." Its gift and a curse, but this "knowing" guides my steps forward and is a big part of the value of my purpose.

Plus,I ain't never scared...






 

Nooney, my dude...

Good Morning.

This entry is a little early.

But I needed to get some things off my chest...and out of my head.

We lost my cousin Stephen "Nooney" Lance yesterday. The funny thing is that when I heard that he had been in a bad accident, it never crossed my mind that it meant he could die. Especially since right after the accident, reports said that he was already dead and I know how fast (fake) bad news travels at home. So when I finally spoke to my Mom to see if she had heard how he was and she said he had been airlifted to MUSC but they thought he was going to be ok, it seemed like it was going to be like the scrapes Nooney has had before. My dude even went "missing" for a few days once. But the reports of his demise have always been greatly exaggerated. I figured this would be the same situation. And when I went home this weekend, I'd look across the trees and see him in the backyard and hear him yell my name and say "What's happenin' cuz?" in that goofy voice of his or see him drive by in the GMC, tucked low and leaning to the side.

I guess you get to a point where life is so full of our daily comings and goings that we don't think about death as a part of everyday life. But it is.

I realized this morning that in my short time as a nurse practitioner, the thought of death and dying, as it relates to my patients, has never really crossed my mind.

It strikes me as a little weird. And I am trying to figure out how I, as a medical provider, that I don't think about it more.

Is it selective amnesia for my own comfort? Indifference? Am I out of touch? Desensitized? Suffering from a god complex?

I just don't have a good explanation. 

When I worked as a floor nurse right out of undergrad, I treated every patient as if they could die at any minute. At the time, I was just that terrified of what I had chosen to do as a profession. Better safe than sorry, right?

I remember the first time a patient died on my watch, I was about 6 months out of nursing school. The shift changed and the report that I got from the day nurse gave every indication that the patient was ok. I remember clearly hearing her say, "He is dehydrated and anxious. Just give him some Ativan and he will be ok."

What I have always had is an internal instinct to cover my @$$ in those situations, so I ALWAYS reviewed each of my patient's charts at the start of my shift for things like new orders, labs and/or test results. So after report, I pulled the patient's chart and noticed he'd had an abdominal CT done. I don't remember the results specifically but the report basically said that the patient's belly was full of "sludge" and his organs "could not be adequately visualized."

All of my other patients were stable for now. And because the off going nurse never mentioned the CT to me, something told me that it meant the doctor did not know about it either.  I brought it to the charge nurse's attention. She paged the doctor while I went to assess my patient.

When I walked into the room, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, on 2 liters of oxygen, but still completely short of breath. He skin was cold and pale. He was sweating non-stop. His pupils were dilated. His pulse was racing. And his belly....

His belly.

That's what let me know something was terribly wrong.

I laid my stethoscope on his stomach and heard absolutely nothing. He was so bloated that I could plainly see the veins dilate and stretch across his swollen belly. I could not palpate his abdomen, because the skin was stretched taut like drum. And the beautiful tympanic sound that you should hear when you tap on someone's belly, was replaced by the dullest "thud" I had ever heard.

I didn't know what was wrong, but I knew we needed to figure it out quick. I yelled for the charge nurse to come in. We didn't have a Rapid Response Team at the time and it wasn't technically a code situation. But we had to do something. She still had the doctor on the phone, so I asked her to get orders to move him to the ICU.

The patient's wife was in the room and we explained to her what was about to happen and she seemed relieved. She said that she'd been asking all day for something to be done, but everyone seemed to think that he was ok where he was. She thanked us and just as the charge nurse and I turned the corner to walk out of the room, it happened.

It sounded like the patient had belched really loudly. Then I heard his wife scream. I turned on my heels and looked back to see the patient projectile vomiting what I could only describe as black bile. Inhuman amounts of black bile. The charge nurse screamed for the secretary to call a code blue and we made it over to him just before he fell forward onto the floor. God gave the us the strength to get him back in bed and on his side so he would not choke on the bile. As we cleared his airway, turned him on his back and started CPR, the code team rushed into the room and took over. This all happened in the matter of about 60 - 90 seconds, but it felt like a lifetime.

His heart had stopped. The monitor showed pulseless electrical activity or PEA, which meant that there was some electrical activity, but no heartbeat. Epinephrine. Vasopressin. Atropine (it was still on ACLS back in 2005). Paddles. No change.

They intubated him and moved him to ICU. The doctors explained to the wife that the patient was brain dead. The vent was breathing for him and once it was removed there was virtually no chance for survival. His wife agreed to have the vent removed, but asked that they allow her children time to come in from out of state before it was removed. They agreed.

I didn't hang around the ICU long enough to know what else happened. My shift had started at 7:15 that night and all of this transpired before 8:30. I had 5 other patients that I had not laid eyes on yet. I had to get my brain to shift gears from the thoughts of the dead, who I could do nothing for, back to the living who needed my care.

I think something happened to me then. I'd never seen anyone die before. To that point, it was enough that I'd seen someone dead in a casket. But to witness them passing from this life to the next? It was almost too much. That night I actually considered not being a nurse anymore.

I struggle with the thought of death. So I try not to think about it. It sends a cold shiver down my spine. I am dismayed by it. Weakened by it. Heartbroken by the fact that it can come and take my most beloved, irreplaceable things away from me. That it could take me away from those same things.

Maybe that is why I don't bother it, until it bothers me. Maybe that's why, I never consider it as an option for my patients because to be effective, I have to always feel like there is something I can do. The thought of death, you see, renders me powerless and sorrow seems to be my only recourse.

I will think about Nooney (and death) constantly for the next little while. I will wonder if this was God's way of saving him from an earthly fate worse than death or if it was really just his time to go. Either way, I applaud the folks that never gave up on my dude, even though there might have been reasons other people thought they should.  Life and hope go hand in hand. No matter what the situation might be.

Its easy to say that in a perfect world, all of our chains would remain unbroken.

But my guess is that world would also be absent of God's will and our promised salvation.
 
And nothing about that could ever be perfect.

Its like my granddaddy, Buh Norman used to say, "Chile, you need to try to live until its time to die."

That's right Granddaddy.

I don't think we should bother death, until death bothers us.

RIP Cousin Nooney. Imma see you again.

Towanna