The tales of woe

The word of my day was woe.

"Woe is me." I heard from the specialist who's complaining that the other specialist at X Hospital is bad mouthing him to our patients. Who tells specialist this tale? The patient. Specialist has taken care of patient forever, before he/she ever even went to X Hospital in our system. Patient told Specialist the truth, and he decided to tell me.

Kids, haven't you ever heard that maxim, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."? "No surprise" I told our Specialist. "He (and his hospital) have done weirder things lately." Frankly, I'm surprised upper management isn't reigning them in yet.

It was woe for our staff, too. I couldn't believe it when I saw our home health nurse doing assessment documentation on a newly arrived patient. She's usually out on the road somewhere, but for some reason, she got called into an admission that should have been completed by the floor nurse.  Not sure why the boss let that happen, but I'm so glad it wasn't me!

There was woe for one of our patients' families. Said patient died over the weekend. We really liked him (at least most of us did). Rudy was a very opinionated character who almost made it to his speed limit birthday, but he had a heart attack and never regained consciousness. He and I got along very well. I was the person who set up his Fritos whenever he was on our unit (he was a Frito maniac).

Rudy told me he wasn't afraid to die because, during one of his many spates of illness, he had had a near death experience. "Heaven is beautiful", he told me. "I saw it and I really wanted to stay, but they told me I had to go back. I saw the Devil, too."

"Really?" I asked. "How did you know it was the Devil?"

"He looked just like the pictures...and he had a bottle of Jack Daniels, trying to get me to go with him."

"No way!" I said. He just shook his head yes.

So from then on, it was our inside joke about Jack Daniels. I told him one night when he spiked a temp late in the shift, "Rudy, I know Heaven was nice, but could you just wait to go there until my shift is over? And whatever you do, don't take the Jack Daniels." Rudy eventually recovered and we laughed about it.

Happily, all of Rudy's last year wasn't a tale of woe. Rudy got to see his grandchildren born and he was so proud. I saw him from time to time and I always gave him trouble. On his last visit to the unit, I told him he had the most seniority (as in he'd been coming to our unit for so long) on the unit, so he'd better help us train our new staff.

"And Rudy," I told him, "if they say you're mean and quit, I'm gonna call you up."

He just smiled. I opened the last bag of Fritos I ever gave him during that stay while his family looked on bemused. Sure we spoiled him sometimes, but he was like our family. I figured out in the last couple of years, I'd spent more time on the unit with Rudy than I have with my own family.

Rudy was a Marine through and through. He loved the Corps and educated me that the Marines wear scarlet not red.

And like the old Marine saying goes, I send it out today to Rudy, not Chesty this time: "Goodnight Rudy, wherever you are." I'm praying you're in Heaven where it's beautiful and not with the Devil and Jack Daniels.

Godspeed, dear friend. I'll miss you and all your Fritos, too.