Happy Friday Accidental readers. I’m a little late with my blog this week. No excuses, just lots of binge-watching. Some weeks are more productive than others!
Like the rest of us, I have been organizing closets, cleaning drawers and generally just clearing out the house. While cleaning under my bed, I found a pair of pink fuzzy slippers that mean the world to me.
As most of you know I had endocarditis a few years back. It was a horrible couple of months that eventually led to yet another heart valve replacement. I was in MGH for quite a long time as the doctors tried a number of ways to clear it up. To make matters worse, I was in the oldest area of MGH with no private rooms, shared bathrooms and two showers at either end of the hallways. It was not my best time.
After over a month on various medications, the doctors decided the only way to get rid of the infection was to take it out and I was scheduled for surgery. As with any major surgery, you try to get mentally prepared; your family takes time off from school and work and you talk to your support system to get ready. In the middle of the night prior to my scheduled surgery, the nurse came in to tell me that my surgery got pushed back as the Cardiac Surgeon had an emergency. They rescheduled me for two weeks down the road. I completely fell apart. I could not stop crying. Truthfully, I cried for days and could not speak to anyone without crying. I was at the end of my emotional rope.
The amazing nurses on my floor, knowing there was nothing anyone could say to console me, collected their own money and gave me a gift card to the MGH gift shop so Armen and my girls could get me a present. Thus my beautiful pink fuzzy slippers. No more hospital socks for me! It meant more to me than you could ever imagine. I love those slippers.
Anyone who knows me knows I love iced coffee, but it’s not on the menu at MGH. I would go so far to say that by the time the hot coffee made itself up to my floor with the little cardboard on top, it was lukewarm at best and I could not drink it. I became close with one of my daytime nurses and I would pay for her coffee and she would go downstairs and get me an iced latte from the MGH Cafe. Sometimes she would bring me a little something sweet.
It was these little things that meant so so much to me. Nurses, Doctors, Janitorial Staff, Cafeteria Workers, all the people who work at hospitals are heroes to me. They work unbelievably hard to care for us. They are a special breed. Their love, compassion and kindness can never be repaid. They are angels working here on Earth for all of us.
To do what no one else will do, in a way that no one else can, in spite of all we go through: is to be a Nurse – Rawsi Williams
Accidental Harmony 