Dear Emergency Room Nurse,
About two months ago, my boyfriend checked me into the UT Methodist Emergency Room in Memphis, Tennessee. I was experiencing what we now know was a severe, complicated migraine. When I walked in, I was unable to answer very simple questions; my vision and speech were blurred, and I was terrified.
We sat in the waiting room for hours. I overheard your co-workers arguing with belligerent patients, the majority of whom seemed to be suffering from severe mental illness. The woman next to me grumbled to her husband that they should have driven out to the suburbs.
Finally, we were taken to a room. That's when the tests started: CT Scan, MRI, ultrasound, blood work, EKG, more blood work. At one point, I asked my boyfriend what he wanted for dinner.
"We're going to be here for dinner," he told me. I didn't believe him. We'd checked in at 11 a.m.
24 hours and 18,000 dollars later, I was set free. In that time, I saw six different doctors, each of whom had his or her own theory of exactly what needed to be done.
"She needs to stay the night," one said.
"Someone call in an eye doctor," another ordered.
"I'm not an eye doctor," the ophthalmologist shook her head.
As most people who've spent any amount of time in the hospital know, it's difficult not to feel entirely helpless. Hours would go by without seeing a doctor. And even though it's the doctors who get the final say, it's the nurses who deal most intensively with the patients.
Your shift must have started in the middle of the night. I remember you because you were the first happy person I'd seen since I walked in. You apologized on behalf of the doctor (she'd been very short with me), told me where to get coffee, found me a blanket. You wheeled me all over the hospital, even though we both knew damn well that I could walk. You advocated for me. But most importantly, your attitude, warmth, and compassion made me feel like I wasn't actually dying. I never took the opportunity to thank you for that.
What I realized in the hospital is that nurses, like teachers, have fairly thankless jobs. I'll be the first to admit that I've fantasized about students standing on their desks, passionately reciting "Oh Captain, my captain."
Both professions tend to attract people who want to help others, but who ultimately realize that they are a part of a system that fails the people it's meant to serve and undervalues those that work the hardest and give the most. We understand that we're on the losing side of a noble battle. And most of us burn out before 30.
In any case, my experience in the ER reminded me that hard work and kindness, though not always acknowledged, do not go unnoticed. I should have said something, found you on my way out, told you that you were doing an important job--but I didn't. The truth is that for every 100 people that you touch, only one will speak up. That's something that needs to change.
I hope that by some miracle this letter finds you.
Thank you,
Alexandra
