The Faith Rx

Last week I was sitting at one of the cows (name for the random computers that seem to always end up in a different corner of the hallway day to day) fiddling around on the charting system called UCare when I heard the patient in the adjacent room just straight up crying her eyes out. I leaned back in my chair enough to peak in and see her laying in fetal position, shaking from tears and pain. Her nurse was on top of giving her pain meds according to orders, but they weren't reaching her abdomen with enough strength to combat yet another ERCP for chronic pancreatitis.

Twenty-four hours later, she was still in the middle of a major pain crisis when I was assigned to helping with her care. One of my favorite roles of a nurse is a patient advocate, but as a student nurse I don't have the ability much less the experience to know when recovery is running its normal course versus when a doctor needs to step the care up a notch. The RN I was with felt it was the latter, and went to work trying to get the dosage right for the patient to achieve SOME degree of comfort.

Somewhere amidst this back and forth of pain management, the patient's description of the pain turned into the implications it has had on her life. Her husband always worked so hard, she said, and these were supposed to be happy retirement years... to travel and enjoy this life he made for them. Her garden would be ruined by the summer heat by the time she got home. Simple things, perhaps, in comparison to her anguish from praying over... and over... and over for God to take her pain away. God isn't listening, she said. She's all prayed out. God isn't listening. She's angry and she can't pray anymore.

I think one of the unteachable nursing "things" is what kind of Rx to give a patient who has lost their faith. Because we all bring OURSELVES into this profession, right? We all bring our experiences, our beliefs, our... US. So, never being the laying-hands-missionary-type myself, I was quiet. Something about every response I could think of was so wildly inadequate. I mean, what? God's going to heal you completely and you'll be in Bali in no time! No. God's given you this burden because He knew you could handle it! Double no.

Funny how God DOES give us grace for the moment though. The only honest thing I could think of to tell her was that when we feel we don't have another word in us for God, God puts people in place to speak a word for us.

The chaplain was in the room within about 5 minutes of contacting him (they're amazing at UC - I hope they're amazing at all the sites and not just at the fancy hospitals) and I can't begin to describe the peace the emanated from her spirit after the visit. Her pain was still acute - and would be, I heard, for days after - but I looked through her charts this week and saw that she had daily visits from the chaplain from that point on that were described as meaningful and comforting.

And to me, the faith Rx is leagues more meaningful and comforting than any physicians orders or nursing intervention I am training to handle.