Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work (A StoryCorps Book) by Dave Isay

Author:Dave Isay
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-04-18T14:00:00+00:00

RECORDED IN NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ON JUNE 25, 2013.

Bryan Lindsay (left) and Rowan Allen.

ICU NURSE MICHELLE ALORE, 43, TALKS TO HER DAUGHTER, JENNA ANDERSON, 16.

Michelle Alore: When I was in college, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. But I had your older brother when I was fairly young, and I decided nursing was a career that would allow me to take care of my family.

But I’ve realized that the reasons I initially thought I’d go into nursing aren’t the reasons that I really love it. I now work in the intensive care unit. For people who deal with critical illness, sometimes it seems like it’s just another day. But for patients and families in the ICU, sometimes it’s their last day. So we try to do what we can to make people feel better, to keep them out of pain, to help them deal with crisis, with tragedies, and with death. And sometimes getting better is a painful process, so we try to make each day a good day.

Jenna Anderson: Can you share a time when you really bonded with a patient and the family?

Michelle: There was one patient about your age who came into the ICU. Two or three days prior, she had been a completely normal, healthy teenager. But then she experienced really bad heart failure, and she needed a transplant. She was in our ICU for a few months, waiting, but as time went on she got worse and worse. And it became clear to us that she was never going to be able to have a heart transplant.

Her family never wanted to give up hope. They just had this incredible courage that gave us a lot of hope, too. But we just couldn’t fix her, and we had nothing to offer other than keeping her out of pain and taking care of her family.

When we recognized that it was nearing the end, I felt like I had to do something. And I decided to make her family a patchwork quilt. So one day I asked her dad for some pictures of her. I wanted the quilt to be something that would fit her personality, so after work I went to the fabric store and picked out about ten different patterns, all bright and in pinks and purples, her favorite colors. Then I stayed up all night and I made her family this quilt, and at the center was a picture of her outside on a swing, with her long, dark, beautiful hair.

I brought the quilt with me the next morning, and all the nurses went down to her room with me. We presented her father with it, and he just broke down and cried. She died shortly after that, surrounded by her family, and by the nurses. And at the funeral, her parents had the quilt hanging there.

Jenna: How do you stay positive when a patient dies?

Michelle: I believe the most important time in families’ lives is when a loved one dies—and I think it can be a really beautiful time, too.

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