Deirdre Neilen, PhD: Health care professionals often wonder if patients see them, see how hard they are working to gain trust, provide comfort, speed healing. Pam Freeman, a poet and actor in Upstate Medical's standardized patient program, wrote us a gorgeous poem that pays tribute to nurses' heroic work. Here is "Request Line":
The acute floors were full so instead of going upstairs
I lay on a gurney at the far end of the ER
A whole room all to myself
Unused because the heat didn't reach there
They apologized and offered blankets
But I bathed gratefully in the chill
While a fever roasted me
No thank you I said and drew the sheet up
Letting my feet float in cool air
Was it sepsis I still don't know
That was before they told you things
Not wanting to scare you
All I knew at the time was
My sed rate was high and everything hurt
So when the nurse peeked in from the door
Spoke my name like a secret password
And finding me awake padded in
How did that nurse know the one thing he could do
Without causing more pain was give my toe a small squeeze
While saying how are you dear
Just give my toe the merest wiggle
And I would relax
He smiled under his walrus mustache
Told me his first name which I've long forgotten
Then with simple instructions
Made a quick neat task of the dreaded bedpan
Which I thought would never work
But it did and he whisked it away
Saying thank you dear
I learned that he was also a firefighter
And played bagpipes
What was his name I wish I could remember
Why bagpipes I asked
He said well you know dear
Someone has to
There must have been other nurses
I was there for days
But he's the only one I recall
The firefighter bagpiper hello-dear nurse
With the cartoon mustache
Who saw my toe sticking out from a thin sheet
In a cold room
And used it like a telegraph key
Pressing messages onto it such as
It's all right
You are safe
You will heal
You are worth a careful touch
You are worth your questions
You are worth knowing that I dress in other outfits
And hoot like a band of owls
Or run uncoiling a fire hose
All within this wild romp of a world
To whose possibilities we will soon return you
And so
This goes out to the nurse
In his scrubs
In his kilt and sporran
In his helmet and asbestos
A uniformed doorman to the world
Waving right this way dear
This way to the music and fires
The songs and battles
Who gives my toe a last confident handshake
Yes please this goes out to him
A tendril of melody
A thin distant chant
Over the daily drone of living
His greeting is still on my playlist
In case I need to hear it again
Once in a while
When all I can seem to get is
The all-night insomniac
Radio station of my mind
