Consciousness

Oncology families are often in the hospital for long durations. The nurses get to know them at a very intimate level. Sometimes this can be a wonderful thing, other times it can be detrimental to both the family and the nurse. If a family gets a reputation for being a particularly “difficult” family this affects the treatment they get by staff and can be the start to a very vicious cycle.


We had a family on our unit for an extended period of time. The patient was dying and the family was not ready to accept that. Despite the pain that would result in pursuing treatment that doctors and nurses all felt was futile, the family pressed on. This created a very difficult emotional burden for the medical staff. The family was clearly under an immense amount of stress. They were continuously researching alternative cures, diets and therapies. They were constantly second guessing the interventions that were being offered and asking for additional therapies that were beyond the policies and procedures we have grown accustomed to. They were under a great deal of financial stress, refinancing their house to pay for medical helicopter rides to Mexico for alternative therapies. They were also under immense emotional stress, the panic of losing their only son, combined with the marital stressors of financial worries and very little time spent on their relationship added to the stress of trying to shield their daughter from the gravity of the situation was draining them completely.

The emotional stress had to be relieved somehow and it came to a head against the medical staff, particularly the nursing staff. The father of the patient demanded certain medications at very particular times, if nurses were one minute late in administering he would go completely ballistic. He would demand lab tests to be drawn or to speak with the physicians at inopportune times and when the nurse could not appease his demands instantaneously he became irate. It was a completely exhausting situation. Many of the nurses that were a part of this patient’s care team eventually burned out and requested a break. This would leave nurses who did not know this patient or family at all responsible for his care with very little background or knowledge on how to cope with this family.

One morning I was assigned to this patient. Upon seeing his name underneath mine I felt the anxiety rising. The patient was extremely complex physically but it was the social aspect that had me completely petrified. I went into the patient’s room for my first assessment completely nervous, feeling as though I didn’t know where to place my hands despite my nursing experience. Upon speaking with the patient however my feelings of anxiety melted away. The child was amazing, he was brilliant and kind and so full of joy. Before I knew it my guard was down completely and I felt myself actually enjoying being his nurse. I received a phone call around 9am that morning, it was his father and he would be coming into the hospital within the hour. He made several demands for interventions that would be made available upon his arrival. I felt the anxiety creeping back into my soul. I allowed myself some time to investigate these feelings. I placed myself in the patient’s shoes, a young man just desperate to live, someone who is trusting his parents are making the best decisions for him and yet feels the discord among the hospital staff and the people he loves most in this world. I than placed myself in his father’s shoes, imagining (as best I could) the emotional trauma of watching your precious son’s life flickering out before your very eyes. I found a new place of compassion and a new line of thinking in which to approach this family, a new filter in which I could see their emotions, their demands and unique needs through. I entered the room with a new perspective and hope on how the day could unfold. The rest of the day went seamlessly. The patient’s pain and nausea were well controlled and his father actually had a sense of peace about him. We had several caring moments together and I left the hospital that evening feeling renewed.

I absolutely feel you can change your consciousness by your thoughts and intentions. I feel that we are easily brought to a lower frequency by those around us unless we make a conscious decision and effort to choose the higher frequency. I also know it is a lot harder to maintain the higher frequency than it is to fall (unconsciously) into the lower frequency of negativity of those around us. I know this is a choice, a conscious choice that must be made and renewed frequently in order to maintain the higher frequency. We can’t allow the preconceived emotions and interpretations of others to be influencing our own consciousness we must enter a situation with the consciousness to be the light and treat the situation as such.