When the Nurse Becomes the Patient

When the Nurse Becomes the Patient

The What-Ifs Before Major Surgery

In the two or three days leading up to my surgery, I found myself becoming increasingly anxious. Restless nights, racing thoughts, and a mind that seemed determined to work overtime in the wee hours of the morning.

The mind can be a crazy thing.

After all, having a lobe of your lung removed is a pretty big deal.

Am I doing the right thing?

What if this doesn't help my chronic lung issues?

Will I ever be able to be active again?

And then came all the other what-ifs.

What if I had changed doctors sooner? What if I had never worked in a hospital? What could I have done differently?

Round and round these thoughts went.

As a nurse, I know that replaying the past and questioning every decision isn't going to change where I am today. Yet knowing something and actually putting it into practice are two very different things.

All those thoughts were consuming energy I really didn't have to spare.

The reality was that the past two years had been a downward spiral when it came to my lung health. I never fully bounced back after becoming seriously ill with sepsis. Years of chronic lung disease and repeated infections had finally taken their toll on my otherwise healthy 55-year-old body.

My physical endurance had become, well… pathetic.

For someone who has always valued being active and independent, that has been one of the hardest parts to accept.

I missed feeling strong. I missed having the energy to do the things I enjoyed. And perhaps more than anything, I missed feeling like myself.

So here I was, preparing for a surgery that I hoped would give me some of that life back, while also wondering what life might look like afterward.

And suddenly, I was the patient.

Sitting in the preoperative room, answering questions I had heard asked hundreds of times throughout my nursing career, I noticed something familiar.

I was rambling.

Talking more than necessary. Probably giving far more information than anyone needed.

A nervous habit I had witnessed countless times in patients over my years of nursing.

And now I was doing the very same thing.

Take a deep breath, I told myself.

After all, breathing is something I teach others to use for stress relief.

I tried.

Not much success.

I had to laugh at myself a little. Here I was, a nurse who teaches therapeutic breathing and relaxation, struggling to quiet my own mind.

I suppose even nurses need a little help sometimes.

At that moment, I decided some good old-fashioned sleepy medication might be just what I needed!

There was no turning back now.

I couldn't change the past two years, and I certainly couldn't answer all the what-ifs running through my mind.

All I could do was trust the decision I had made, trust my surgical team, and hope that this was the beginning of better days ahead.

So here we go…

Right middle lobe removal with lung resection.

Not exactly how I imagined spending this chapter of my life.

But perhaps the beginning of a new one.

To be continued…