The night I met someone like Terri

When I look at the recent pictures of Terri Schiavo, I always remember a patient I helped care for about ten years ago, when I was in nursing school.

I was halfway through my first year, and had taken a job as a nursing assistant at a hospital. I worked the night shift, on the float pool, so at the beginning of my shift I'd find out where I was going that night. At first I hated the float pool, but after a while I began to enjoy it as I got to know the staff of the different floors and learned their ways.

On this particular night, I was assigned to a medical unit. I'd been there before and had gotten to know the other nursing students who worked there all the time. One of the crueller customs at some hospitals is bathing "total care" patients -- brain-damaged patients unable to help themselves -- at night, when things are quieter, freeing up more time for the day shift to get their baths done.

Tonight there was only one bath, and it wasn't for any of my patients. I was suprised when Patty, the other nursing student, implored me to help her. Patty was a tough young woman from Baltimore, heartlessly practical and usually completely unflappable, but she confessed that she just couldn't face going into her patient's room alone.

I looked down the hall. Her patient was all the way at the end of the hall, in an isolation room -- the kind with a little antechamber between the room and the corridor. That antechamber and the two heavy doors barely muted the eerie wailing coming from the room.

Bath time rolled around, and as Patty got the towels and blankets together, I flipped quickly through the chart. It was a terribly sad story. The patient was a young woman, barely into her thirties. She had been abused as a child and had struggle for years with mental illness. Just as she had begun to emerge from that turmoil and pull her life together, she had developed a serious infectious disease and went into cardiac arrest. They had managed to revive her, but she had suffered a severe anoxic insult -- brain damage -- while her heart had stopped.

We entered the room. The patient was painfully thin, with short, shaggy dark hair. Her arms, hands, and legs were beginning to draw up into contractures, but occasionally she would helplessly paw at the air. She started to cry out again. Patty shuddered, as she unpacked the washcloths, anticipating yet another nerve-wracking night.

I went around to the other side of the bed. I was feeling relaxed -- it was a slow night, there were two of us there to give the bath, and I was going home in four hours. Out of habit, I greeted the patient and introduced myself.

The wailing immediately stopped. Patty looked up and stared.

I started explaining what we were going to do and apologized for having to disturb this poor woman at three in the morning. She didn't attempt to speak, but watched us intently and didn't cry out again.

We started washing up. I was struck by how pretty the patient was, and told her so. Patty got into the spirit of things, and before long we were practically playing spa -- brushing hair, brushing teeth, massaging the patient's hands and feet. We exercised her hands, arms, and legs, changed the linens, and finally tucked her into bed and dimmed the lights. Patty was beaming as she propped the patient's hand on a pillow. "Thank you! Oh, thank you!" she gushed -- to the patient.

I don't know what happened to the patient. (She probably got shoved in a nursing home, where her family might or might not have visited her.) I don't know what happened to Patty, either, but I hope that as she started her career she remembered that night as vividly as I do.