Imaginary friends
When I was a little bitty girl, I had imaginary friends, like most of us do. My first one, I don't really recall on my own but have heard many stories about her from my Mom. One was that we were driving down the road , and my Dad had either come to an abrupt stop, or had turned a corner too sharply, and whichever the action, had thrown my friend from the back seat into the floorboard, and I began to cry.
The other "friend", or rather set of "friends" was my pet "Stunks". Not sure if they were skunks or squirrels, but they could fly and I kept control of them by having each one on a string, like a handful of helium balloons. They didn't, in my memory, do anything spectacular, other than keeping me entertained, but who knows what I have since dumped from the fantastical memory file to be replaced by more mature, mundane "reality". What a shame.
I may have mentioned in earlier posts that nurses are taught in school to orient our patients to reality. I become very selective about which patients I decide need this, as reality is often not so much fun. If their delusion is calming and soothing them, why fix it if it ain't broke? Especially since I work nights, and often come across what is known as "sundowner's syndrome." Reality fades and returns with the sun's fall and rise, but if the fantasy is nonthreatening, why remind them that they are in the hospital with very little control over what is happening to them?
I have spoken to athiests who label faith as equal to having imaginary friends, and provide us poor deluded souls with somebody else to "blame it all on". HMMMMM.....I, at the very base of this equation, would much rather be wrong along with the much greater proportion of civilization, than with them.
I may still have imaginary friends. I mentioned in a comment to another post that for a timeframe of several weeks at work, I would walk up to one of the elevators at work, and before I could push the button, the door would open for me. No one would be on the elevator, and a classmate of mine who is now long departed, would pop into my head. Hadn't had any reason to think of him, or talk about him with others for maybe years, but there he was, in my head, grinning at me. This was behavior that would fit his personality to a "T". When it happened so many times that I couldn't write it off to coincidence, I started thanking him out loud.
What is intuition? Is it nothing more than enough experiences in any given situation to provide us with answers to problems without our conscious thought? One situation I will never forget happened very shortly after I began working at my current hospital. I had not been there long enough to know any of the doctors well, or they know me. I walked into a patient's room for the first time, and alarms started ringing in my head. Vitals were good, O2 levels were good, patient was alert and oriented , and without any specific complaint. SOMETHING just wasn't right. That something was screaming in my head so loudly, that I ventured to make a fool of myself with his admitting physician by calling him.
"Dr. Tom, I don't have anything specific to tell you, but my gut tells me that something is very wrong with Mr. Jones. His vitals are good, cardiac rhythm is sinus without ectopy or blocks, sats are okay, he's breathing is okay......but something is just NOT right." The sensible thing for that doctor to have said would have been " Okay so what do you want me to do about it?" at the very least, or to have gone into a tirade about bothering him with my nonsense. To my surprise, he said, "I'm just coming into to parking lot, I'll come to you first." Within less than five minutes, he was walking in the door, and we were in the process of putting this man on a backboard to begin CPR. That MD and I bonded from that day on, and that trust in judgement didn't waver for the next ten years or so, until he retired. Who was talking to the BOTH of us? Sure, he knew much more about this patient than I did at this point, but if he suspected he was THAT critically ill, the patient would have been admitted to a CCU, not my floor, from the ER, where he had previously been evaluated. The patient survived, by the way, and with a future of some quality of life in his pocket on discharge.
Guardian angels? Imaginary friends? My daughter was hit by a car when she was 12. She was hit on the right side on her bike, flipped and took the windshield out with her left shoulder, went up over the top of the car, and landed behind the car,in a road that, on any given day, in any given moment, SHOULD have had another car right behind to run her over again. She was in middle school, and her schoolmates sent 3 full bags of cards to wish her well. One I will never forget when she read it to me,"Sorry to hear about your accident, God must have been busy that day.". May be, but there was Somebody there to catch her as she landed, and there was no car to take her out behind the first. Her worst injuries were a terrible loss of flesh on her left shoulder, a few broken ribs, a concussion, and multiple areas of road rash all over her body.
Some cynical yahoo will want to give me scientific explanations for all of these phenomenon. Save them. If these are all delusions, I will keep them, thank you very much! They make much more sense to me than there having to be answers for every question! And just like the bunch of "lil chilrens" over there in the corner who are giggling and playing, and keeping my patient entertained through a long night, they are doing no harm to you, me, or anyone else.
The other "friend", or rather set of "friends" was my pet "Stunks". Not sure if they were skunks or squirrels, but they could fly and I kept control of them by having each one on a string, like a handful of helium balloons. They didn't, in my memory, do anything spectacular, other than keeping me entertained, but who knows what I have since dumped from the fantastical memory file to be replaced by more mature, mundane "reality". What a shame.
I may have mentioned in earlier posts that nurses are taught in school to orient our patients to reality. I become very selective about which patients I decide need this, as reality is often not so much fun. If their delusion is calming and soothing them, why fix it if it ain't broke? Especially since I work nights, and often come across what is known as "sundowner's syndrome." Reality fades and returns with the sun's fall and rise, but if the fantasy is nonthreatening, why remind them that they are in the hospital with very little control over what is happening to them?
I have spoken to athiests who label faith as equal to having imaginary friends, and provide us poor deluded souls with somebody else to "blame it all on". HMMMMM.....I, at the very base of this equation, would much rather be wrong along with the much greater proportion of civilization, than with them.
I may still have imaginary friends. I mentioned in a comment to another post that for a timeframe of several weeks at work, I would walk up to one of the elevators at work, and before I could push the button, the door would open for me. No one would be on the elevator, and a classmate of mine who is now long departed, would pop into my head. Hadn't had any reason to think of him, or talk about him with others for maybe years, but there he was, in my head, grinning at me. This was behavior that would fit his personality to a "T". When it happened so many times that I couldn't write it off to coincidence, I started thanking him out loud.
What is intuition? Is it nothing more than enough experiences in any given situation to provide us with answers to problems without our conscious thought? One situation I will never forget happened very shortly after I began working at my current hospital. I had not been there long enough to know any of the doctors well, or they know me. I walked into a patient's room for the first time, and alarms started ringing in my head. Vitals were good, O2 levels were good, patient was alert and oriented , and without any specific complaint. SOMETHING just wasn't right. That something was screaming in my head so loudly, that I ventured to make a fool of myself with his admitting physician by calling him.
"Dr. Tom, I don't have anything specific to tell you, but my gut tells me that something is very wrong with Mr. Jones. His vitals are good, cardiac rhythm is sinus without ectopy or blocks, sats are okay, he's breathing is okay......but something is just NOT right." The sensible thing for that doctor to have said would have been " Okay so what do you want me to do about it?" at the very least, or to have gone into a tirade about bothering him with my nonsense. To my surprise, he said, "I'm just coming into to parking lot, I'll come to you first." Within less than five minutes, he was walking in the door, and we were in the process of putting this man on a backboard to begin CPR. That MD and I bonded from that day on, and that trust in judgement didn't waver for the next ten years or so, until he retired. Who was talking to the BOTH of us? Sure, he knew much more about this patient than I did at this point, but if he suspected he was THAT critically ill, the patient would have been admitted to a CCU, not my floor, from the ER, where he had previously been evaluated. The patient survived, by the way, and with a future of some quality of life in his pocket on discharge.
Guardian angels? Imaginary friends? My daughter was hit by a car when she was 12. She was hit on the right side on her bike, flipped and took the windshield out with her left shoulder, went up over the top of the car, and landed behind the car,in a road that, on any given day, in any given moment, SHOULD have had another car right behind to run her over again. She was in middle school, and her schoolmates sent 3 full bags of cards to wish her well. One I will never forget when she read it to me,"Sorry to hear about your accident, God must have been busy that day.". May be, but there was Somebody there to catch her as she landed, and there was no car to take her out behind the first. Her worst injuries were a terrible loss of flesh on her left shoulder, a few broken ribs, a concussion, and multiple areas of road rash all over her body.
Some cynical yahoo will want to give me scientific explanations for all of these phenomenon. Save them. If these are all delusions, I will keep them, thank you very much! They make much more sense to me than there having to be answers for every question! And just like the bunch of "lil chilrens" over there in the corner who are giggling and playing, and keeping my patient entertained through a long night, they are doing no harm to you, me, or anyone else.
posted by Mommanurse at 5:26 AM
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