Nurses
Hi, I’m Michael, and I’m a stroke survivor.
My dad always advised me to marry a nurse. He had done so himself. My aunt was also a nurse, and many of the ‘good friend’ aunties I knew as a child were often nurses too. Even those no longer employed as nurses seemed to carry their nursing spirit with them—because nurses never really retire! But I didn’t truly understand just how amazing they are until I became a patient myself.
Zoe
I was rushed to Emergency at about 8.30 am on a Friday. Once I was settled, my wife went home to grab a few things for me and to take our dog to daycare, as everything was still so uncertain. I was alone in the ER, scared and unsure of what was happening, when a nurse named Zoe came to my bedside and filled me in. She called the nurse who worked for me to explain the situation. Zoe told me that the neurologist would be dropping by soon and suggested I have any questions ready. When I struggled to type on my phone (I couldn’t speak at the time either), Zoe typed the common questions into my phone for me.
Jasmin
That evening, a bed opened up in the stroke ward on level seven, and I was moved upstairs. The next day, a nurse came to my room and said “Michael, you can cry, scream or even rant but you have to start speaking again. You need to rebuild the neural pathways for speech. My name is Jasmin. Can you say Jasmin?”
I couldn’t say her name, but the following day I moved from grunting when I wanted a glass of water to mumbling something like “I wan waya” while holding out my cup. Then every day, slowly, kindly but firmly, Jasmin pushed me to try to speak.
Rebecca
After a stroke, they put you on thickened liquids until they’re confident you can swallow properly. I was thrilled when I could finally move off that thickened sweet stuff and onto normal water. But as a Melburnian, what I really wanted was a good coffee—and the pot coffee on the trolley wasn’t cutting it.
Through a mix of hand signals, pointing, and maybe a bit of baby eyes (by me), I got the message across to my day nurse, Rebecca, who looked after me most days. She noticed my drooling upon seeing her Hudson's coffee from downstairs. An hour later, she disappeared and then reappeared with a café latte just for me. From that day on, she brought me a coffee every morning when she went downstairs to get hers.
Tip of the iceberg
Zoe, Jasmin and Rebecca are just three of the incredible nurses who have cared for me since my stroke. From my initial hospitalisation to rehab, subsequent hospital visits and surgery, they have proven time and again that nurses are a remarkable group of people. I will never forget them.