One who has gone through with an experience like this, and who has courageously remained with her patient to the end, has passed through a training more severe than any she has had in her hospital life, and she has earned a new diploma.
There are some things which the nurse may do to lighten these dark days, some things which may help both herself and her patient, and these I will try to show.
Firstly, it is well to study your case from a pathological view point. Find out the heredity, the manner of the daily life, the first manifestation of the disease, what circumstances led to it, how it was treated, what success the treatment seemed to have, what symptoms can now be noted, what complications have shown themselves, and their influence on the original disease. A careful history could be written embracing all of these points, and as new symptoms appear they should be observed and noted. All this should be valuable and should help some future day to show some one who has but started on the dreaded pathway, how to avoid what will surely be a fatal disease. Many a valuable paper could be written in the long hours when the nurse feels she is losing her time, if she would intelligently study her case, and write the story of the disease, what led to it, and how it is being combated.
Perhaps, if it could be arranged, the nurse might be spared part of a day once or twice a week, and she could go to her hospital out patient department, or to some dispensary and do some work that carries a little feeling of success with it; work in a babies milk station, or almost any of the numerous charitable activities, would rest and refresh one who has for months been with the same patient.
Secondly, as a psychological study. We all know we must die, we feel that we talk to people every day who perhaps will not be alive a twelvemonth hence; but we are not actually certain that ourselves or any of our friends will so soon be dead, and we habitually act and speak as if we all were to live on indefinitely. So to be closely associated with some one who we know is drawing closer and closer to the life beyond the grave, is a very solemn thing; whether the sick one knows it or not, the nurse knows it, and such an one must be viewed with peculiar interest.
She is so near to knowing the great Mystery. She will so soon see those who have gone before. The present helplessness will so marvelously become Life Everlasting. It seems, as the end comes nearer, and yet more near, as if, perhaps, one could send a message to some of our own loved ones gone on before, "If you see some of my dear ones, on that other shore, bear them a loving greeting from me, tell them I am trying to live as they would have me live." Such a thought trembles on the tongue, so near does the unseen seem to come to us.
In the face of these things, how small do the thoughts of our own dignity seem. It is all service, and service is what we were made for.
"I pass this way but once, if, therefore, there is any service I can perform for my fellow man let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again." This quotation is familiar to all, and especially does it come to mind when we minister to those who are to die. When they are gone there will be no bringing them back to explain duties slighted or left undone. "We pass this way but once."
Thirdly, from a religious point of view. It is quite impossible to say, what exactly is the nurse's duty as regards the religious side of her ministration, though the wish to help must be often in the mind of every thoughtful nurse who has charge of an incurable case.
The patient may not know her condition, and the doctor may not wish her to be told, then, of course, the nurse's lips must be sealed, as to any allusion to the dread truth. The religious views of the patient and her friends may be different from anything that the nurse knows, or perhaps the family pastor comes frequently, and instructs and comforts the sick one, and the family.