The Borders of Loss: An Early First in One Nurse’s Career

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, is an oncology nurse navigator and writes a monthly post for this blog. The illustration below is hers.

Peds Ward (2008), charcoal, graphite, flash, and acrylic. By Julianna Paradisi Peds Ward (2008)/charcoal, graphite, flash, and acrylic/by Julianna Paradisi

Working in oncology, the topic of whether it’s crossing a boundary for nurses to attend the funeral of their patients comes up. Sometimes, however, we’re carried across that boundary by our heartstrings. The first patient funeral I attended was that of my first patient.

During Jack’s short life, he was the first assignment of many a new nurse on the pediatric unit where I was hired as a newly graduated nurse. He had lived in the hospital his entire life.

Jack was nearly ten months old when we met. Born with a congenital illness requiring multiple surgeries, he failed to thrive. A nasogastric tube snaked through his nose into his stomach so he could conserve the calories burned eating from a bottle or spoon. As Jack’s nurse, I mastered the skill of nasogastric tube feedings.

Most parents bond with their chronically ill babies, but it takes a big commitment on their part. Babies like Jack do not look like the pictures of healthy babies in magazines. They are cloistered in an isolette and connected […]

2016-11-21T13:02:33-05:00May 8th, 2015|career, narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|2 Comments
Read More

A Brief Meditation on Love, Loss, and Nursing

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

Manicure, by Julianna Paradisi, 2014 Manicure, by Julianna Paradisi, 2014

As a child, I remember being afraid to fall in love, because I didn’t want to experience the pain of losing people I loved when they died. I don’t know why I thought about this; I only know that I did.

Becoming a nurse has done absolutely nothing to alleviate this fear, but life experience has, to some degree.

Nursing is hard not only because we are there for the dying, but also because we are there for the illnesses and deaths of our own, the people we love, too. Making a living by caring for the sick and dying does not exempt us from personal loss. We grieve and mourn like everyone else.

Recently, I sat in a chair in an emergency department, noticing the sparkly red polish of a woman’s holiday manicure as she rolled past on a gurney. Clearly, she hadn’t anticipated an ER visit as part of her holiday celebrations either. On another gurney, next to my chair, lay my husband, getting an EKG, labs, and IV fluids. The prayer, “Please, don’t let it be a heart attack or a brain tumor,” wove silently through my thoughts.

We were lucky. There was […]

2016-11-21T13:03:11-05:00January 14th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective|4 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
Go to Top