A Visit

As a part-time visiting nurse, one often enters a home blind, without a notion of what will wait behind the door. Often, the outside will tell a story one tries to quickly decipher before even entering the home. And then the story unfolds.

As I approach the stoop, I notice a shopping cart filled with returnable bottles and cans to the left of the crumbling steps. I climb those steps and look into the yard to the left. Detritus of urban life litters what could have been a yard at one time: hub-caps, an eviscerated washing machine, the fenders of several cars, rotting lumber, moldy carpets. What looks like it may have been a cage for a few dogs now holds bag upon bag of trash. I hate to think how this will all smell in the summer heat.

I knock. I knock again. And again. I'd rather this person answer the door so she can get her meds and I can get paid for this visit. I knock yet again.

The door opens following a short period of undecipherable noise from inside. The room smells of stale cigarette smoke. I put my bag down on the table in what seems to be the cleanest spot. The young woman who sleepily opened the door says, "She'll be right there." I put my paperwork down on the table and I notice that it sticks to the wood. Hmmm.

There is yelling from the bedroom around the corner. "Why do these nurses come so early? I'm so tired!" I note that it's almost 9am and I should have been here at least 30 minutes ago.

"Is she OK? I ask. "I thought her regular nurse usually comes at 8."

"Oh, she just likes to complain." The young woman goes back up the stairs and I'm left to wait. A few minutes go by, and there is rustling and complaining from the other room as I ruminate on the other visits I still need to make.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she yells, and enters the room in a bustle.

She smells of urine and maybe a hint of sweat and feces. I greet her warmly in both English and Spanish.

"Buenos dias, hello, how are you?" I smile. "Where's your med box and the paperwork?"

She opens a cabinet and produces the box and the all-important folder which any nurse who comes to the home can use to guide him or her as to what to accomplish during the visit. I have a secret piece of paper with the combination to her med box. She can't be trusted with her meds---like so many of our patients---so a locked box is kept in the home.

"Thanks." She smiles wanly and sticks her finger out so I can check her blood sugar with the glucometer on the table.

The machine beeps. "105. Muy bien," I say as I hand her some gauze to staunch the blood from her finger that I just pricked.

The visit is inconsequential as visits go. I am one more face, one more nurse who has come to check her sugar and blood pressure, administer her meds, and then be on my way. The fact that I speak Spanish seems not to impress her. She answers in English no matter what language I use. How tiring it must be to have a virtual stranger in her home each morning. What an imposition when one wishes only to sleep one's depression away. Her blank stare and flat affect belie her underlying mental illness, and I feel compassion for her even as I reel from the smell of urine that surrounds her. I wonder when the home health aide will visit her next, or if her family will make sure she bathes.

Not being a case manager has its rewards, and having relinquished the management of the intricacies of more than eighty people's lives, this momentary glimpse into a life on the edge of chaos reminds me why I so recently quit my full-time job. In my current position---covering for absent nurses and stopping in on patients who need a visit---there is no management, no follow-through. It is simply a visit and nothing more. It is a fleeting clinical glimpse, a hello and a goodbye, and I move on to the next.