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Behind each of these stories I see the eyes of the people I love and I see the
years we spent together, the laughing, the crying, the discussions, the arguments, the celebrations, and the disappointments.
47 days after this day Jess
needed to be transferred t a long term care facility. I knew I had eighteen months to stimulate the most neurons I could so
he would regain the most function. I brought him home, he still looked just like this with a little less bruising around the
eyes, he didn't talk, his eyes were open but he didn't know any of us. I requested the tracheostomy be removed and that required
readmission to a long term care facility. The first night there the Director of Nursing told me that she would have my son
removed from her facility by morning because I had requested he be put near the nurses station and not be tied down.
Six years later Jess is getting
married March 2011, he is back working at his old job and driving!
When caring for someone remember
to look in their eyes and take the time to look into your eyes each morning.
We are not alone in our
loneliness Others
have been here and known Greifs we thought our special own Problems that we could not solve Loves that we
could not have Pleasures that we missed by inches by Patrick Kavanagh, an Irish Poet
- In 1859 Florence Nightingale
wrote down her observations about caring and very practically called it Notes on Nursing what it is and what it is not
- To paraphrase, She wrote that if every
woman or man must at some time or another in their life have charge of someone's health then how immense and how valuable
the product of a united experience, if everyone would think how to care.
Florence Nightingale also said:
I do not pretend to teach anyone how to care, I ask them to teach themselves, and for this purpose I venture to give them
some hints. The following notes have been helpful for myself and may perhaps will be helpful to someone else.
Based on the creeds of the nurse
manifesto.
Mother Teresa said: all my years
of service to the poor have helped me to understand that they are precisely the ones who better understand human dignity.
If they have a problem, it is not a lack of money, but the fact that their right to be treated humanely and with tenderness
is not recognized.
Resolve to be tender with the
young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak
and wrong... because, sometime in your life you will have been all of these. Unknown
Florence Nightingale said, "Let
us be anxious to do well, not for selfish praise but to honor and advance the cause, the work we have taken up.
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Our Mission
The Caring Initiative is meant to stimulate
a retrospective, introspective
and prospective exchange of ideas about what is meant "to care" for ourselves and others.
The Caring Initiative is a transformational program for people
working in the caring field,whether or not you are paid.
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