(cheers)

Every nurse has a patient that reminds them why they became a nurse in the first place

Mine was Joe

Joe was a beginning stage of Alzheimers

He had moments with and moments without his memory.

But the hardest part about aging condition for Joe were his night terrors

He'll wake up in the middle of the night, screaming out bloody murder

But if I just sit in there and held his hand for few moments, I can usually get him to calm down

But then he wanted to talk

He would ask me if I can change his treatments

but I said, "No, Joe, I can't. I'm just a nurse."

"But what about my medication, can you fix those?"

And I said, "No, Joe. I'm just a nurse."

But because I can't do those things for Joe

We connected to another levels

He would ask me about volleyball

We would talk about his grandbabies

He would tease me about being the only nurse on the unit

that can reach the gauze on the top shlef

It was a lot of laugh with Joe

But then one night, everything changed

I found him in his room crying

And I went over to him and I lifted his his head up out of his hands, and I said,

"Joe, I know this is really hard."

"But you're not defined by this disease "

"You are not just Alzheimer's"

"You are still Joe"

And he looked right back at me

almost to look through me, and said,

"Nurse Kelly, then the same goes for you."

"Although you say it all the time, you are not just a nurse."

"You are my nurse."

"And you have changed my life because you cared about me."

And that's when it hit me

Patients are people with family and friends

And I don't want to be a nurse that ever pretends.

Because you're not a room number and a diagnosis when you're in the hospital.

You are a perosn, very first.

And Joe reminded me that the day that I'm a lifesaver.

I'm never going to be just a nurse.