22 Quotes by Theresa Brown

Perhaps if our bodies vanished when we died, death would be easier; part of the puzzlement of death is that the body stays, but the person we knew and loved will never come back. When.

ICU is a hard place for me since it’s often the last stop for our sickest patients.

A mother’s death is a deep, some would say irreparable, loss.

When people ask why I left teaching English to become a nurse, it must be moments like this that puzzle them.

I hold infinity in the palm of my hand, and eternity in the next few crucial hours.

There will come a time when each of us will need a clean, well-lighted place that stays open all day and night, offering shelter from life’s storms. This is a hospital.

There’s nothing easy about helping someone start the journey from life to death. “They also serve who only stand and wait,” the poet Milton said. It’s a line I often hear in my head at work, where standing and waiting can be the best service we offer.

To picture what happens during the late stages of sepsis, imagine a garden hose with small holes placed throughout to turn it into a sprinkler. When a normal amount of water goes through the hose, the sprinkling effect is constant. If the flow decreases, the sprinkler effect becomes more erratic, and if the volume of water in the hose lessens even further, the sprinkler will turn into a leaky mess that waters only the strip of garden it rests on. The.

I rarely fall asleep easily after a shift, especially if I’m working the next one, but now quiescence comes, pushing at the edges of my mind. My breath deepens and I feel the calm of oblivion begin to cover me. I will do this all again tomorrow and then there will be another shift and another and another. To be in the eternal present of illness and unease, never knowing the future. It’s where my patients live so I, ever hopeful, live there with them.