Sue James

Mary was a 56 year old woman with metastatic breast cancer and her prognosis was very poor. She was neutropenic due to her chemotherapy regime and was on reverse isolation due to a low WBC count.

She had a large group of family and church friends that wanted to visit with her after church. So we put the group of family and friends in the day room and got Mary ready to visit with them. She informed her nurse, Sue James that she was really tired, and she did not feel like she could visit for a long time, but did not want to hurt her friend’s feelings.  Sue helped her fix her hair and put on some make-up.  She put Mary in a wheel chair, put a mask on her face, a crocheted blanket on her lap and also found a matching bonnet for her head.  Sue rolled her to the day room to visit with this large group of people.

After about 20 minutes Sue rolled her back to her room so her close family could continue to be with her at her bedside. Her grandchildren came to visit and their mother washed the small children’s hands and place masks on their faces to prevent Mary from infections.  Sue noticed the children about to go into the room with their masks and stopped them.  Sue told their mother that the children could leave the masks off and encouraged them to have a party.

Sue got the children up in bed with their grandmother, and this made Mary very happy. Sue then proceeded to bring ice cream to the room, and the kids and their grandmother had an ice cream party in her hospital bed. Sue felt it was very important that Mary’s daughter got to see her children interact and be able to have fun one last time with her Mother, Mary.  She also felt it was important to Mary and the grandchildren, that they both could have this last interaction with each other.

At this time the immediate family could share a few laughs and cherish the last time Mary was with her family. Unfortunately, Mary died that night, but the family will always be able to look back on the ice cream party they had with Mary.

Thanks to Sue.