Moments Like These

Remember in the last post how I mentioned I was waiting for my lung transplant patient to return from the OR. Well... She got back up to the unit following her surgery in the early evening. She was on the older end of transplant recipients and I wasn't quite sure how she would do. I recovered her from surgery but then my shift ended before we could take her off the ventilator to see if she would fly.
The next morning when I returned not much had changed, she was still ventilated. Fortunately by mid morning she was ready to come off the vent. As I woke her up and put her on the spontaneous breathing trial, she became very anxious and had a death grip on my hand. Once we took the ET tube out, she began to cry. These were not tears of pain but tears of joy, she finally realized what it was that had just happened and her hope for life was renewed. She kept repeating, "I can't believe I can breathe! Thank you all so much, this is amazing."
She continued to recover very quickly following her extubation, getting out of bed only only an hour later. It wasn't long before we had her walking circles around the unit with her IV pole, 4 chest tubes, portable suction, monitor and drains in tow but remarkably no oxygen! (Of course I had packed it with us "just in case...") I can't say that she made for the most exciting patient but she was the one who truly "got it" and did her best to take great care of her new lungs. It's moments like these that give nurses the energy to keep on doing what they do.