One dreary winter afternoon, a nurse walked into a bar. While this may sound like the start of a bad joke, it was really an instance of God at work and resulted in something better than a punchline!
The nurse, Tammy*, had walked into my sister’s brewery to have lunch with an old friend. As small towns go, the old friend knew my sister and introduced the two. As they chatted, Tammy mentioned she worked as a private duty home health nurse, and she was currently looking for a new patient.
Months earlier, our elderly father had fallen and suffered a brain injury and a series of unfortunate health trauma. After weeks in the hospital, he was home but struggling. He couldn’t stand or ambulate without help, wasn’t eating, and continually experienced incontinence and skin breakdown.
Sadly, our elderly mother was having great difficulty caring for him. I had arranged for in-home care support, but that was proving terribly inadequate, and dad continued to deteriorate. I was anxious and afraid for my father.
My sister told me about Tammy, and I reached out to her. Tammy was willing to assess my father and mother--and to my great surprise, her fees were affordable. I was worried that she wouldn’t want to get involved in a complex situation in a remote rural home with a frail old man and his anxious wife.
So I held my breath until the next week when Tammy made her first home visit. Would mom accept Tammy? Would dad be comfortable with her? Would Tammy really care and do what was needed to help my father?
I was overwhelmed with gratitude when my mom told me how much she liked Tammy. Tammy immediately realized dad and mom’s enormous needs and swiftly took action. She went beyond what I thought was required of a home care nurse, bringing in groceries and helping mom plan meals for dad. Dad’s skin breakdown started resolving and I began to see many other improvements.
While I was worrying and searching for a way to improve my dad’s care, God showed up in an astonishing way to bring optimal nursing care to a remote, seemingly impossible situation. I’ve realized that since Tammy, the nurse, entered our lives, what the psalmist wrote is so true: “Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, he [God] hears my voice” (Psalm 55:17, NIV).
*Name changed to protect privacy.
Jenny Burroughs Choi is the art director for the Journal of Christian Nursing and a marketing pro serving with Nurses Christian Fellowship.
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