Reminder

This was a crazy weekend for work, with lots of patient visits. I'm staying up late tonight finishing up paperwork. It is on days like this that I need a reminder why I love being a visiting nurse. Today I got one of those reminders.

The driveway was a grassy two track through a swamp with willows, cattails, and stagnant water on either side. It wound quarter of a mile through the wet land, then through a thick dark hemlock forest. A tumbled down barn in the woods was the first sign that someone might have once lived here. Finally I came to a little disheveled house covered with spiderwebs. A pond covered with thick green algae stretched out beyond the house. A family of sand hill cranes--the parents and their half grown craneling--stood almost as if they were guarding the house, and made no move to flee when I stopped my SUV and got out.

I stood there for a few minutes just taking in the complete silence and the green darkness of the forest and water. Despite the eeriness, it was incredibly peaceful and beautiful.

When I knocked on the door, I half expected it to be answered by a little old lady with a broomstick and a tall black pointy hat. No such luck, but the 81 year old home bound woman who lived there was quite a character. You would have to be, to live alone in a run down house in the middle of a swamp by yourself at age 81!

Our goal as visiting nurses and therapists is to keep people home as long as it is safe for them to be home. It is a great privilege to help a person like this woman, live independently in the house she and her husband built together, surrounded by the wild animals, birds, and the wet lands she loves.