Bart Timmermans is site manager in intensive care at the UMC Utrecht. He tells about a situation he will not soon forget. “Especially the involvement of my colleagues who pulled out all the stops to make a patient’s special wish possible makes me very proud.”
“The man of around 60 had been brought to us in an acute situation. He had just had a major operation and it was questionable whether he would come out of it well. That morning, a piece of the inner layer of the artery going to his head had become detached. An aneurysm. This had partially stopped the blood supply to his brain. A life-threatening condition. And if you survive, the question is how, because it is then unknown how much damage in the brain the lack of oxygen has caused.”
“In that condition, he came to our ward. It soon became apparent that he was doing miraculously well. Not only did he survive, he could still do everything and even recovered tremendously fast. When the initial bulk of worry and grief was over, he let us know what he felt so terrible about: his son was getting married and now he couldn’t be there. The wedding wasn’t for another two weeks, and he had hoped to be sufficiently recovered by then, but now he knew: he wasn’t going to make it.”
“Ineke, a nurse from our team immediately contacted our ict guy Henk. In this digital age, surely it should be possible for this gentleman to still witness his son’s wedding from his ICU bed? With the help of a videographer hired by the family, everyone went to great lengths to ensure that this patient could enjoy this beautiful moment.”
“Both Ineke and Henk weren’t actually going to be there that day. Separately, they said: I’ll make sure I’ll be there. Ineke had even arranged a beautiful corsage for the proud father, who was lying all dolled up in bed, ready for the big event. He realized very well what had happened, that he had crawled through the eye of the needle. So yes, some tears did come when he realized how special it was that he got to experience this.”
“I was especially touched by the commitment of my colleagues. Because sometimes the workload is very high. We struggle to find enough nurses. Nevertheless, many caregivers want to provide just more than basic care. They would like to go that extra mile. “That’s my job after all,” I hear. Maybe so, but that doesn’t make that extra effort any less beautiful. On the contrary, it makes me proud of all those colleagues who do their best every day to make our patients as comfortable as possible.”
