The American Nurse | Full Documentary Movie

i always thought all nurses were alike they come in they take your blood pressure they take your temperature they smile i just thought a nurse was a nurse now open your little mouth [Music] and then i got breast cancer i had a surgeon who fixed me an oncologist who decided what chemotherapy i was gonna get i had a radiologist who decided i was gonna get zapped with radiation but somebody had to put a mask on and wheel the chemotherapy through that door and stick it in the port that was in my chest and that was

a nurse she was the one who got me through it so in 2012 when i was asked to make a book that celebrates nurses i started with joanne i spent a year photographing and interviewing over 100 nurses all across the country helicopter nurses er nurses pediatric nurses military nurses school nurses i got a glimpse into the world of nursing and it was nothing like i expected so i decided to dig deeper to follow five nurses from the book and find out more i wanted to know what does nursing look like for soldiers coming back from

war for inmates in our prison system for people living in one of the poorest parts of the country what does it look like at birth and at the end of life and who are the people that can do this incredibly intimate work [Music] [Music] baby boy was born at 10 35 she's done with her postpartum pit she um just has d5lr at 125 running she has her fully still in she has an epidural with eight five twenty and three fentanyl pivokine at five micrograms a lot of people just think oh you just deliver babies but

we are cross-trained to all the different departments within labor and delivery we're also trained in the or we are actually scrub techs all right so what you're going to do is you are just going to take this and you're going to change other nurses and other departments are like i can't do that there's so much body fluids and screaming and a lot of people can't handle that and i think it takes a you know a certain kind of nurse to be able to have those nerves to calm people and and push through it and and

be able to stand up and say we're going to do this together and we have to get this done and you're going to be able to do it so the more you push like this the more open your spine is the easier it is to get more curl yes the more you curl over your baby medicine here okay so ready yep one two three sticking up sticking a burn all right i'm not leaving you i'm not leaving you some more sticking a burn okay you're doing great just keep breathing with me in through your nose

out through your mouth and just try to relax okay yeah there'll be a little pressure here let me know okay so there's a catheter coming it's just a little tube okay she's 36 years old she's period1011 she has a history of ovarian cancer on the right she has only her left ovary and her uterus but she has not been unruptured so she's here for repeat c-section and evaluation of her inter-abdominal area i would just like to introduce the team dr beanstalk is the attending dr winder and dr wu dr tokyoka is the anesthesia attending i'm

naomi cross i'm the delivery nurse and our tech today is molly burnish 10 1034 clear fluid nuclear hey all [Music] thank right okay you want to go see your mama you want to go see your mama okay i'm going to get them [Music] after my cancer was diagnosed i had what they call fertility sparing surgery so naturally i can get pregnant and i did which is amazing we had a planned c-section and today we delivered my son well congratulations go team what's up you're so okay thank you [Music] from the wsip weather center for this

afternoon mostly cloudy with a 30 chance of showers highs in the low 40s tonight cloudy 40 chance of rain and snow showers lows around 32. cloudy on tuesday a 30 chance of rain and snow showers in the morning working with my dad as a mechanic is a family business i spend a lot of long hard hours in here of course you know we would argue over certain little things sometimes i would be a little too lenient with customers that owed stuff i would actually step out use tires to people i thought they were going to

have a blowout but they didn't have the money i was always a helper and you know he was a a businessman so we would have disagreements about stuff like that and i don't know what it is in me i always went for that feeling of giving and helping and through nursing i actually found an even better way to do that working with people in their homes in the intimate setting there's nothing more intimate than being in someone's home especially at a time like this they're more than just patients their lives we're touching them no matter

how good i fixed the car i never got that you know never got it but i get it now that good all right thank you very good all right just kind of relax i'm gonna flush it and make sure that it's working good getting ready to access you and we're done you want the covers okay let's get that drink of water huh yeah i'm gonna change your bed now i didn't want to say it in front of him but actually that change can be actually a bad thing okay and it was a good thing i

know and it's it's easy to you know see something like that and think that oh that's good that's good that's changed but usually when you have tumors growing in there and stuff it's usually a kind of a really bad sign when something major changes like that even if it seems to be for the better but you know i didn't want to you know tear his hope down or anything i just wanted to yeah make you aware of that because that's kind of where we come in we we see the overall picture and i wouldn't feel

right if i didn't bring you out here and tell you but it's it's gonna you know if it happens it will be very dramatic what's your name tanya faust okay thank you boys is [Music] [Music] i've been at angola for 11 and a half to 12 years it's about two years pretty close to two years ago that i became the hospice coordinator when i was growing up i was thinking i would never work at angola because my mom worked here she called me she says mom i've got some good news and i said what she

said i've been offered a job at didn't go i said oh no you know my baby going to work at angola and i said doing what she said we're being a nurse well growing up angola was your prime area of jobs that everyone's parents had so many people that i went to school with their families already their parents already worked here so it wasn't out of the norm when i first came to work at angola i was a tower guard it was nerve-wracking because you were always always thinking what if this happens what am i

going to do how am i going to handle that situation can i really shoot someone if they get over that fence and the way i handled it was i thought well if they get out they're going to get to my children once i grew up around weapons up in north louisiana you know hunting and stuff like this so i'm a very good shot i'm an excellent shot i'm not to brag on myself but at the firing range i usually shoot better than most of the men so i was i'm a good shot tanya's a good

shot she's a squirrel hunter a deer hunter my initial thought was you know there's no way i'm not going into an area where there's razor wire bars and you know thinking of a maximum prison area it's not something you think you're gonna really go into i just had no desire to work around people that were hardened criminals murders rapists um armed robbers all these just horrific things and you know in my mind was they're just horrible people they're here to write you know and never see the light of day again [Music] a lot of people

ask me how i can take care of people that have committed such horrific crimes and i know it probably seems odd to someone else but to me i look at it as you sort of put yourself in their their their spot you know of how they felt and what they went through and it just gives you a completely different outlook on someone i'm prepared to know that this guy that i'm talking to i'm admitting him into something so i can to make him comfortable to let him pass away hey so how did you sleep last

night did you do okay how'd you sleep last night all right did you all right hi my name's daryl kirsten slager i'm here on a first degree murder choice i shot my wife when mr daryl first got into the hospice program um one thing that we ask all the patients is you know is there someone you want to get connected back to is there some desire that you have that you haven't been able to accomplish and um one of mr darrell's first things he said was that he hadn't spoken to his daughter in 20 plus

years and it was one of those things that you do sort of worry about you know how is a family member especially with that length of time being you know where they where they haven't had any communication if they're going to be open to that and now it's just amazing with that huge gap that they had they talk well y'all talk twice a week now and she writes him letters and mr daryl and i will sit down and then we write back to her and we send them she's helped me tremendously especially with my relationship

with my daughter that's the most important thing to me now when i'm at their bedside i'm taking care of just another human being i don't look at their criminal rap sheet i know they're in here for something what exactly it is nine times out of ten i don't want to know they're here during their time and i'm not here to judge them i'm here just to take care of them decision to go in the military was not was based on you know not a very big vision of what the world was like or how big

the world was my father served in the air force both of my grandfathers served in the navy both of them for for a career my dad said hey he goes the way i see it you could either go to school or you could go in the military and then his caveat after telling me that i could either go to school or i could go in the military was that i really wasn't ready for school i lacked some of the discipline required for it and he was never more right i made a major life decision based

on the fact that i was flirting with a girl that was 20 when i was 18. and i was flirting with this girl in an army recruiter station and i was like oh yeah this girl's going to be a medic i said show me that medic video medic i could do medic remember how i used to take care of my grandfather when i was a teenager i could do that they showed me a video and it had this beautiful white ambulance and a big orange stripe and u.s army and little black letters and these guys

in whites came out with an ambulance uh with a gurney and and uh you know in front of an army hospital and they said oh i could do that i'm totally good at that i can drive and i can take care of people um [Music] little did i know that i was going to end up in the jungle infantry and i wasn't going to see one of those white ambulances for three years [Music] the first person i saw died was in panama as we were fighting the war on drugs that began during the reagan administration

i was there in multiple countries teaching foreign militaries and foreign medics how to do things and as that political crisis heated up we did more and more semi-combat condition type training there was a motor accident and a round blew up outside the cannon four guys blew into four different directions and um i provided emergency care to all of them the guy that was wounded the most was a sergeant i was putting on inclusive dressings i was you know patching up all those wounds that was taking care of his sucking chest wound i was taking care

of the traumatic amputation of his hand i was taping an airway into his um into his into his what was what remained of his jaw which was completely shattered skin was shredded torn and burnt and there were just bone ships and fragments there so it wasn't like training very much stand down is a homeless veterans outreach when you have a veteran who is living on the street that doesn't make them any less of my family ranger that you which bat second second bat thank you for your service man i'm brian i think what drives my

dedication to these guys is all of the years of shared experience with them there was no closer bond there's no closer tie than that tie that's built by shared suffering by being in the worst places doing the worst things together all the time guys and girls that were out there on the front line fighting for us doing everything they could to ensure that our freedoms are maintained it makes you just want to work harder makes you just want to be better in order to support them um ah [Music] [Music] uh [Music] there hey gracie one

just a bite hurry up nope okay fine all right when i was growing up i always wanted to live on a farm my cousins were on a dairy farm and i we'd go there you know during the summer and i'd say dad can't we move to a farm please can't we move to a farm well you know no we couldn't alrighty going to a catholic school many catholic girls my age grew up thinking they would be a nun at one point or the other oh boy okay through high school i remember having a soft spot

in my heart for older people never knowing that i was going to then join a convent or a religious life that was going to be taking care of old people [Music] what oh my gosh and he's about 10 pounds when he was born it's just a baby [Music] such a pretty baby [Music] we're very convinced and very committed to the fact that animal activities or animal therapy is very beneficial to young and old our residents feel unconditional love here the animals love you they don't care whether you have an odor or don't have an odor

or got some soup down your shirt it doesn't make any difference you know they don't judge you they love you anyway oh dear i better say my prayers first okay children are placed here from fond du lac county social services we have a contract with them and they're kids that some are in foster care some are in their own homes almost all of them have some issues we have dealt with autism we have dealt with oppositional defiant behavior we have bipolar behavior sexual abuse today here take one and show it [Music] the kids learn a

sense of responsibility because there's more to just you know oh i love animals yeah well now grab the shovel we've got to clean the pen and they learn that they really can control their behaviors if they have to because i've had kids that have been so hyper and they want to go in for example and take a llama for a walk no you cannot do that till you get your behavior under control because you know the llama picks up on that and they can do that you know what this is it's an alpaca the residents

love it it's home to them and they don't feel like they're just stagnant they see all of the life around [Music] i'm doing it for you a lot of worst nightmares for a mother would be to come into their ultrasound and for the doctor not to find a heartbeat it's really hard for so many people to wrap their mind around i've had mothers tell me that how can death happen before birth i'm usually the nurse that takes care of those patients i'm able to go at their bedside consult them and discuss with them all the

decisions that they have to make that they never prepared themselves for i myself have had a loss i had a miscarriage in my bed i was by myself um it was so difficult and so hard and i've had to deal with the guilt it comes with i was so shocked i think at delivering in my bed not realizing um what was happening at the time until it happened that i just took my little baby i wrapped him in a sheet and i threw him away in the trash and i think it's been so long for

me to try to figure out how to forgive myself for that i think now when i became a nurse that was kind of put in the back of my i think it was always there but i didn't know like consciously that i was becoming that i was uh pulled into bereavement perinatal bereavement nursing for that reason i actually went to a conference and discovered that i had all these feelings that had been buried so deep especially the guilt the guilt that that baby never had a proper burial but at that conference i was surrounded by

other women and providers who were so compassionate and they told me to name that baby and i named him right then and there and i named him gabriel and i think about him sometimes and it just burned this fire in me to never ever want any other mother to be alone through this in order to do this job you have to have very supportive family and very supportive friends it is a very demanding job oh thank you there's no way i could do this without my husband he's pretty amazing well naomi from the first i

met her the first time i really talked to her and just came out and said that you know that one of her big passions was nursing and particularly her goal was to be a nurse at johns hopkins i wasn't you know overly passionate about my job it was a job it was an interesting job i felt that i did do good work but for naomi it was such a passion such a calling that i felt that she really needed to be able to pursue that and for me being able to help her on that path

was kind of a no-brainer [Laughter] okay all right have a great day okay you too i love you people that work in this profession they can't go to their friends and and discuss their you know their day because most of their friends are just like you know i don't want to hear about that that's that's too much most people do not want to deal with that you know a lot of things that happen sometimes it's a loss or something that goes horribly awry and that's something that you you you're looking at the your spouse had

to deal with and they need somebody to to let that out to to vent to and and you're the person and you have to take it but it's difficult to see somebody in pain you know and it's difficult sometimes to take that pain on yourself i just always have to go in there knowing that i don't know what to expect that i have to be prepared for whatever comes down the pike it's my job and my responsibility to my patient no matter what i have to give her the best care the baby's heart rate went

down a little bit before so a lot of times it's just because maybe the baby is pressing on its um umbilical cord so sometimes i will give you oxygen on your mask to make more available for the baby okay so i just don't want you to be scared okay so is this a boy or a girl it's a girl what's her name this is where i grew up until i was about 12 years old my sisters must have put a lock on the door but as they know i'll find a way around it wow yeah

this house needs to be torn down i was kind of a hyper child and i was always into stuff and i didn't behave real well you punished me one way and then i would do something else i was just unruly i would miss a lot of school i had really bad grades and i didn't care in high school all i wanted to do is just hang out and have a good time and i really didn't care and i didn't see the point in it you know i thought oh shoot i can get out here and

uh you know make good money and some kind of business of my own i actually run into people today that are like you're a nurse i don't know if they thought i was going to be in prison or what but now 18 was a difficult year for me i had a really bad motorcycle accident i had a head-on collision and i was in a wheelchair for a long time pretty much the rest of that year you know and uh i knew what it was like sorry what am i doing um i found out what it's

like to to need care you know to be helpless and it wasn't good and you know i think that's what helps me be so compassionate for these people that are in this condition is i've been there and man it sucks nursing was the big thing on the campus that i went to but i just kind of dismissed it you know i'm a guy you know i'm supposed to be macho um i didn't realize what nursing was so i kind of just brushed it off but it is planted that little seed in the back of my

mind i think the first time i went to college that that might be something i'd like to do i did truck driving that was the first thing i tried i didn't really fit in to the truck driving mold i was a good you know truck driver but i was just working for a company i wasn't doing any good for anybody that's when i actually decided to set my sights on a specific goal which was nursing fixing cars there are a lot of similarities uh even when i was sitting in anatomy class and you know we

were studying the blood vessels or we were you know just studying gross anatomy i was like i could relate to it because the things i've learned is an auto mechanic just interesting you know the radiator hose i kind of thought of as the circulatory system and the water pump was the heart you know when i first became a nurse i got this call and they said your dad is down in the er he had uh gallbladder cancer by the time they figured out what it was it was too late nothing we could do so we

kind of went from hospital to hospital to hospital just basically in a panic not knowing what to do because everything was happening so fast and you know the medical community as soon as they seen his age which was 70 which is actually young but there's a doctor that says well he's 70 years old you know and let it go he went from work and to gone in two weeks felt like he was kind of abandoned by the traditional hospital setting and through that whole process it really really changed the way i view healthcare i kind

of felt like maybe i need to you know get into the homes in the intimate setting what are you saying did lafayette come in yet valor all right man lafayette gonna take care of him yeah put your head up this way life at ballard is uh one of my hospice volunteers he just amazes me did you ever see it before no it's been before just like which dog when we go there yeah they said uh what was it wilmer's before that's what i've heard it looked like that's what somebody said that it looked just like

his now i didn't see wilmer's whenever at first i didn't get me a red bag it was wrong we give our hospice volunteers an educational process that's about 40 hours of education time body mechanics assisted daily living activities show them through the grief and dying process once we see that they're where they should be then they become the trained volunteer and they're on their own yep did you they're in this program because they're able to see that what they do makes a huge difference you speak to any of them they're going to tell you in

a minute they know they've done horrible crimes um they know that they've done things that you know they're in here for and they know that they need to be in here for it but they want to give back they want to give back to society and try to make amends for things they've done in their life and they want to feel better about themselves and it's a healing process for them as well [Music] in the past two years that i've worked lafayette is definitely one that is a major go-getter he's there checking on all of

the hospice patients and then when you look over he's emptying urinals helping with the bed bath helping the nurses turn the patients changing bed linens i didn't think i could do it but once i started man just like it took a part of me and i'm not right listen i come over here then i try to come over here every day i can if it's not just to look at one of them and let them know hey i'll come over here if you need anything i'm here if you don't i see you tomorrow probably checking

him back from the hospital it must have turned awesome yes a hospital sir say ain't going to save me because i live with trusted life on the street i mean a treacherous life and i didn't care about life itself i played with death fighting shooting running with the wrong people being with the wrong kind of people i had seven friends it was seven months all together when i was out there in the streets acting crazy all of them did all but one guess who they are me that's right by the grace of god i'm still

here you know everybody look at prison and being harsh and uh abusive but it's not it's getting a second chance at life because the things you did in your past you can't undo but you can better yourself as you go along and it's just a journey here it's a big old university that you learn everything about you with people up all walks of life just like john he can't do nothing he can't even stand up and he want to shower and he can't on his own so i come over here personally just to shower him

see he's not a hospice patient he's just live on awards but i want to show him that i care about him just like i do the patient [Music] so [Music] [Music] these grown huge men are sitting there at someone's bedside and they're feeding them ice cream telling them jokes talking to them reading books to them no one else sees this so they don't you know they can't fathom that they they see you know fights in a prison and just everyone is still so horrific they don't see that compassionate side that that a lot of these

guys end up working their way to air evacuation that's what i did when i was stationed here in lunchtime um is uh air evacuation [Music] while i was here the iraqi conflict was at an apex something called the battle of fallujah was raging the casualties were guys who were very young with multiple kinds of injuries traumatic brain injuries traumatic amputations there's kids they had just woken up from being in a coma or from sedation and you pull a tube out of their throat and one of the first things they would say to you laying their

missing limbs is when can i go back and if something happens to you inside when you hear that i mean you you love them tremendously at that moment but you also want to say no you ain't going anywhere because you've already given enough brother once you make it here you have a much higher percentage chance of making it period part of the reason why the guys that come here aren't prepared for what's in front of them when they get injured is because we train them to be to be invincible and then we aim them we

point them at the enemy and frequently you find out right at that moment you're not invincible you know your body shattering is one way you find out and that possibly your days could be numbered as well coming off of active duty and working in the va hospital in san diego with veterans from world war ii korea and vietnam conflicts even a few from operation desert shield desert storm also gave me some perspective for this young soldier after they get injured what does it look like when they get back home what do they have in front

of them take a moment to review the list to determine which things are absolute priorities that you want to keep in your life the things you highly value the things that bring joy satisfaction or meaning into life and circle those i'm working with these guys many months and many years after their traumatic injuries sometimes they're still struggling with the post-traumatic stress yeah so here's the truck i did up in la operation um iraqi freedom and then operation enduring freedom remember i was telling you i wanted to do something when i got back i have a

lot of problems with survivor skills i think it's beautiful and um i did the tats first i did the one on the cavs and um and you know what people see it but i wanted um more so um i came up with this um in memory of the fallen for this side of the truck and then on this one i just put in memory of those who gave their all you know i i gave some but they gave their all i was in iraq in 2006 got medivacked out when i came out out of surgery

and the lady put a quilt over me because welcome home son i was like i was just you know you just like i'm alive and a lot of my friends didn't make it back and a lot of black people just um so i said you know i got to give um i have really bad survivor skills i i can't let people forget and then i found on the website there was a website they had everybody's pictures that um iraq and afghanistan that lost their lives and i came upon that and i said i want the

american flag overall it's beautiful here it is i like it i like that so i i i see my friends i'm always with my friend um with my friends they're always with me the kind of work that you do as a nurse can be intense i was blown up caused a traumatic brain injury i've lived out of suitcase for two years i've had a really rough time maintaining my relationships as a result of that i've had to let go of a lot of things that i may not have had to let go of if it

wouldn't have been for this lifestyle and uh sometimes it's hard and sometimes you look back and there's some regret you know like what if i just would have done you know less somewhere else maybe less at work or less maybe what if i would have you know backed off from being who i am is what you're at is what it's basically boils down to it's like i would have to be less it sometimes feels like i would have to be less of a nurse or less of a soldier to maintain a relationship and so far

i've chosen to be a nurse and a soldier who have the precious treasure of faith have a great responsibility it is not enough to be satisfied with mere profit in high school i thought i don't want anybody thinking that i am going to be a nun i can remember thinking that very specifically so we would just do little little things like um i remember one time we greased the toilets in the in the nuns bathroom and you know one of us was an outlook looking out and and the other one would go in there and

do that another time we took food coloring put it in the holy water fountain where the nun would come in so she'd see that and get it but she always was a little bit smarter just anything that would be kind of fun but to get people thinking no she's she's not going to join the religious life my family from both mom and dad we were often challenged to what can you do to help other people also taking people in and not being judgmental i'm sure that i received that from mom and dad you know we

talked about together how we could make the world a better place how we could help so it was just that environment i think and that was getting stronger and stronger as as the years went on in high school and i knew that i'd have to make some kind of a decision i really did begin to think it was you know there god was really calling me hey florence hi hi they told me you're not feeling good no i don't feel good you don't what's the matter huh whole body yeah let me just check your pulse

here i worked for several years as a nursing assistant i had no intention on to go on to school and we had a couple that was they were a resident here and when they passed away they wanted to do something in the form of a living memorial they wanted to send a sister through nursing school so i got asked hi orville i remember the first day i went to school and it was a chemistry class i came out crying i had the faintest idea what the man was talking about hi and then every time i

had a test i would tell our residents and they'd pray pray pray they prayed the rosary i got straight a's in chemistry so that was i thought okay i can do this my dad came to villarreton when he was 61. he was diagnosed at a very young age with alzheimer's when he would hallucinate it was it was just ugly he would think he saw things and he would get on the couch and he'd try to kick the windows out and he it was it was really just so sad when my dad got to the point

where he had deteriorated physically he had an episode where he had gotten very sick he had high fever and it really looked like death was imminent of course we had to call the doctor and the nurse came and said to me doctor wants to order all of these antibiotics what do you want to do and i said i can i can still remember the nurse it was one of my dear nurses that still works where i said annie i don't know what to do and she said well what would you tell other people to do

and i said i i would tell them not to go ahead and do that and so that's what we did and there were and i said that's you know the thing is we want to just keep them comfortable but they helped me with that those nurses and that's what i'd like to be for other people too because you see the pain that they're going through when you're so involved and it's your own family member i know how it is to to make a decision and you need someone there to say yes you are doing the

right thing or these are some things we can try many times it's like you know asking the question what would they say what would this person want what have they told you in the past and you know many times we're able to walk through but it's it's tough [Music] [Music] [Music] i see the stars [Music] my oh [Music] did we do okay yeah did you like it did you hear the guys voices this time yeah did you they weren't able to come last time yeah did you hear the story i told about you yeah yeah

okay love you okay gotta go away for the day but i'll come back in tonight otherwise if jesus is calling you you go okay go home to jesus okay see you later okay all righty oh it smells so good in here [Music] for naomi her family is very important to her and when you have a child it makes it even more important to try to keep that focus on your family and the things that you know are good we should we're on page training so okay i'll show you how this works oh my mom's pretty

awesome she's very confident and she makes me confident a lot too i really like the idea that she saves lives and creates like helps create new ones laboring is such a special time for a woman the work that it takes to birth a baby and to birth life i do i believe it's a miracle we put so much stock into who's responsible for the children of our communities and of our society your mom can bond with her child she will protect him more and make better decisions and that is the core of communities that's the

core of our society and this is the best part of my day are you ready mister yeah good job buddy [Music] [Music] so [Music] how's mary doing what's going on uh what's she doing with her pain medicine has she made any adjustments or anything well she needs another dose of it then give her another dose and i'll be out in a rural area you know appalachian region we go through a lot to get to patients homes there are places that an ambulance can't even get [Music] my heart's going 112 feet per minute how long ago

did you say you had the rocks and all uh we may have to give you another dose even shorter than four hours as i can definitely tell you know with that kind of heart rate you've got something going on we like to go in make sure that they're doing their treatments a lot of these families they don't they don't have the means or you know vehicle wise or financially to uh to get supplies to even dress their wounds and it's at a time when they're you know there's complete chaos in their home but this is

their crisis that we're there for them we're going to help them through their crisis and this is a one-time deal for them seems like you're kind of obstructed there there we go yeah something's going on her heart rates higher you know and it could be just from the painter there could be something a lot more serious going on but it worries me about what is blocking something since we're dealing with colon but how can i find it you know you're going to call us and we'll come out okay they will work she may be dying

she may be terminal but she had a problem and you know hopefully i fixed that and you know hopefully the remainder of her life is going to be somehow better we're gonna um do that leg yeah that heel and if you'll um just help me hold it up yeah wilmer how are you doing wilmer what company take care of your legs yeah take care of that leg okay i've never been at the end of life care how you feeling it's chilly in here it was something that i really wasn't sure if i was emotionally capable

of doing and you're spending up to six months with one of our hospice patients and then you make that rapport and that friendship and then they pass away it's really hard because you get so attached to people they become like your family that's one thing that those volunteers say constantly is a family member has passed and i just can't do this i can't do it again because once one of our patients hospice patients passes away his six volunteers are the ones that go into the room clean him up and and take care of him they'll

tell you it changes their life because they know at some point it being that most of these guys are lifers their chances of being in that bed are highly likely so they feel like they're giving back and they know that they could potentially be there at some point there's a purpose for me here it's to help someone else get to a point where they're able to let go and and not suffer anymore knowing what a lot of these kids had in front of them it's not a hard extrapolation to say this person is going to

be disabled the rest of their life they're going to need help the rest of their life those situations where you have those people that are going to be taking care of you that's not you know three months five months like someone who breaks a leg that's 30 40 50 60 years of somebody having to help you and i'm not at in any way shape or form suggesting that these people have no quality of life or anything because many of these people rate their quality of life higher than i rate my own quality of life um

but what i'm suggesting is that it's a long road and while they may not suffer every day for 60 years they certainly will suffer adjusting to their new life how's today yeah i was injured in 2007 on uh combat patrol in iraq i had about two or three weeks left to the deployment the deployment was about 15 months long it was one of the last missions the helicopters dropped us off in the village i'm squad leader so it was taking control of my man we took cover i took a nina good position and unfortunately the

spot where i took in the app was a set ied and so when i stood up and went off and that's when i lost my leg i actually woke up in walter reed here in the states my wife was there and that was the first voice that i remember hearing oh scary you're not trained or to do any of this and everything's unexpected to be in a wheelchair or to wake up in a hospital bed and my leg is missing my arm is gone and i have to hop into the shower i wake up every

morning and i'm handicapped it's it blows my mind sometimes that you can go from being so strong of a person to being so handicapped and it was just a lot for me to deal with and i didn't think that it was until i started seeing like small reflections of my problem reflecting off of everyone else you're aware of the respite you know that you have the ability there's a profound difference between brian coming into our home and just having a regular nurse come into the home um brian was in the army he knows he knows

people how they are and he's an army guy so i mean he knows where i'm coming from he's been to combat he knows he knows a problem when he sees it more i don't know why that is i know why it is because you're not up so um and when you're not up you're not out either positive emotion equals positive emotion as well and if you're down you need more to sometimes it's been more of a relationship than work i guess you know the logical thing there is being able to have that relationship with the

guys that you call brother it's um it's good for your heart there's a lot to look forward to with my family my children my wife to have the opportunity for them to grow up with me having these handicaps and disabilities it's um it's normal to them and so now it's it's great because they don't see the disabilities in me they just see their dad taking care of people who were just heroes they were standing on a battlefield and they were they were super heroic and now they're vulnerable you have to strike a balance between honoring

what they were and giving them what they deserve now you have to strike a balance between recognizing the things you have in common about serving and realizing that they can no longer serve in that capacity the military is a huge part of the man that i have become you know i was a boy before i went in the military and i i became a man in the military and um it's it's just who i am and it'll be who i am even after i hang that uniform up but that may be part of why i'm

so devout to it saying what they're saying it'll be part of my identity forever i mean um even if i go do something completely different i may become an entrepreneur or something like that but i'll be an entrepreneur with a nursing background i'll be whoever i am with nursing background and that'll be important no matter what i do but these are just these are the upper respiratory infections right is that everybody let's see we got roy gibby martha she was okay do we have a neb treatment for her then we do okay we really find

and we hear a lot from people in the community how important the villas of the holy land are to the the life of the community because of the nature of long-term care now the fact that we could be a stand-alone facility for very long is not probably very realistic nothing stays small anymore our farmers all around us are mega farmers one small business is bought up by another and the same thing is happening in health care and long-term care alrighty i'll hold on to your hand you what you never were in this room before i

think what we'll do is we'll take that beanbag even if we have to become part of another healthcare group my dream is that this work will continue on that we can benefit the people that come to visit as well as our staff our residents our families and the kids that are involved here you want to hold him yeah that's even wonderful okay [Music] just relax [Music] so [Music] so [Music] in scripture it says when we're generous to god he will give back to us to measure press down and overflowing [Music] and that is what i

experience in my life [Music] uh [Music] oh [Music] hey [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] my [Music] oh [Music] um [Music] forever [Music] uh [Music] you