Dimple's Discoveries

        Four years ago I went on my first emergency call with police to a domestic violence scene. One call was all it took, and I knew I was made for advocacy. At 18 years old I had already seen my first case of domestic violence at my job in a geriatric center where I literally jumped between the victim and her abuser (do not try this at home!), and knew deep in my soul that I could do this for the rest of my life. I have seen some of the darkest horrors human beings can inflict on each other. I have cried with victims as they've shared their stories from hell and fought PTSD as a result. I've held clients as they shake after a night terror or assessed injuries to determine medical care. For years I've mediated conflicts, counseled endlessly, and encouraged and empowered women to rise from the ashes. Looking back makes me wish that the 24 year old woman I am could write a letter to the 18 year old girl I was, so here are the five lessons I've learned as an advocate...

           As a teenager I used to love to read LDS romance novels. My parents would drive us to the library once a week and I would leave with a stack of eight or nine books tucked under my chin, and I would lose myself in a world of heroines who were carefree, laid back, and breezy with a problem or two, but she would eventually triumph after a seemingly short five or six chapters, and it always wrapped up so very neatly (and of course, with her on the arm of a handsome new beau)! I imagined that life would go like that, and that I was indeed that heroine. I would never have dreamt that I would be the 24 year old that would scrub her bathtub when she was stressing over something, or carefully packing two weeks ahead of an upcoming event (yes, I have done that!) I know that I am a control freak, and I'm actually proud of it. It's part of why the events on and since May 13th have been so difficult for me.      ...

Time for a medical post again! Sorry to those of you who follow me for the medical posts, I will do more once I’m back at my jobs again. I’m actually headed back to work soon and getting a short break from school (very excited!) and it’s got me thinking back to some special moments I’ve had with my patients. I realized that one patient in particular has affected the decision I made to choose my career of counseling instead of nursing, and I wish I knew where he was so I could tell him that. I remember it like it was yesterday. It had been a long day. I worked four hours at one of my jobs, had three hours off, then went to my other job and worked 16 hours there. Working twenty hours in a twenty four hour period is exhausting, and I was pretty slap happy by the end of it. I was on auto-pilot trying to make it through the shift, starting it off by ‘rounding’ on my patients and doing vitals, and I went in his room. He was a very fun patient, he has a dry sense of humor that I hadn'...

Every aide has had scary moments on the job where they were in danger. I had never imagined when I first started my CNA course that I would ever be put in any dangerous situations. I thought it would all be very predictable and boring work. I was wrong. The first time I ever even knew we could be in danger was a patient who was 6'2'' if memory serves me right, his wife had recently died, and he was determined to die. He had quit eating and drinking as well as taking his medication, and would just lay in bed all day and night. He was refusing to shower or go to the bathroom, and changing him was a nightmare. I came into work one day with a note in the book to see the med tech before I hit the floor. I soon learned that one of our older aides had gone in his room to help him into the shower, and he was livid. She wasn't backing down and he got up, knocked her backwards where she hit the wall, grabbed an oxygen tank above his head and went after her. By a miracle our tra...