My firstborn son and second child was born on May 16th, 1999.
We left the hospital two days later and after his parents dropped me home, the three of them went home to a wonderful life.
There was grief on my side for a long time, but never regret. But it is still not something my family talks about... At least not openly.
His folks have been great to me over the years and Facebook opened a new line of communication. He has a big family and is so loved- it is wonderful to know my decision was the best one for him.
In the past couple of years, he has been in touch, again via Facebook, with my daughter, and I got to meet him briefly when I took his Dad out to lunch. Best of all, God gave his Dad a miracle recovery from cancer that I am still grateful for everyday.
God is Good- Happy Birthday my sweet boy.
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Monday, May 6, 2019
The Kelly-Mancuso philosophy of nursing
In the 1990's, I made my first unsuccessful attempt at Graduate School by enrolling in Hunter College. I wrote the following as part of one of the projects for my course Theoretical Foundations of Nursing
Science in the Spring of 1996:
In conceptualizing my personal philosophy of nursing, I determined that person and health are the focal concepts of my nursing practice. The person is defined as a psycho-socio-cultural soul with a physical manifestation of body. Each of these elements of person is separate, but each is intertwined with the others, with the person being more than the sum of the elements involved.
The primary component of person is
soul in that the soul of the person lives beyond the physical manifestation of
body. An example of the overlap of the person elements is that the social and
the cultural each include integrated ideals of religious and familial networks
and support systems. Here I need to clarify the definition of family. It is not
singular in meaning within the context of my nursing philosophy. In some
situations the friendship network of the person can form an extended family,
which can replace immediate family during crisis or due to dysfunction. In this
event, the friend is as significant as a blood relative, if not more so.
The second of my focal concepts,
health, is a relative term, differing from person to person. Health is defined
by the person or between persons. It differs from physical body wellness.
Health can exist without physical body wellness, as in the case of a controlled
chronic illness. Physical body wellness can exist in the absence of health, as
in clinical depression.
The nurse, who along with the
client is person, has several roles. There is the role of facilitator between
client and family and client and the health care team.
Client advocate is also an important
role, in which the nurse supports the choices of the client. Elemental to a
successful nurse's perspective is an openness to the differences that exist
between societies, cultures, and religions. It is reasonable to disagree if
there is respect for differences. In cases where a nurse is unable to put aside
bias, there should be an active effort to work in an area that limits exposure
to these clients, as an inability to identify with a client leaves the nurse
ill-equipped to meet the client 's needs.
Within my philosophy, the difference
between a person's physical body and a person's soul sets forth the idea that
life continues beyond the physical body. Accordingly, death becomes not a
termination of life, but a transitory point to another plane of existence,
which cannot be explained. As Ross has stated, it can be compared to a caterpillar making the
transition to butterfly. The world of a butterfly is beyond the comprehension
of the caterpillar, yet, at the same time, is a world of new and different
wonders. It is not possible to understand or imagine what is beyond the
transition of death, which is frightening, but I believe there is a new place
of wonder and new experiences awaiting the souls of this world.
Happy Nurse's Week!
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