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  • Performing and original monologue, here is Kelly Johnson, Miss Colorado

  • (cheers)

  • Every nurse has a patient that reminds them why they became a nurse in the first place

  • Mine was Joe

  • Joe was a beginning stage of Alzheimers

  • He had moments with and moments without his memory.

  • But the hardest part about aging condition for Joe were his night terrors

  • He'll wake up in the middle of the night, screaming out bloody murder

  • But if I just sit in there and held his hand for few moments, I can usually get him to calm down

  • But then he wanted to talk

  • He would ask me if I can change his treatments

  • but I said, "No, Joe, I can't. I'm just a nurse."

  • "But what about my medication, can you fix those?"

  • And I said, "No, Joe. I'm just a nurse."

  • But because I can't do those things for Joe

  • We connected to another levels

  • He would ask me about volleyball

  • We would talk about his grandbabies

  • He would tease me about being the only nurse on the unit

  • that can reach the gauze on the top shlef

  • It was a lot of laugh with Joe

  • But then one night, everything changed

  • I found him in his room crying

  • And I went over to him and I lifted his his head up out of his hands, and I said,

  • "Joe, I know this is really hard."

  • "But you're not defined by this disease "

  • "You are not just Alzheimer's"

  • "You are still Joe"

  • And he looked right back at me

  • almost to look through me, and said,

  • "Nurse Kelly, then the same goes for you."

  • "Although you say it all the time, you are not just a nurse."

  • "You are my nurse."

  • "And you have changed my life because you cared about me."

  • And that's when it hit me

  • Patients are people with family and friends

  • And I don't want to be a nurse that ever pretends.

  • Because you're not a room number and a diagnosis when you're in the hospital.

  • You are a perosn, very first.

  • And Joe reminded me that the day that I'm a lifesaver.

  • I'm never going to be just a nurse.

Performing and original monologue, here is Kelly Johnson, Miss Colorado

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