Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Clem, and you are on my podcast, milkweed and monarchs.
[00:00:11] Today, I'm going to be sharing another story of one of my patients with you.
[00:00:18] I first met Foster when I was a nurse working on a small medical surgical unit of at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts.
[00:00:32] I had been in the report room, and the report room was just down the hall from the nurses station, so we could actually shut the door and talk privately about the patients. And then we would come out and go to the main nursing station and start doing orders and our care for the day. So I had been in the report room, and all of a sudden I heard a man yelling, and he sounded so angry. I'm like, what the heck is going on here? What the heck is going on? It's not something that would be usual for that unit. It was well managed. There were some of the best nurses that I've ever worked with in my life worked on that unit. And so it was out of the ordinary to hear someone yelling. So I got up from report and I walked down the hall, and his room was right by the nurses station. The patient that was yelling, and he was continuing to yell.
[00:01:41] And so I walked into the room and I said right away, what is going on in here? And he turned around and looked at me, and he said, well, I am very unhappy. And I said, well, who is your nurse?
[00:01:57] And he said, my nurse is Betty. I said, betty is a wonderful nurse. I don't know what your problem is. And by the way, you're not allowed to yell.
[00:02:07] I don't want to hear you yelling. There are other patients here, and we're trying to provide care, care and quiet for them and a healing environment.
[00:02:18] And he just looked at me like, who the heck is this? Right?
[00:02:23] Are you the head nurse? No, I'm just a nurse that works on the floor. But calm down. We're going to take care of you. There's no need for you to be yelling. So we made it through our little interaction there, and he did manage to settle down quite a bit.
[00:02:41] I went out and I talked to his nurse, Betty, and I found out what was going on with him. He was scheduled to go to surgery.
[00:02:50] He had an x ray and had showed that he had a tumor in his colon. And so he was scheduled to go to surgery that day. So I went back in the room and I said, okay, I have learned to that you are scheduled to go to surgery today. And I can imagine that must be quite upsetting for you. What can I do to help you out.
[00:03:18] You're gonna be fine. We take care of patients like you all the time, every day. We have patients like you that have the same kind of surgery that you're going to have, and we're going to be here to support you. We're going to care about you, and we're going to make sure that you're comfortable. And I know this isn't something that you want, and it must be scary, but I'm telling you, we're going to be here so you can calm down.
[00:03:49] And he looked me right in the eye, and he says, what's your name? I said, my name is Don. What's your name? He said, my name is Foster. He said, I think I can get along with you. I said, I think you can get along with me. I'm going to make sure that everything goes okay for you, Foster. I'm going to watch over you. I want to make sure that you're going to be good. So he was like, thank you. I appreciate that.
[00:04:17] So the morning went on. We got into the morning, and I'm into my morning routine, and Betty came to tell me that they were going to be taking him down to surgery in about 45 minutes and wondered if I could go back in and talk to him again. She said, after I had talked to him the first time, he had calmed down considerably.
[00:04:37] So I was like, okay, I'll go. I'd be happy to go back in and talk to him. So I went back in and talked to him again, and it is true, he was starting to get himself all worked up again. I mean, I don't blame him. He didn't have any family there. It was just him. So at that moment, I realized that I was going to treat him like he was one of my own family members. So I talked to him for about 20 minutes, got him all situated, educated him on the whole entire process.
[00:05:11] What would happen when he went to surgery, how he would get his anesthesia, how they would go in, check out his colon, figure out if it was something that was a problem or something that could be removed. And we had a whole conversation. He was calmed down. They came in to get him from the OR. The Or always came up and transported their own patients to surgery. So they came up and picked him up, and I sent him on his merry way, and he did not yell.
[00:05:48] So I made it through the rest of my ship that day. No worries. Didn't really think too much about Foster because I had a whole group of other patients I was taking care of.
[00:06:00] And then I was off the next day from work, and I came in the following day. So now it's been two days since I've seen him.
[00:06:10] So I'm walking down the hall talking to somebody, and I see him come out in the hallway, and he's like, I hope you're coming into my room to talk to me. I could hear you. I knew you were back. I said, yes, I'm going to come in and talk to you. So I went in and talked to him, and he said, I'm just waiting to see what the results are. They took growth out of my colon, and, you know, I'm nervous about it. And we had a whole long talk about if it was cancerous or if it wasn't cancerous, what would be the care for each, and how we were going to try to work with him to make sure that he was up and moving around. I was actually kind of surprised to see him out of bed and standing in the doorway because it had only been really two days since he had surgery. So from my perspective at that point, he was doing remarkably well.
[00:07:11] So we didn't have the pathology back before the end of the week. And when we got the pathology back, it came back negative for cancer.
[00:07:25] It had been something else. Nothing for him to even worry about.
[00:07:31] I can't remember if it was like part of a diverticulum, and he didn't have any inflammation or anything else there. He just had this benign tumor that they took out. So I went back in to talk to him after the doctor did, and he was so relieved, and he was so grateful, too. He kept telling me, you know, you saved my life. I didn't save your life. All I did was come in and calm you down. You just don't know what a difference it made for me, you know?
[00:08:06] He said, I want to tell you something. And I was like, okay. He said, I'm an artist. I said, you are? He said, yes, I'm an artist. And when I get discharged and I get home, I'd really like you to come and visit me at my house. So I said, okay, I will be happy to do that. He said, I live in Orleans. So I said, okay, I'll look up your address and everything, and I will definitely come and see you once you get discharged and you've been back on your feet for a while.
[00:08:45] So he did get discharged. Probably a couple, three weeks go by, and I really wasn't thinking too much about him. I was just happy that everything worked out in his favor and he could go home. But one of the other nurses, Annette, who had been working with me, knew how this patient was kind of taken by me, and she thought, you know, dawn, I think we should really make an effort to go see foster. I said, really? You want to go see him? She said, yes, let's try to figure out where he lives, and then we can drive out there and go and see him. I think he would really, really appreciate it. So I was like, okay, so, you know, we didn't have access to people's addresses back then.
[00:09:40] The only way to really look up somebody's address was in the paper phone book. So we did look up his address, and we did see that it was in Orleans. So we were pretty sure that was his address, and we decided that we were going to take a Saturday and drive out there to see him.
[00:10:03] So Saturday came beautiful day, it was in the summer. And we. We get into Orleans, and we're trying to figure out where this road is, and we. I think we drove around for quite a while trying to figure out where the road is. We had a map, a paper map that we were looking at, trying to figure out, and we'd gone down a couple of roads on a couple of wild goose chases and did not find it. Finally, we figured out that he lived on this dirt road way back over into the inlet, and he actually had a house on the water, but it was way back. You couldn't even see it from anywhere. And it was kind of a unruly road that we were driving on to get there. And I'm like, I don't know, do you think this is really his house? And Annette's like, yes, it's his house. It's got to be his house. I go, why would you think it's his house? That's what the phone book said. You know, we're going on back and forth trying to figure out, is this really his house? Listen, let's just park the car, and I'll go up to the door and see.
[00:11:27] So after we back and forth for a few times, we finally park the car. I get out of the car, and I go up to the door. It's a screen door at that point, and I can hear him yelling in the house.
[00:11:46] I'm like, what's going on? So I stood there for just a few minutes, you know, I mean, I was embarrassed that I had heard him yelling, and then I was embarrassed that I was eavesdropping, and that's exactly what was going on. I was just trying to figure out, is this a bad time? Should I even knock on the door? Should I just turn around and go, what should I actually do here? And my friend is out in the car, and I can see her leaning out the window. Is it his house? You know, that kind of thing? I'm like, oh, brother, a calamity of errors.
[00:12:28] Finally, there was a little quiet, and I knocked on the door, and I said, hello, Foster, are you in there? And he said, I would recognize that voice anywhere.
[00:12:44] And he came running to the door. He said, I can't believe you came to see me. I said, I did come to see you. I'm so happy that I found your house. It wasn't that easy. And he started chuckling. I motioned to Annette, and Annette got out of her car, and she came into the house, too.
[00:13:06] The house was an unruly mess, but I didn't care because I had seen Foster. And he said, come in with me. Come into the kitchen. I want you to meet my wife.
[00:13:20] So we go into the kitchen, and his wife is sitting in a wheelchair, and he tries to explain to her who we are.
[00:13:31] And it was obvious she just had a blank stare on her face.
[00:13:37] She just had a blank stare, and she didn't really say anything.
[00:13:42] And then we walked out of the kitchen, and he said to me, I'll never forget it. He said, my wife has Alzheimer's disease.
[00:13:53] He said, I can't tell you how petrified I was about having surgery and not being able to get back here to take care of my wife.
[00:14:09] I know I acted out of in the hospital, but it was really out of fear for leaving her alone.
[00:14:21] You can imagine. First of all, I was so upset with myself for kind of, you know, chastising him in the hospital without really knowing all the facts. But when I look back, I completely, completely understand now why he was responding the way he was.
[00:14:46] And I was so grateful that his surgery turned out okay and that he was fine to be able to get back home and take care of his wife.
[00:15:00] He was in his sixties at the time when I met him, and I was in my thirties.
[00:15:07] And what a gracious and kind man, really. I can't say enough about him.
[00:15:17] So he took me outside, Annette and I, and he had a shed just filled with all his beautiful artwork.
[00:15:30] And he said, you can pick out any painting that you want.
[00:15:35] Any one that you want. I really want you to have one because you helped me through an enormous emotional time for me.
[00:15:46] So I looked around, and I. I actually picked out a painting, and it's a little shed on the water. That kind of reminded me of the shed where he had all of his artwork. So it was kind of like a self portrait of his own living area. And I said, oh, I love this one. What would you think if I took this one? He says, you can have that painting, but, don, I want you to pay for it. He said, I'm a famous artist. I said, you are? He said, yes, I'm a famous artiste. I teach art school. I've been an instructor for years. My paintings are in galleries. So I want you to pay for this painting so you'll remember that I was a famous artist. So I said, okay, I'll pay for it. How much do you want? He said, $50. $50? That didn't seem like much to ask from a famous painter. Right. I just.
[00:16:54] The whole experience made me think so much about how we meet people and we meet them on face value, right? So we meet people, and we automatically make an assumption of who they are.
[00:17:14] How can we make an assumption in five minutes like that, right. There was so much more to foster than I would have ever, in a million years, known. I would have never known anything about him. I only knew that he was being disruptive on an inpatient unit in the hospital.
[00:17:39] In my mind, in the beginning, I thought, is he crazy? Why is he acting out like that?
[00:17:47] But now I got to see who he really was.
[00:17:52] I got to know more about him and how much he cared about his wife. I can imagine. He really was just so scared and petrified. Who's going to take care of my wife if I have cancer? And that's all he could think about when he was waiting to go to surgery.
[00:18:13] So I guess I learned more that day in one meeting than I learned with many other people in my life.
[00:18:27] It really made me understand that I have to take time to listen to people and get to know who they are before I start to make an assumption.
[00:18:42] It was years later, after I left Cape Cod, I didn't see foster again. I moved up to Maine because I was going to be going to graduate school up there.
[00:18:55] And that's when computers really started to come into their own, and you were able to look people up on the computer. And I remember I had been living up there for quite a while, and all of a sudden, I was hanging his picture up on my wall in a new home that I had moved into.
[00:19:20] And I started thinking about him again.
[00:19:24] And I decided to look him up.
[00:19:27] And I did look him up. And what I found out was he was indeed a very famous artiste. And I was.
[00:19:40] I mean, I still am completely floored by the fact that I bought one of his paintings for $50.
[00:19:49] He lived a long life. He ended up dying in 2011, and he was 101 years old when he died.
[00:20:01] So that alone is just such a testament to the person that he was. And I read all of the obituaries from people that had written in talking about him. I read his obituaries, and then I read the comments, I should say, from all the people that had written in. And everybody just remarked on what a kind and wonderful human being he was. And he really, really was. He loved his wife, and it was so obvious that he was doing everything he could to make sure that she was going to live out a life in peace with him at her side.
[00:20:45] He still continued to be an artist, and he sold his paintings, and a lot of them are in major art galleries and worth a lot of money.
[00:20:57] And he was an amazing human. And I am so glad that I just had that one little incident where I had the chance to meet an amazing human.
[00:21:15] His name was Foster Nystrom.
[00:21:24] I hope you enjoyed my story today.
[00:21:27] I think about foster all the time.
[00:21:31] I still have that painting, and I absolutely love it.
[00:21:35] It just reminds me so much in New England, and New England will always have my heart. I just love it out there. And I love Cape Cod, too. So when I think about Foster and I think about my painting, I just realize how much gratitude I have for being able to meet someone as spectacular as him.
[00:22:04] Thank you for listening today.
[00:22:07] Still working on the one to one interviews.
[00:22:13] All of my episodes are on my podcast, milkmon.com. milk.com.
[00:22:23] All one word and you can go on there. And I have 23 episodes now, so I'm moving along. And if you have any questions or if you would be interested in sharing your story with me, please go on my website.
[00:22:43] There's a page at the bottom where you would be able to fill out a questionnaire. I've also been working with marketing, so I might be able to have a better way for people to contact me in the future if they want to share their stories. And again, should be going live on YouTube in August, so I will continue to keep you informed of what's transpiring as we go along.
[00:23:14] Until the next time.
[00:23:16] Bye.
