Kat 103.7 Radiothon for Children's Nebraska: Adrienne Schleissman - Paliative Care N.P.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
I had a patient that was really near and dear
to my heart, and I do have permission to share
her story from her mother and this little teenage girl
was Her name was Bella and I met when her
cancer unexpectedly returned, and it was shared that she had
a very slim chance of a cure. So when I

(00:25):
met her, I was really surprised by her cheerful and
upbeat attitude and kind of her wicked sense of humor,
despite recently receiving very bad news and the symptoms that
she was currently experiencing. So during our initial meeting, she
bluntly said that she knew she was going to die,
but she did not want to focus on that likely

(00:47):
reality at that point in time because she really wanted
to focus on living, and she wondered if Palline of
Care could help her do that, and if I was
going to convince her to give up or not be
able to fulfill that goal, She had no interest in
meeting with me again. Further, she laid down the wall,
as her mom put it, I was interviewed, and somehow

(01:08):
I passed, So ultimately she and I worked together closely
throughout the rest of her time here at Children's and
throughout her course of her treatment, both on an inpatient
and an outpatient basis, and we were able to kind
of help figure out what did that quality of life
and how did she want to pack as much life

(01:30):
into her limited time as possible. So through that we
were able to determine that traveling was really important to her,
and how were we able to get her to travel,
and because she her disease was progressing, how did we
navigate controlling her symptoms so that she could enjoy traveling
to different areas which she affectionately named her farewell to her. Ultimately,

(01:55):
we were able to also meet her where she was
at at the time and when she wanted to talk
about harder things, including how the end of her life
was going to look, we were able to talk about
all of those hard topics and help talk about what
did it feel like if she was going to die,
and what were the symptoms she could experience, And she
was concerned about what her family would see and how

(02:15):
we could help them through the process, as well as
talking about her funeral planning and her legacy planning, and
so we were able to talk about that and during
that course, in that conversation, I learned that it was
very important to her to be buried in white go
Go boots, so that was a goal that was met

(02:37):
and her her parents honored that wish at her funeral.
I think she taught me more and helped me more
in my profession than I did to help her. She
taught me how to listen attentively to my patients and
meet them where they are at and include what is

(02:58):
important to them during their core of the treatment. And
I hope to bring that to every single patient family
that I meet. So when you ask what my day
looks like every day, that's what we try and do
every single day here for our patients and families