HOME NURSING

By Sheereen Khan

An extract from the book The Reader, now an award winning film:
When I started to feel feverish, I enjoyed it.  I felt weak and light-headed at the same time, and all my senses were pleasingly muffled, cottony, padded.  I floated.

He could have added feeling rotten but he didn’t.  He had started to withdraw from the world due to the illness.  This is exactly what the body wants to do.  Caring for a sick child or adult during an acute illness requires skill and sensitivity.  So often the word ‘nurse’ comes on the label of a bottle i.e Day Nurse and Night Nurse.  The advertising world know how to create the notion and desire for care and attention, you simply bottle it.  But real home nursing has far more benefit but requires effort and thoughtfulness.
When anyone in the family is sick with an acute illness there are simple and curative steps to aid recovery.

1. The person should go straight to bed.  No slumping in front of the TV or playing on a play-station.

2. If a fever is developing then ensure the patient is warm and monitored regularly.  Fevers have their purpose and suppressing the process makes recovery a protracted affair.

3. Ensure there is fresh water by the bed and a bowl of easy to manage fruit.  The gift of grapes brought to people in hospital is not due to lack of imagination.  This fruit along with others are easy to eat and digest and are refreshing.

4. Food should be simple.  Nothing heavy or greasy.  Chicken broth for meat eaters or a light vegetable soup are nutritious and also easy to digest. Adults often recall how a certain food was always given when they were ill as a child and continue to ask for this in adulthood when feeling unwell. Present the food on a decorative tray accompanied with a flower in a beautiful little vase.

5. Plumping up of pillows and straightening the bed clothes is a gesture of bringing freshness into the sickroom.

6. Keep your movements slow and quiet.  Less chatter and more gentle touch.

7. The worries of the world and household should be left at the bedroom door.  The patient is in another world so leave them there to find their way back.

8. A special box containing a handful of soft and simple toys can be brought out each time a child is ill. The same box each time.

9. Often the child or adult hasn’t got the strength to read but wants something to match their temporary residence in this other world.  Read to your child or adult. Not books of adventure or trouble but soothing, gentle, simple stories which require nothing of the patient but to simply listen.  Books along with TV or films can call forth forces within us which are not there when unwell.

10. If there are other children, ask them to write a little get-well note to either the adult or child and to slip them under the door. A get-well card or letter allows the person to read it when they want, look at it again and have it put by their bed as a reminder that they are being thought about.  Visitors should be told to wait until the person is feeling stronger.  So often the person simply hasn’t the energy to talk and it takes energy to be nice to someone.

11. Once the person is feeling stronger, there comes the recuperative process. Whilst they immerse themselves in a hot bath, change all the bedding, air the room and have warm towels and clean pyjamas at the ready.  Everyone feels the benefit of cleanliness and order and more so when recovering.  It signals a change on all levels.

12. The move back into the arena of everyday life can be facilitated by bringing the person down for a family meal or simply to sit for a short while with the family.

13. The signs of full recovery are easy to spot.  Boredom, chattiness, great hunger and a re-appearance of their old self.

14.  Back to their normal routine, the person should be watched for any signs of relapse.  So often in these times, quickness is the message which underlies all of life’s events.  A quick recovery is seen as strength and it is but the process to get there needs attention.

This is guidance for any acute illness with or without a fever.  For more serious acute illness you should contact your GP or homoeopath.  Most people first encounter homoeopathic remedies when administering them for acute illnesses.

Overall, allow the person to experience the illness as a special time.  A time when everything seems to change and almost stop.  We have all experienced the difference in the dynamic of the household when a person is ill in bed.  We too have to stop and change our routine a little.