Inspired Nurses Calendar 2018: You saved my life

Lippincott NursingCenter.com partners with Lippincott Solutions to bring you the story of an inspired nurse every month. Here is the story of an inspired nurse from October 2018,

Grace Eisen
Faculty of Nursing
Mid Michigan Community College

Women’s health, and breast care particularly, is of particular interest to me because I actually have two sisters-in-law who’ve survived. While working in women’s health for several years and serving on the breast care team, I attended a breast cancer program in my home community. The mother of certainly one of my kid’s classmates was sitting next to me. When a breast model was available for her to practice palpating breast masses, it was obvious that she didn’t know learn how to perform a self-examination. I taught her the right technique when she told me that she thought going to the doctor every year was enough. Of course, I didn’t realize on the time how this straightforward act would affect me or my role as a nurse so deeply.

“You saved my life” are powerful words, considering I had never worked in an intensive care unit, and yet I heard those words from the identical woman lower than two months later after we met again in a food market. The evening of the presentation, she had done a self-exam and discovered a lump in her breast, had a mastectomy, and commenced chemotherapy. Since then, we now have celebrated several milestones for our kids, including graduations, weddings, and becoming grandmothers, and I have fun my role as a nurse each time I see this extraordinary woman.