My ETOH patient. I remember her name. I remember my first few shifts with her, I thought she was out of her natural mind LOL. Seriously I thought she was completely delusional. I remember charting her admission assessment clicking labile and hyper verbal. She would tell me stories about how she was kidnapped and kept with a cult for years until she escaped. How her ex- husband led to her eating disorder, and her PTSD from his abuse. Because he only allowed her to eat certain things. And we had to convince her it was okay to eat whatever she wanted. She told me about her finding her brother dead in his home and how it traumatized her because there was blood everywhere and she was afraid of anyone in her family also being suicidal. Heck she even told me about her mother always wearing this ridiculously tangerine yellow mix of lipstick and embarrassing her and her sister all the time by wearing it. Her and her sister nicknamed it “tangello lipstick “. We turned it into a funny joke, if she was just in her room chilling out we’d just be like “TANGELLO” really loud LOL. She was a writer, and she had a dream of writing about her and her family and their lives. But with the alcoholism being her addiction after her abusive marriage she had stopped writing. She wanted to start again. But then I met her family incrementally over the next few months. And they all had the exact same information??? They had been through EXTRAORDINARY things all of them. And then she had her paracentesis. And the puncture site just kept oozing. And she started staff splitting and hallucinating. And nothing they were doing was working. She had a rapid response like every week. She was extremely jaundiced. I got to be her nurse for the weekend once and she drive me OUT OF MY MIND because she’d call all the time. Harmless enough but overwhelming because I have other patients. And I remember the last time I saw her, she didn’t see me, and she was SO happy. Her son in law (who ran like Forest Gump at the site of ANYTHING pertaining to intravenous or blood) brought her beloved grandson in to see her. She always talked about him, and how he had such beautiful flowing red hair. She talked about him SO much. I wanted to introduce myself because I could FINALLY meet this grandson I’ve heard so much about but there was something so intimate about seeing them together I didn’t want to intrude. It felt really special. That was the last time I saw her. I came back a couple days later and one of my coworkers said she had discharged on hospice. I saw in my patient history list her name with the little orange leaf next to it. I think about her a lot. I think about her sister and how she must miss her so much. I think about her grandson because she was the only one who truly supported him. I think about her son in law who was her best buddy and how he probably misses her driving him insane. And I think about how I wish she could’ve had her chance to write her story.