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A nurse who isn’t afraid of distressing tasks
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Nurse Cai Yunmin has a job that no one wants but some patients desperately need until their final days. She was recently honored as one of the top 10 Jinshan residents whose contributions have touched hearts. She talks with Wing Tan.
Nurse Cai Yunmin’s medical specialty — and her avocation — is dispensing respect and warmth, helping patients live (and sometimes die) with dignity.
“I couldn’t bear pain since I was a little girl, so putting myself in the place of my patients, I don’t want to see them in pain, either,” the 48-year-old Jinshan native says.
For 26 years, Cai has been tending and dressing some of the most distasteful, distressing and foul wounds and conditions (even one with maggots) in the medical dressing room at the Outpatient Department of Shanghai Jinshan Hospital affiliated with Fudan University.
She is one of the city’s seven full-time internationally certificated enterostomal therapists, who deals with surgery patients’ colostomy pouches that collect intestinal waste and others that collect urine. Because of her long professional experience, she attends consultations with doctors and is asked for her opinion.
Jinshan District recently honored Jinshan native Cai, as one of the top 10 residents whose contributions have touched people’s lives.
“It’s my duty to care for patents, I just do my job,” Cai tells Shanghai Daily.
After graduating from Jinshan Nursing School in 1987, Cai was assigned to Jinshan Hospital where she saw terrible pain and devastating wounds.
On the first day she went to the emergency room, she fainted when she saw victims of an auto accident. Several days later while observing surgery, she fainted again when she saw the doctor slice open the patient’s stomach.
She was allergic to penicillin and could not do injections, she says.
Cai was then transferred to the medical dressing room.
“I was still under great pressure every day as I handled various horrible injuries and gross wounds,” she says. “I told myself to relax but the more I thought about it, the more mistakes I made.”
One day as she was removing stitches for an old woman, she mistakenly cut the healthy skin while taking out stitches, and the wound started to bleed. The old woman smiled, told her not to worry and urged her to try again.
“Somehow that was a new starting point for me,” she says.
Cai spent 11 years studying advanced nursing college programs, always after work, and finally obtained a diploma.
In 2007, she was recommended for further studies at the Hangzhou Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital affiliated with the School of Medicine of Zhejiang University, specializing in enterostomal wound care and treatment.
“We not only care for people’s wounds, but also warm their hearts,” she says.
Every month she sees more than 500 patients from around the city and the country.
She travels to suburban districts such as Qingpu, Fengxian and Songjiang, and to nearby cities, including Pinghu and Haiyan in Zhejiang Province, offering free treatment and advice.
Patients with colostomy bags deal with discomfort, unpleasant tasks and smells, though much can be controlled and managed for a reasonably normal life.
“Many feel inferior in public places and even their family members shun them,” Cai says. “But if they are well cared for, they are just the same as healthy people. These patients also have the right to live in dignity.”
She also deals with untreated, festering wounds; in one case, there were 66 maggots. The other nurses screamed in terror and broke equipment as they backed away.
“I was really afraid,” says Cai, but she put on a thick mask and for three hours she cleaned the wound. “It was a tough job but it had to be done.”
Cai always tries to stay upbeat as she deals with patients suffering with wounds that make them sensitive, irritable or rude. Sometimes their behavior can be bizarre.
“Many of my patients suffer for many years with chronic diseases and special wounds. Put yourself in their place and try to understand and respect them,” she says.
Last October Cai received a text, a thank-you letter from a girl who wrote it before she died:
“Dear Ms Cai, when you read this, I’ve already left the world. You gave me the warmest hug when I was in the dark. I hated myself so much, hated the smell, the weeping sores on my body, but you didn’t. Each time you came to my house and changed the dressing, you always smiled and talked to me like my mother. I thank you so much and I’m so sorry for my words that hurt your feelings.”
That patient was a high school sophomore suffering a slowly progressive disease that produces extensive mucus accumulation within the abdomen and pelvis. There is no cure.
“When she told me to my face that she didn’t even have the strength to crawl to the balcony, I was heartbroken,” says Cai, weeping at the recollection.
From 2011 until the girl’s last days, Cai volunteer to change the dressings and visited her more than 100 times.
“My daughter had a happy time in her last days and left the world peacefully. It was all because of Ms Cai,” says the girl’s father, Hou Lixin.
“But in fact, it is I who thank my patients. From them I learn about being strong and optimistic. And they reaffirmed my own life’s values,” says Cai.
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