Book: The In-Between

 Book: The In-Between

Author: Hadley Vlahos

Pages: 288

This is my 80th read for the year

This is the story of the author as a hospice nurse.  She recounts her time from when she became a nurse and how she ended up in Hospice as a career.  The tells the stories of some of her favorite patients over the years and how they changed her as a person.  And also how there are certain things at the end of life that are almost the same for all of us.  The author - who had a rough beginning to adulthood as a pregnant teen who made her own way through nursing school while juggling motherhood - found her calling by helping others be eased out of this world with compassion no matter what their beliefs.

This was a pretty good book.  She spoke clearly about her work and what it meant to her as a person and how she handled it at as professional.  The stories were great and will cause even the hardest heart to melt.  Her personal interminglings in this book should have been a bit shorter and she should have stuck to the patients stories for 90% of this book.  But overall a good read.

As a nurse myself, it brought up a lot of old feelings of my time working on a transplant floor at Johns Hopkins Childrens.  Hadley talks about how hard it was to separate her feelings from her job when she spends months with a patient as they transition through the end of their life.  For me - working with children who were frequently in the hospital and very sick - it was always hard when they died.  You became close to the families and being the child's main carer when they were in hospital meant separating your feelings from your job was very hard.  It brakes a lot of nurses.  However - I, like Hadley, think if we can find a balance as nurses, it can make us better and more empathetic to those who come next.

Stars: 4