The Story of the Traveling Angel

At this point in the internship, I am halfway done and I have completed a variety of different rotations! Seriously, when I say a variety, I mean a variety. That’s something I really love about this internship, the diverse experiences we get to have both with different rotations and populations we work with. So far I have done a food service management rotation at Goleta Union School District, a community rotation at Ridley-Tree Cancer Center, clinical rotation at Buena Vista Long-Term Care, clinical rotation at Saint John’s Regional Medical Center and I’m about to start another community rotation at Sansum clinic. As you can see, in just five months I’ve been to multiple sites, worked in multiple different types of rotations, worked with totally different populations in each one & have met countless fabulous RDs. And this isn’t even scratching the surface. I wish I could tell you all of the amazing stories and experiences I’ve had at each one but we don’t have that kind of time, so I’ll tell you this story:

Long-term care. What comes to mind when you think of this setting? Be honest. Old people? Illness? Boring? Maybe even death? Grief? Or just plain “Ha, I would never work in long-term care”? Well let me tell you, one thing I’ve learned about being a dietetics professional is never judge a book by its cover. Even if you don’t necessarily want to end up working in long-term care, doing a rotation there can be a great experience.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect when I started this rotation. My extent of long-term care experience was seeing my 53-year-old aunt in one after she survived kidney failure and two comas all within a few months. So you could say I didn’t have the most pleasant impression of this kind of facility. But this also brings up an important point: long-term care facilities aren’t just for elderly patients. While they often do have a fair amount of elderly residents, they also have rehabilitation patients who are coming to learn to walk, talk and do daily activities again after some kind of trauma or medical incident. When you think about it, long-term care facilities can be a place of hope and growth.

This brings me to resident Mr. George, as we’ll call him. Ah yes, one of those patients you’ll just never forget. In the field of dietetics we meet plenty of people with special dietary preferences and needs. Well, Mr. George was a vegetarian (although he enjoyed his morning bacon & sausage) and newly diagnosed with diabetes who had high protein needs due to a shark bite on his foot that just wouldn’t heal. Woah! Talk about some specific needs. This man was young, too, in his late 40s. He was here for rehabilitation and learning to walk again since he had lost that ability with the wound on his foot. He shared with me that he used to weigh a lot more than he does now and that he had started eating healthier and exercising to lose weight. He was able to do so but since his foot injury, he hadn’t been able to exercise and hadn’t been eating the best. Well, lucky for him, that’s why I’m here! As complicated and specific as his needs were, I sat down with him each week and figured out his menu choices with him. There were certain meats he wouldn’t eat but he was amenable to eating fish and requested bacon and sausage at every breakfast. I would take his preferences, his dietary needs for his diabetes and his protein needs for his wound into account. I worked with the dietitian to calculate how much protein he needed and exactly how much he was getting based on his choices. Mr. George needed a lot of protein so we had to get pretty creative but luckily he was open to most things and was very grateful for our help. It felt so rewarding to use what I had learned in school and put it into practice in real life to help a real person.

Over two weeks we were able to help him stabilize his blood sugars and maintain better glycemic control, which was a great success for him! Monitoring his labs and then being able to give him the good news was so awesome! He was headed in the right direction. Throughout my time there I also took the time to do nutrition education for diabetes with him so he could continue with these lifestyle changes even after he leaves this facility. Like many people not in the field of nutrition, he had never heard of carbohydrate counting, simple or complex carbohydrates. He was so grateful for the knowledge I gave him and I could tell he was starting to feel motivated to make changes again.

Then before I knew it, it was my last day in my long-term care rotation. I went to fill out one last menu with him and at the end let him know it was my last day. He asked me why and where I was going to next. I briefly explained the concept of a dietetic internship, how we switch places quite often and that my next stop was to work at a hospital. What he said to me next is something that will always stick with me: “You’re like a traveling angel!” I can still picture the smile on his face and the genuineness in his eyes. This. This is why I do what I do. This is why I chose to pursue being a dietitian.

So, the next time you go into a situation with preconceived notions, remember that this just might be your opportunity to be someone’s traveling angel.