Sample Chapter from my Book

I’d been an RN for about ten years when it started dawning on me that I can intuit things other people couldn’t. In retrospect, I believe this was both my first spiritual awakening and a cautionary tale about the importance of trusting your own intuitive gut instinct no matter what.

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Most of my RN experience came during night shifts in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) where patients landed for post-open-heart surgery care from nurses like me until they were well enough to go to a step-down unit. My easiest nights were very intense… and I loved the adrenaline!

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I remember a particular patient, a married, recently retired woman with an adult Down syndrome child living at home. She was in stable condition following a valve replacement. I walked into the room and saw that she was indeed stable but suddenly had a dark feeling about her condition that I just couldn’t shake. My charge nurse dropped by to check on things, and I told her about my bad feeling.

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“Don’t say that,” she snapped. “Let it go!” Nurses are a superstitious lot when it comes to saying bad things out loud for reasons you’ll see later.

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Shawn the respiratory therapist (RT) came by to run some Arterial Blood Gases (ABG’s) to see how well my patient’s postop body was regulating her chemical balance. Her ABGs were slightly out of range—normal after heart surgery—but her slightly low blood pressure fueled my sense of foreboding. I decided to call her surgeon, Dr. Finney, hoping he hadn’t gone to bed yet. He picked up my call and told me to give her a liter of

IV fluid, which I promptly did. Her blood pressure didn’t go up… nor did it fall. This was a subtle abnormality, and I didn’t like it.

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A patient’s blood pressure normally rises when given that much IV fluid after heart surgery. I started suspecting that my patient might be in cardiac tamponade, a life-threatening condition that can occur after open-heart surgery, where blood or fluid filling the pericardial sac keeps the heart from beating properly.

My second call to Dr. Finney woke him up. He downplayed my suspicion because her blood pressure wasn’t far out of range, then called my charge nurse to ask if I was okay since I had called him twice about what seemed like nothing. Marcie returned to the room right as I started to panic. I told her that I had listened to the patient’s heart carefully and I could see her turning blue and feel her becoming cold to the touch. Marcie promptly performed a head-to-toe assessment and informed me she was neither seeing, hearing, nor feeling any of the things I was. Marcie then asked me again if I was okay. I assured her that I was even though neither she nor Dr. Finney were taking me seriously.

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I called Shawn back to the room to run another set of ABGs. He did so and added his voice to those saying that the patient seemed stable. He had a lot of respect for me as a nurse, and I could tell he felt uncomfortable disagreeing with my findings. Her ABGs were a little worse this time but still nothing to write home about. Nevertheless, she seemed bluer and colder, so I did the only thing I could and called Dr. Finney a third time. He listened patiently and then warned me that a fourth phone call would lead to action that could result in my suspension… or worse. He then asked me to transfer him to Marcie so they could discuss my behavior. Meanwhile, the patient’s vital signs still weren’t very bad, but she looked so awful to me that I just knew Marcie would finally agree that something was going terribly wrong.

Instead, Marcie informed me that she had just spent ten minutes assuring Dr. Finney that I wasn’t taking any mind-altering substances. She looked at me sternly and told me that she would ask our manager to suspend me for a week without pay if I called the surgeon one more time. By this time, I was more confused than ever and starting to question my own sanity, but my conviction held that I was right, and they were wrong. The things I was seeing and feeling about my patient seemed so obvious that I couldn’t understand why the others refused to listen. 

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This all transpired over the course of about an hour. I could not hear my patient’s heartbeat at all the next time I listened to my patient’s chest, her skin was as cold as ice to the touch, and her whole body was turning a dark purplish color right before my eyes. I called Shawn and demanded yet more ABGs with my promise they’d be severely abnormal. This time, Shawn arrived with his supervisor in tow… and the ABGs were only slightly abnormal yet again. The RT supervisor then did a full assessment of my patient and agreed that nothing seemed terribly wrong.

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I took my chances and called Dr. Finney a fourth time. “No one believes me that this woman is about to die! I need you to come back to the hospital right now and help me!”

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“Why are you acting like this Jami? What is wrong with you?!” I had no monopoly on raised voices that evening… and that’s when the heart monitor made the awful sound no medical professional wants to hear: beep… beep… beeeeeeeeeeee…

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“She’s flatlining! Code blue!” A code blue means a patient has just died suddenly. A code brings a phalanx of medical professionals at full sprint. Meanwhile, Dr. Finney was barking orders at me. “I’m on my way! Notify the on-call OR staff! Keep her alive until I get there!”

Well, at least everyone finally agreed the patient was blue and cold. I felt horrible for my patient. I also felt relieved at knowing I hadn’t completely lost my mind. Dr. Finney arrived within ten minutes. He rushed in and cut open my patient’s chest right there in the non-sterile hospital room—a very rare, and very last-ditch lifesaving effort. He reached around her heart looking for blood clots, later explaining he did this because of my repeatedly voicing suspicions of cardiac tamponade. He felt around for about a minute before withdrawing his arm from the patient’s chest cavity… clenching a softball-sized blood clot. There was no way her heart could beat with that much pressure being placed on it. She had indeed been in cardiac tamponade.

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The main symptoms of cardiac tamponade are low blood pressure, abnormal ABGs, and skin that is both blue and cold to the touch—the exact symptoms I witnessed in this patient all evening. Clot removed, her heart began beating on its own almost immediately. Dr. Finney rushed her back to the OR and thoroughly cleaned out her chest cavity before sewing her back up. He returned from the OR a short while later.

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“Come with me,” he said tersely as he walked me toward a dark empty room in the corner of CVICU. He told me to have a seat on the bed and sat next to me, taking a few deep breaths before speaking. “Tell me once and for all how you know the things you know.”

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I looked at him blankly. “I don’t know.”

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“You saw all of the signs of cardiac tamponade when no one else could.”

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“I’m as confused as you are. I’ve never thought about how I know what I know and right now am just relieved that my patient is still alive.”

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“This isn’t the first time you’ve done something like this,” Dr. Finney said. “There’s a reason I ask for you specifically when I’ve operated on a patient who needs a nurse who can intuitively anticipate problems.”

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I reiterated that I didn’t know exactly how I seemed able to catch problems early on.

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 “From now on, if you call me and say that something is wrong and you need me to drive back up here to the hospital, I will. I will never question you again… and I’m so sorry for what I put you through tonight.”

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I accepted his apology then ran to the bathroom as quickly as possible, where I immediately burst into tears. It felt so good to finally receive validation and respect for this gift I had that no one could explain—least of all me.

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Patients who have their chest opened and heart exposed in the non-sterile environment of a regular hospital room have a roughly thirty percent survival rate. I came in for my shift the following evening and beelined to the patient’s room steeling myself for the devastation of not seeing her. Imagine my surprise when I found her off the ventilator, sitting up in a chair, and eating dinner. I walked over to her speechless, my jaw hanging open.

She looked at me, slightly annoyed. “Who are you?”

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“I was your nurse last night. I can’t believe you’re doing so well!”

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She dropped her fork. “You’re the one everyone is talking about! They told me you risked your job to save me!”

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I sheepishly told her that I did get in a lot of trouble trying to save her.

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She introduced herself as Mrs. Sparks and asked if I’d be willing to hold hands with her. I happily obliged. She looked me in the eye. “My husband doesn’t have as much patience as I do for our son, who has Down syndrome and ongoing behavioral issues because he doesn’t interpret the world the way we do, to where he throws temper tantrums that can last for over an hour. My husband can’t calm our son when this happens, so it falls to me. My husband and I make a great team and keep our home and family running as smoothly as possible. I can’t imagine what it would be like for my husband to try and manage everything on his own. I believe you are an angel sent by God to help the three of us. Thank you for saving my life and for keeping our very special family intact.”

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Tears ran down my face as I told her that her still being alive was enough thanks for me.

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Marcie stopped by a few minutes into my shift to tell me how sorry she was for not believing me. She then told me she had submitted my story to the Chief Nursing Officer, who gave awards to nurses for showing exemplary use of intuition when caring for patients. I received the award a few weeks later, along with a promotion and a pay increase. This was my first inkling that my intuition was something special. What if I had ignored my medical intuition and psychic senses that night? What if I’d allowed the RT, the RT supervisor, my charge nurse, and the heart surgeon to back me down? What if I’d let hard scientific data derived from evidenced based medical practice overrule my gut instinct? Ignoring my intuition that night may have had catastrophic effects for both Mrs. Sparks and her family.

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Anxiety Screams, Intuition Whispers

(A meditation Exercise)

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I think the difference between intuition and anxiety is that anxiety screams while intuition whispers. Anxiety comes from the brain, while intuition comes from both the center of your being and your energetic connection to both the earth and universal energy (more on this later). I constantly preach the importance of spending time in nature because of its grounding effect on the human energy field. Being more energetically grounded strengthens your connection to higher sources, which strengthens your intuition.

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Anxiety reminds me of being chased by a swarm of hornets that are mercilessly surrounding and trying to hurt me. My only anxiety around Mrs. Sparks came from the threat to my job. Beyond that, I felt no anxiety-related sensations when my medical assessment skills were being questioned. Instead, I felt like I had a solid rock in the center of my being that was not going to budge under any circumstances. That rock felt strong and sure.

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I didn’t let the threat to job interfere with trying to save my patient’s life because I was confident that I was doing the right thing. Those anxiety hornets tried to swarm around me, but my intuition formed impenetrable armor that kept me protected, centered, and grounded in this chaotic situation.

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I had three nights off prior to coming to work the night I saved Mrs. Sparks. I’d used my time off wisely, I’d eaten well, gotten plenty of sleep, spent time at the beach communing with nature, and I meditated every day. All these things strengthen our intuition big time. I entered that highly stressful situation energetically ready to honor my gut instinct and stand my ground.

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To continue reading you can buy my book here.

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