The Language of Touch
A piece of paper taped to one cabinet in the break room asked for items staff nurses would like to see in an admission package. I suggested a nice razor, one with more than one blade, one worth more than 29 cents and less likely to ravage the skin of someone sick enough to be in ICU, but well enough to feel better after a shave.
Later the same day, I walked by the break room and overheard two nurses, both who happened to be around thirty, ridicule two “seasoned nurses,” meaning over sixty, for making a big deal about shaving male patients. “I won’t do it. I just won’t do it.” One said.
I can’t imagine refusing to do any kind of patient care. I have been threatened, scratched, kicked, thrown up on, and sprayed with all sorts of body fluid. To me it’s part of the job. But I know times have changed. Maybe I AM out of step. So I looked up hygiene in a textbook called Fundamentals of Nursing. Shaving still appeared under the classification of personal hygiene and earned its own section with a “how to” discourse.
Two weeks prior to this I shaved a man days after an open heart surgery complicated by multiple co-morbidities. I asked his wife to bring in his shaving kit. It contained a nice four blade razor with Edge shaving cream, a brand I like to use on tough beards. I softened the whiskers with a warm cloth, slathered on gel that blossomed into an abundance of white foam, and shaved one side of the man’s face, then the other. When I finished, his family literally gasped with delight. The man they knew was beginning to look more like himself.
I sought out another experienced nurse. We discussed a scene from Out of Africa in which Robert Redford washed Meryl Streep’s hair. It didn’t overwhelm the audience with dialogue or sex. The mere act of washing hair epitomized the relationship between the senses and intimacy. To me it symbolized the universal language of touch. In the hospital setting, touch facilitates communication. It engenders a bond of trust that needs to be established between patient and professional, a bond that eases the distress caused by loss of control not only of the decisions of daily life, but also bodily functions. How do you make a person not feel ashamed when he knows he’s drooling because he’s had a facial reconstruction or when he loses control of his bowels and doesn’t realize it? It’s through a degree of intimacy and trust.
The senses connect us. They speak more articulately than words. It is not just a shave. It is a conduit that builds trust, creates a sense of safety, and makes a patient feel like he’s not just a room number, a diagnosis, and a daily weight.
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