I rarely read the newspaper. But I can clearly remember twice that I’ve seen my former patients in the newspaper.
The first one was a 12 year old girl. She was 11 yo when she was my patient 6 months before I saw her in the newspaper. She was a local girl, I was a nursing student in Peds. I took care of her during her first day of chemotherapy. I was at work one morning before getting off and we were shifting around the paper and there she was on the front page of the local section. Now you have to realize I went to nursing school in Memphis which has 2 pediatric hospitals. Not every pediatric death made the front page of even the local section. This was some human interest piece about her class in school holding a rememberance of her. She wasn’t my first death in nursing school. But she was the first of my patients I saw in the paper.
The other one is recent. It’s a small town and a sensational story. I won’t write about it just yet.