Continued from Page 1

Everything in between

After a successful effort and a wave goodbye, Dreier heads back upstairs. She walks off the elevator to find another patient waiting for her in a wheelchair outside his room. The man, a former Chicago police officer who recently fell and broke his hip, also is heading home today-but not before one more quick session in the therapy room. She greets the man warmly and grabs his chair and heads back into the elevator-this time traveling to the basement, where she wheels him down a long, brightly lit hallway and into a giant workout room. The room is buzzing with dozens of exercise contraptions, therapists and patients of all ages and disabilities hard at work.

Dreier navigates her way through the crowd to a therapist waiting at a small mock staircase. Here, her patient will spend the next 20 minutes putting his fragile hip through yet another workout and practicing what had been, until recently, the most routine act of going from one floor of his home to the next.

While Marianjoy's therapists handle most of the intensive rehab work, the nurses play a vital role as well. The nurses make sure patients are adequately exercising and practicing their routines-and continuously working toward their specific rehabilitation goals.

It is this hands-on and interactive part of her job that Dreier said she finds the most rewarding. "It's hard work and sometimes you really have to push your patients," she said. "But there's nothing like seeing the joy they feel when they realize they're making progress and reaching their goals."

Of course, not all patients are so enthusiastic. It is shortly after 11 a.m., and Dreier has just returned to the wing after running down to the first floor vending machine for a cup of coffee. She spies two hospital administrators talking in hushed tones outside a patient's room-and she knows immediately what's happening.

The man inside the room has been one of the more difficult patients. He won't exercise, go to therapy or cooperate with Dreier and the other nurses. In short, he won't try to get better. For some patients, Dreier said, the combination of depression, frustration and pain overwhelms them and they simply refuse to participate in their rehab program.

Dreier huddles for a while with the administrators, who determine that they will take up the case and determine possible next steps for dealing with the patient. She hints that he may need to undergo a more intense form of counseling than Marianjoy offers, and it's unclear whether he'll remain at the hospital. "He has no interest in trying to achieve his goals and that's what it's all about here," Dreier said in a tone conveying both sympathy and tough resolve.

There's little time to dwell too much on the issue, and Dreier spends the next hour tending to the needs of several patients, grabbing a quick lunch and preparing her files for the daily staff meeting. During that meeting, nurses, doctors, therapists and case managers gather to discuss the progress of each patient on the wing.

Arrival

The meeting ends about 1 p.m. Dreier, whose shift runs from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., will spend the rest of the workday focused on the new arrivals. Beds at Marianjoy don't stay empty for long, and several patients are scheduled to show up before she leaves. She heads to the nurses lounge, where she'll read up on the case histories of the newcomers and then make sure they get settled in.

Then it's off to some fun in the sun. This is Dreier's last day before vacation-one she will spend visiting a friend in Arizona. Although she said she's definitely ready to leave behind the cold and snow for a while, she doesn't deny that she'll soon be yearning to get back.

"This is whole nursing," she said of her job. "You really work closely with the person and their family and get a chance to establish real relationships." That certainly seemed apparent earlier in the morning while Dreier helped her departing silver-haired patient prepare to leave. As she guided the woman into her wheelchair, the patient reached out and hugged her.

The two then headed down the hallway toward the elevator with Dreier grinning the whole way. "That's why I love this job," she said.

Contact H. Cheever Griffin at cgcommunications@ameritech.net