An Imprint (and Honoring a Nurse)

You make an imprint. For good or for bad, you will always leave one.

I don’t know about you, but I love listening to true crime documentaries. I am the kind of person who will take a road trip, turn on a true crime podcast, and imagine I am the detective piecing together where things happened, who was involved, and how the story unfolded. I grew up loving the good old Nancy Drew novels and the shows “Murder She Wrote” and “Dateline”, there is something fascinating about discovering a story through the smallest details.

One of the things that fascinates me most is fingerprints. Every person has them, and sometimes, a single fingerprint is enough to connect someone to a place, a moment, or a crime. Whether someone wears gloves or not, whether they intend to leave evidence or not, their actions can leave a mark. With each life experience, each cut or burn, the fingerprint can alter but it is ultimately our identifying mark.

An imprint.

And somewhere along the way, I started thinking about how much that applies to our everyday lives.

Everywhere we go, we leave something behind. In every conversation, every relationship, every workplace, every church, and every circle of people we enter, we are leaving an imprint. Sometimes we know we are doing it. Sometimes we never realize it at all.

So here is the question I want you to sit with as you read this:

What kind of imprint am I leaving?

Is it good? Is it bad? And if someone examined the evidence of the way I have lived, what would they discover about me? If I stood trial for the imprints I have left in the hearts of others, what would the verdict be?

An Impression or an Imprint?

I have been pondering why I am drawn to the word imprint rather than impression.

An impression can be misleading. First impressions can be wrong. Last impressions can be wrong. We can misunderstand someone, catch them on their worst day, or see only a small piece of a much larger story. Our impressions are often shaped by our own experiences, assumptions, and perspectives. We think we know someone because of what we have seen, when in reality, we may know very little about who they are or what they carry.

But an imprint is the mark that remains. It is the lasting influence of someone's presence, words, and actions. It is the trace they leave behind after the moment has passed and they have moved on.

We leave marks on people that we may never fully understand. A few words spoken at exactly the right time might give someone the courage to keep going. A moment of patience might soften a heart that has grown accustomed to rejection. A simple act of kindness might become the one thing someone remembers about a day when everything else felt unbearable.

We may never know.

The same is true of the hurt we cause. A careless comment can echo in someone's mind for years. A moment when we choose pride over humility can fracture a relationship. Our anger, our absence, our indifference, and our unwillingness to listen can leave marks, too.

We do not have to intend to hurt someone to hurt them. And we do not have to intend to change someone's life to make a difference.

Our lives are touching other lives, whether we are paying attention or not. The question is whether we are willing to take responsibility for the marks we leave.

The Imprint Left in a Hospital Room

Recently, I had the privilege of standing in the burn center at Lehigh Valley Hospital for a moment that was not about me. I was there to honor one of my nurses who received the DAISY Award after a letter I sent in to nominate him. I had only learned the day before that the presentation was taking place at 7am the next morning, I did not know I would even be a part of it. I woke up at 4am to get ready to leave by 5 so I could arrive on time. I did not expect to be doing anything than just standing there, seeing his face of surprise, and going home. Right before they started the morning meeting, the head nurse looked at me and said, “Do you want to read the letter you sent it?” My hands were shaking. My body was shaking. I stood there holding my letter, looking at the words I had written months back, trying to prepare myself to read them aloud, without crying.

But how do you put something like that into words? How do you explain to someone that the way they treated you during one of the most vulnerable seasons of your life mattered far beyond what they may have realized?

As I stood there, surrounded by nurses and care team members, I kept thinking about them. I wondered what it must feel like to spend your days caring for people who are hurting, frightened, frustrated, or uncertain about what comes next. How often does a nurse walk out of a room, move on to the next responsibility, and never know what that encounter meant to the person on the other side of the bed? How often does a moment that seems ordinary to the caregiver become extraordinary to the person receiving care? How often does someone leave a room believing they have simply done their job, unaware that they have given another human being something they desperately needed?

I wanted him to know.

I wanted him to know that I remembered the way he made me feel like a person. I had spent so much of my hospitalization surrounded by the realities of my body: the wounds that needed attention, the procedures, the pain, the restrictions, and the uncertainty of recovery. After five years without this kind of hospitalization, I was once again in a position where I could not simply rely on myself. I had to ask for help. I had to wait. I had to trust other people with parts of my life I was accustomed to managing on my own. For someone who has spent much of her life learning to be independent, that was a difficult place to be. After twenty-three years as a survivor, I was not a newbie to the world of burn care, and I knew that too well. He made me feel like I mattered more than the next thing on the list, the next task or note to write or wound to tend too. He made me feel like I had dignity in a way that still makes me tear up.

I needed medical care, of course. But I also needed to know that I was still more than the care I required. I needed my thoughts to matter. I needed my concerns to be heard. I needed to feel that my perspective was worth considering, even when I was the one lying in the hospital bed. And in the way he cared for me, he helped preserve something important: the feeling that I was still a whole person, even when so much of my experience revolved around what my body was struggling with.

That may not have seemed extraordinary to him. Perhaps he was simply listening, communicating, or taking the time to consider my perspective. Perhaps he was doing what he believed every patient deserved. But that is precisely what I wanted him to understand. Sometimes, the things that make the greatest difference in someone's life do not feel remarkable to the person doing them. Sometimes, kindness is so woven into the way a person moves through the world that they do not recognize the depth of what they are giving.

I wonder how many times he has done that for someone else. How many patients have felt less alone because he took the time to see them? How many frightened people have felt a little more secure because he treated them with patience? How many people have left his care carrying a memory of being respected during a season when they felt they had lost so much control?

He may never know all their names or remember every conversation, but they may remember him. He may not always remember what we talked about completely, but I hope it imprints on him. The other patients may remember the way he treated them long after they have forgotten the details of that particular day. They may carry his kindness into their lives without him ever knowing how far it traveled.

And on that day, I had the opportunity to give him a glimpse of what that looks like.

As I read my letter, I was not simply recounting my experience as a patient. I was offering him something caregivers do not always get to receive: a view of their work through the eyes of the person whose life they have touched. I wanted him to hear that his care had stayed with me. I wanted him to understand that he had been part of my story during a season when I was vulnerable, struggling, and learning how to accept help again. I wanted him to know that the way he treated me had mattered enough for me to stand in front of a room full of people, nervous and shaking, because I wanted to make sure he heard it.

I hope he felt the weight of that moment, not as a burden or an expectation to do more, but as an invitation to recognize the good he had already done. I hope he could see that the work he does reaches beyond the tasks he completes and the shifts he finishes. There is a person on the other side of every act of care, a person who will carry that experience into the rest of their life.

EXTRA SOAP BOX: More than a Patient

I will keep the letter I wrote for him mostly private. It was written for him, and some things do not need to be shared with the world to be meaningful. But what I will share is that he exemplified something I have not often experienced throughout my years of receiving care: compassion not just for the survivor I was when I first entered the hospital, but for the woman I have become in the twenty-three years since.

Please do not misunderstand me. I have had nurses show compassion over the years. But often, that compassion has existed within the walls of the hospital. I received care, I recovered, and I went on with my life. The medical relationship ended, and the survivor side of me continued somewhere beyond those walls. My scars remained. My experiences continued to shape me. My desire to help others grew. But those parts of my life did not always have a place in the conversations surrounding my medical care.

This time was different.

He pulled up a chair.

It may seem like such a small thing. A chair. A few questions. A little time. But after twenty-three years of living in a body marked by an injury that began when I was four years old, I have learned that some of the most meaningful moments are not the ones where someone does something extraordinary. They are the moments when someone chooses not to rush past you. When they make room for your story. When they recognize that you are more than the injury that brought you into the room.

He wanted to hear my perspective as a twenty-three-year burn survivor. He wanted to understand what I had learned, what I had experienced, and what I believed could make care better for the people who would come after me. He wanted to know how he could do better to support the entire person, not just the patient. In much of the medical field, there are few opportunities to sit with someone so far removed from their initial injury and learn from their lived experience, especially while that person is receiving care again. Burn care is different in that way. Survivors may return years, even decades, later, carrying a lifetime of experiences, adaptations, and knowledge that cannot be learned from a textbook alone.

But what moved me was not simply that he asked questions. It was that he made me feel as though my answers mattered.

For so much of my life, I have had to explain what it means to live beyond the initial injury. People see the scars. They may know the story of the fire, the surgeries, and the survival. They may even admire how far I have come. But there is a difference between knowing what happened to someone and being curious about who they have become because they lived through it. There is a difference between seeing a survivor as someone who needs care and recognizing that the same survivor may have wisdom to offer, experiences worth learning from, and a voice that could change the way someone else is cared for.

He saw that difference. And he soaked in everything that I could provide him for knowledge and wisdom, and I did the same.

He sat, he asked, he listened, and he encouraged. He did not treat my years as a survivor as something separate from the care I needed. He recognized that those years had given me a perspective worth hearing. At one point, he told me, “The work you do is admirable and inspiring. Thank you for what you do.”

I do not know if he understood how deeply those words reached me.

Because I was not simply a survivor sitting in that room. I was a woman who had spent years trying to turn the hardest parts of her story into something that might make someone else's journey a little less lonely. I had carried my experiences into burn camps, into conversations with other survivors, into advocacy, and into a desire to help make care better for the people who would come after me. I knew why that work mattered to me. I knew the heart behind it. But there is something profoundly moving about having someone recognize that heart without needing you to prove it to them.

He saw more than the patient in front of him. He saw the purpose that had grown alongside the pain.

And perhaps that is why his words stayed with me. I was back in the hospital because my body still needed care after all these years. I was once again navigating wounds, limitations, uncertainty, and the vulnerability of needing other people to help me heal. There is a particular kind of exhaustion in returning to something you hoped was behind you. You can be grateful for how far you have come and still grieve the fact that you need help again. You can be proud of the life you have built and still feel the weight of everything your body continues to carry.

In that room, I did not need someone to tell me I was strong. I did not need another reminder of how much I had overcome. I needed someone to see the person standing behind all those years of survival—the person who was still learning, still hurting, still hoping, and still trying to make a difference.

He gave me that gift.

He reminded me that even in a season when I needed care, I still had something to offer. My experience was not merely a record of what had happened to me. It had become a perspective that could help others. My story was not finished simply because I had survived the fire, and my value was not suspended while I lay in a hospital bed. There is something powerful about being reminded that you are still able to contribute while you are still healing. That you do not have to be the helper every moment of your life to have something valuable to give. That receiving care does not erase the years you have spent caring for others. That being vulnerable does not make your voice less worthy of being heard. He gave me the gift of being able to use my stay to, well at least I hope, impact the unit for the better.

He did not have to fix anything for me in that moment. He did not have to offer a grand speech or make a promise. He simply pulled up a chair and treated my lived experience as something worth his time.

And I think that is what I want more people to understand about compassion. Sometimes, compassion is not about having the right answer. It is not about knowing exactly what to say or finding a way to make someone's pain disappear. Sometimes, it is the willingness to sit beside someone long enough to discover that there is more to their story than what first brought them to you. Sometimes, it is recognizing that the person in the bed in front of you is not only someone to be helped. They are someone to learn from, someone to listen to, someone whose life has continued far beyond the moment you entered it.

That is what he did for me.

And I hope he knows that it mattered. My prayer is that our conversation has gone beyond those four walls. That he has mentioned it to his fellow nurses and those who work on the floor, that is has impacted how he walks into each room and each person. Because after all, that is what changes how people do medicine and patient care.

Okay, let me climb off the soap box and back to the originally scheduled blog…

Sometimes, what they carry is the memory of pain. Sometimes, it is the frustration of a difficult season. But sometimes, it is the memory of someone who made a hard chapter a little more bearable.

That is what I wanted him to see. Not that he had been perfect, or that one award could capture every good thing he had done, but that his presence had mattered. That he had made a difference in a way that could not be measured by a wound healing or a procedure being completed. He had helped make room for my humanity in a season when I needed that reminder.

And I hope he knows that this is not a small thing.

Nurses spend so much of their time caring for others that I wonder how often they get the opportunity to stop and see the impact of that care. They are constantly moving toward the next need, the next patient, the next responsibility. They may be present for some of the most vulnerable moments in another person's life and then return to work the next day without ever knowing what became of that person. They give so much of themselves in moments that may never be acknowledged beyond a simple thank you.

So, on that day, I wanted my thank you to be more than a passing expression of gratitude. I wanted it to be something he could carry with him. I wanted him to know that someone had noticed, someone had remembered, and someone had taken the time to tell him that what he did mattered.

For a little while, the person who had spent his time caring for others was the one being reminded that he mattered, too. He was not simply being thanked for what he had done. He was being shown what his care had meant.

And perhaps that is one of the most meaningful gifts we can give another person: the opportunity to see the good they have put into the world. To know that their compassion was felt, that their effort was noticed, and that their presence left something worth remembering.

I walked into that moment hoping I could find the right words to thank my nurse. I walked away reminded that the people who care for us deserve to hear the stories they have helped shape. They deserve to know that their work does not disappear when a shift ends, that their kindness does not stop mattering when a patient leaves the hospital, and that the way they treat people can become part of a story that continues long after they have moved on to the next room.

I hope he remembers that letter. I hope that somewhere down the road, on a difficult day when he is tired or the demands of his work feel endless, he remembers that there was a patient who stood in front of a room, shaking as she read, because she wanted him to know he had made a difference.

Because he did.

And he deserved a moment to see it.

Imprints for the Better

During that hospitalization, I had also been thinking about a message my pastor sent me. She shared that when she was in the hospital, her goal had been to become the kind of patient the nurses would fight over getting. I loved that thought.

Not because we should have to earn good care or become someone's favorite patient to deserve compassion. We should never have to do that. Every patient deserves dignity, kindness, and excellent care, regardless of how easy or difficult their circumstances may be.

But there is something beautiful about wanting to leave a positive imprint even when you are the one who is hurting.

I could not control every circumstance. I could not make the pain disappear or make recovery easy. I could not always be cheerful or pretend everything was fine. But I could choose what I did with the moments I had.

I could choose gratitude when I was able. I could ask my nurses how they were doing. I could smile, share a little of my journey, and try to encourage the people who were caring for me and the critically injured patients around me. I could remember that I was not the only person in that building carrying something difficult.

My pain mattered. So did theirs.

Being a patient did not erase my ability to care about others. Being vulnerable did not mean I had nothing to offer. Even in a season when I needed help, I could still offer encouragement, kindness, and the reminder that the people around me were seen.

As I prepared to leave the unit, I was asked if I would be willing to participate in SOAR, Survivors Offering Assistance in Recovery. My answer was yes. Anytime. I was also asked if I would come back to visit. Absolutely. Anytime.

Because if my experience could help someone else, if my story could encourage a nurse, or if my presence could remind someone that the work they do matters, I wanted to make myself available. I did not want my time there to end when I walked out the doors.

I wanted something good to grow from what I had experienced. Ultimately, if I could do that for a living and dedicate my life to transforming the world for others facing trauma (not limited to just burns, I would do it in a heartbeat.

That is the thing about an imprint: we do not always get to decide how far it travels. We simply get to choose what we offer in the moments entrusted to us.