From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is my unsung hero, stories where one person reached

out to help another in a time of need.

My unsung hero was my...

Max saw me came over and asked how I was doing and if I needed help.

So whoever you are, thank you so much.

Today's story comes from Dorothy Ternan.

In 1986, Dorothy's father was dying of cancer.

On the last day of his life, Dorothy and her family gathered around his bed at the hospital.

Her father was unable to communicate, but Dorothy and her family

sensed he was in pain because he was writhing around in his bed.

It was it was just an awful thing to see and obviously terrible for him to be experiencing.

It was incredibly, incredibly distressing to experience the helplessness that I felt in wanting him to be comfortable and having no way to be able to do this.

No way to be able to help him.

And I remember asking one of the nurses, his nurse, please, can he have some more medication, please can he have more morphine.

Well, no, he's not supposed to get it, he has to wait for the full four hours and I can't really give it to him now, you know, we're just not

allowed to and it really should be enough for him and we were all just so traumatized and I remember that evening this wonderful woman who was the house manager, the nurse manager

covering the whole hospital, came in and you know stuck her head in to see how

things were and she could see what my father was was experiencing.

And she went and she got the nurse and she said medicate this man now.

But I don't have an order, the nurse said, and this woman said, you go ahead and medicate him now I will take responsibility for it and I'll deal with it.

And the nurse came in very promptly, medicated my father, He finally got comfortable and within the next I think 24 hours or so he died.

So obviously a very terrible time for us all, but we were relieved that he was out of his suffering because it had just been an awful awful time for him.

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