I have to say that I love that picture. I was looking for some fun clip art to add to this blog for today's post and this was by far my favorite! Obviously, my post today has to do with nursing and more specifically Denise and nursing. If you have kept up with anything in this blog, you will know that Denise and I met 13 years ago while working together as nurse's aides in a local rural hospital. We have a ton of awesome stories and here is a word to the wise, if you get "squeamish," you will have to stop reading, but not quite yet. Before I go on with any stories, I want to say how proud I am of Denise right now though. After several years of wanting to be a nurse and being stopped short of going to nursing school due to, well, life, she finally completed all of her pre requisites and has been accepted into nursing school! I am so excited for her! She was made to be a nurse! She is caring, smart, compassionate and brilliant! She has worked so long in the medical field that really, I consider her a nurse already. School is just a technicality for her. Denise, I know you are scared and nervous about this journey you are about to embark on. You have to sacrifice your family and friends for a period of time to educate yourself. Your instructors were right, you will find out real fast who your true friends are at the end of this. I am completely aware that our friendship, although it will remain whole and freakin awesome, will be put on the back burner for a bit. You have to know that at the end of this though, it will all be worth it. You will come through it all shining bright and I will be around for you the entire time to help you, listen to you stress and listen to you bitch and moan about the fact that the nursing instructors own your ass! For me nursing school was one of the best experiences of my life, but one of the most grueling. I never thought it would come to an end and now that has been six years ago and that one year it took seems like such a insignificant amount of time taken from my life when I look at the rewards I have reaped from attending. Remember that! It is worth it! Don't get discouraged! You were made for this!
And now it's time for the squeamish to stop reading. The two stories I have lined up really aren't that bad, but some people can't even handle me saying the word squeamish so this is your warning. Do not continue to read if you are one of "these people."
Denise and I hadn't worked at the hospital together very long until we found out we were both pregnant. Her with her first child and me with my second. Denise had a very queasy stomach and horrible morning sickness throughout her entire pregnancy but somehow, she was able to hold it together through all of the horrible and nasty things we had to do as nurse's aides. Except this one time. We had an elderly lady whose doctor had ordered a urine specimen and the woman was having a hard time providing one. The charge nurse had requested that Denise and I go see if we could do something to help her. The main problem was that the elderly woman had lost a lot of her mobility and couldn't even hold the specimen cup under her hoohaw to catch the urine and she couldn't get from her bed to the toilet without making a huge mess. The nurse's could have put a Foley catheter in but were trying to avoid doing so. So Denise and I were attempting to come to this little woman's rescue. We headed down to the room with a bedside commode and a specimen cup. Now, since I have some experience under my belt, I am wondering why we didn't just put a new nurse's cap in the commode to catch this urine and then transfer it to the spec cup, but if that would have happened then this story wouldn't be near as good. So, we got to the room and washed up and put on gloves and assisted the woman to the bedside commode. We did attempt to get the woman to do what she could on her own (almost all nurse's know the saying "if you don't use it, you lose it") but she just couldn't manage it. Before I knew it, Denise grabbed the spec cup and (with her gloves on) placed it between the woman's legs under her va-j-j. The woman didn't just urinate. She unleashed a fast flowing river of urine that hit the inside of the cup and splashed out.... all over Denise's arm. Oh no! Poor Denise. I could see the look in her eyes and the green tint in her skin. She was trying her hardest to hold it together but she just couldn't do it. She started gagging. I told her that I thought the cup had enough urine in it and to hand it to me so she could wash up and she went to the sink and scrubbed her skin FOREVER! The poor woman had not idea what had happened and I kept talking to her while Denise tried to pull it together. I guess we are really lucky that Denise didn't barf all over the woman's legs when it happened. The story would have actually been better if that would have happened. Oh well! At least we were able to help this poor little woman, and at least that happened to Denise and not me (not that it didn't eventually happen-you can't work in the nursing field and be a mom with out having something like that happening to you at some point).
As most people know, horrible and sad things happen in the health care world. Such is the case with this second story. Once again, Denise and I were pregnant when this next situation occurred. It was a Sunday afternoon. Our patient census was pretty low and the day was creeping by. How I wish it would have continued to creep by. We all heard commotion coming down the hall and a young lady appeared holding her one month old baby girl named Kandace. I remembered the woman and the name of this baby because just the month before, I had the privilege of working in labor and delivery and witnessing the birth of this sweet child. The woman was screaming and crying "my baby, my baby- she isn't breathing. Please help!" As you can imagine she was out of her mind as the charge nurse took this blue, limp, lifeless rag doll in her arms and whisked her away to the trauma room. I want to pause for a moment and explain something about this hospital. This was and still is a small, rural hospital where the nurse's that work the floor are also in charge of labor & delivery, the newborn nursery and the E.R. So that meant that Denise and I, both pregnant, were going to have to pull it together in order to do our jobs in the E.R. and try and revive this infant. We both took a deep breath, recovered from our initial shock over the situation, and wiped the tears from our eyes and headed back to the trauma room to see what we could do to help. The scene was horrendous. This baby girl was having tubes put into her arms and down her throat. We hooked her up to monitors and quickly started life saving measures. It was a horrible sight. Denise and I had assisted with CPR many times by this point in our employment, but never on anyone younger than 50 years of age. It was, as you can imagine, a horrible sight to be hold. I want to give Denise props though. She jumped in and did exactly what was expected of her. She pumped on that baby's chest, she brought in supplies, she took notes, she attempted to comfort the mother that was standing outside the trauma room screaming for her baby. Those screams still haunt both Denise and I. I would love to say that after an hour of working on this baby that eventually we got her back and we were able to transport her out to a larger hospital where she recovered and she is now a 13 year old active little girl, but I can't. What really happened was that after an hour of trying to revive her, we couldn't get a heart beat and the doctor eventually had to call the time of death. Then we had to hear the doctor tell the mother that her baby was gone. I can't imagine the anguish she felt. We wanted to give the mother time with her baby before the funeral home came to pick her up. The nurse's aides are the ones that have to do the grunt work and one of those jobs is cleaning dead bodies so that the families can see them one last time in the hospital. So Denise and I spent the next 15 minutes cleaning the trauma room and the baby up for the mom. We cried the entire time. We wrapped the baby up in a blanket and brought in a rocking chair for the mom to rock her baby in. I still can't imagine what this poor momma went through. I knew how it had made Denise and I feel and I knew that we were only feeling a small fraction of what this woman was feeling. This was the first of many sad events that Denise and I would see while working in the medical field and this was, at least for me, the most traumatic thing to have happened to me at this point in my life. I had seen loss before, but nothing so horrible as this. I truly feel that this is what sealed the deal for both Denise and I. This was the event that would make us or break us in the medical field. We would either walk away that day saying, "we just can't do this job," or we would walk away saying, "as sad as that was, we fought like hell for that baby and want to continue to fight like hell for the life of others." We both chose the latter. Throughout both of our careers, working together or apart, Denise and I have both seen our fair share of horrendous things happen that were on the same level of this terrible event. God was preparing us that day to be a part of something amazing. To be people that would need to understand empathy and compassion. I have always said that in my nursing career, if I ever lose those two things then I need to hang up my stethoscope and call it quits. Because you can't help others, whether it be a child that slipped and fell and needs to get stitches or having to tell a family that their loved one has passed on, if you don't have those two things. They are two of the most important things to carry around with you as a nurse.
That's what is going to make you great Denise! You are the most compassionate and empathetic person I know. You always try to understand people and learn how to best serve them. Colossians 3:12 says "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience." You are these things. I am so glad to have you in my life and I am so glad you are finally going to school to show others these things. You are going to blow those instructors away! Just remember, there is nothing wrong with being a brown noser and becoming your instructors new best friends! HAHA! I love you girl and am so proud of you!
