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Nurse Stories, Part Eight: Hard To Swallow, Hard To Forget (By Gloria M. Trainor, R.N.) by Karen Lynn Vidra, The Texas Tornado
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Rated "PG" by the Author.
A seasoned emergency room nurse shares some of her own experiences and how it has helped shaped her into the person she is today.
My friend and colleague, Louisiana M. Sandusky, has written several stories in this series about some of the cases that we have had to face in our career as nurses, and even though she hasn't been around here as long as I or Genevieve [Voisin] has, she still has become quite the keen observer of human life and human sufferings.
We have seen just about everything imaginable come through our emergency room doors here at NMH (Nashville [TN] Memorial Hospital: stabbings or shootings, respiratory- or cardiac-related events in which the person's very own life is at stake, abuse and rape, even people who weren't really sick or injured; but just wanted the comfort and solace of a friend to talk to them and keep them company, as they were lonely. We have seen the ravages of human error or disease, and we have had fights or riots break out right in the hallowed halls of our emergency department (thoese are always fun...NOT!). Life certainly is NOT dull here in the E.R., that is for DAMN sure!!
Admid all the suffering and sadness we often face on a daily basis, we have had moments of humor and even the bizarre occur in our E.R. For example, we had a kid who had an owl clamped to his shoulder (the poor bird was frightened, and in his fear, the bird held on for all its worth, nearly severing an artery in the boy's shoulder and cutting off precious blood supply), or the drunken guy who tried to scratch out his own eyes when he thought he had contacts that were stuck fast to his eyes (he nearly damaged his eyes in the process, and it took months for his eyes to heal to where he could see somewhat normally again). Or how about the elderly woman with dementia who thought she was an opera star, and she sang instead of talked? We could hear her all over that E.R.!
We have also had funny moments occur in the E.R., such as the time when I caught Genevieve Voisin playing Louisiana's Cajun accordion and singing an off-key version of "Jole' Blon'" (we could hear her all over; and we still tease her to this day!), or the time her Louisiana's precocious little son, Johnny, walked in on a couple who was somehow attached to one another, and in his childish innocence, he asked "why the man and woman were stuck together like that". Poor Louisiana was so mortified, and we really had such a good laugh about this for weeks on end! She was ready to murder us, she was so embarrassed, but it sure made up for all the stress we have to endure day in and day out! Another funny moment we have had was when this poor man with Alzheimer's started in with one of his nightly wanderings (he was one of those who was lonely and needed a friend to keep him company) and ended up in the morgue, thinking that it was the restroom (the poor soul had to void). He was thinking that the nurse in there was his wife, and he was asking her if "this was the bathroom". It wasn't funny at the time, but now we can laugh about it. Despite his Alzheimer's, he was such a pleasant, easygoing man, and we loved him a lot!
But dsepite the jokes and light-heartedness of the situations described above, more often than not, our jobs are fraught with tragedy, suffering, and heartbreak, and tears and death is a very common occurrance in our E.R. We have seen many a person die despite our best efforts to save their lives; and we have also seen people whose lives we managed to save somehow end up damaged somehow due to delayed treatment or gross medical error or misjudgement on our part, and we have also seen lives once full of hope and promise wiped out completely, or lives changed to the point to where the person is a barely functioning human being, unable to do even the most basic things for himself or herself. This is probably the hardest part we face as our duty as nurses: we try to save people, yet we have people crash on us and they end up dying or are damaged somehow, and at times we feel that it is our fault, that we could have done something to preserve their lives somehow, but were unable to. We have been the subject of medical malpractice, and I have seen capable nurses who were fired on account of their actions, actions that they (and we) will have to live with for the rest of their (and our) lives.
Nursing is a very hard profession; we are subjected to a wide array of possiblilities and scrutiny, and at times we feel as though we are living our lives through a microscope: we feel as though we are being watched every moment, every second, and the stress that we face at our job is oftentimes unbearable. This is why I am such a hardass today: I don't trust people anymore, and I have been hurt too many times; yet I feel drawn to my career as a nurse, and I feel it is my nursely duty to try to save people's lives, no matter what the price, or the cost. I have gone way beyond the point of caring, and I don't know why some of the nurses are so loving, so tenderhearted, or so compassionate, even when they are being treated like a goddamn piece of shit by doctors or the system itself. I am always getting after Louisiana Sandusky about that: she is one of the gentlest people I know, and she has to put up with so much; I keep telling her to stop getting so attached to patients, but she just cares too goddamn much, and at times I want to strangle her! It's a wonder she hasn't burned out by now! I worry so much about her, and if she were to snap or reach the breaking point, I really don't know what we would do without her because she is one of the best things going with our nursing staff!
i love these series--nurses have to deal with so much, and you capture what they go through on a daily basis vividly. a normal day can turn into a disaster in a second's notice; and humor is needed to get through some days--well done!
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My friend and colleague, Louisiana M. Sandusky, has written several stories in this series about some of the cases that we have had to face in our career as nurses, and even though she hasn't been around here as long as I or Genevieve [Voisin] has, she still has become quite the keen observer of human life and human sufferings.
