Kindle Edition
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Elizabeth Blake Author
Elizabeth Blake Author
Amazon
Category:
Memoir
ISBN-10: 1499548990
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 205
Copyright: June 5, 2014
ISBN-13: 9781499548990
Price: $3.95 (eBook)
Inspirational story of a struggling single mother. Funny and touching.
Facing meager finances, single mother Elizabeth Blake searches for a rewarding career that will support both her baby and herself. From Minnesota to Hawaii and Arizona, she describes her years as a student and medical professional. Bursting with poignant, funny, and dramatic medical stories, this true account reveals a young woman’s dedicated struggle to balance work with motherhood.
Excerpt
A monitor screen in the employee lounge at the emergency center displayed people entering and exiting our front doors. On one quiet afternoon, the door beeped and our heads turned to the monitor. A young man walked in. This one was my turn, so I walked up front to wait for the receptionist to finish the chart.
By the time I got to the front, the man was already on his way out the door. Why was he leaving? Curious, I rounded the corner and walked toward him.
He looked to be in his early twenties, tall, thin, blond, a good-looking guy in blue jeans and white t-shirt.
"Can I help you?" I asked.
He turned toward me and I was startled to see one of his eyes looked horribly infected. I'm not an expert on this matter but it was so bad, even an inexperienced person like myself could tell he needed medical attention. And fast.
"There's something wrong with my eye."
"Why don't you go back and get checked in and then we'll take care of it for you."
He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and looked at the floor. "I can't. I'm homeless. I live in the field in the back. The lady said she couldn't check me in if I didn't have an address."
I glanced at our receptionist. She sat filing her nails, not paying any more attention to him. I wasn't going to argue with her. This boy needed attention. There was no way I would allow him to walk out the door.
"Follow me." I led him back to the eye exam room. I took his vital signs—blood pressure, temperature, respiratory rate—then asked him all the necessary medical questions. Was he allergic to any medications? Was he on any meds? How much did he weigh? Any medical history? He was quiet, polite and cooperative.
Then I had him read the vision chart. His good eye read the chart perfectly.
"Okay, now cover your good eye and read the chart using your other eye."
He did as I instructed him, but didn't say anything.
After some silence, I asked, "What line can you read?"
"I can't see any of the lines."
He must have been mistaken. "Surely there must be at least one line you can read."
He squinted and shook his head. "No, I can't see anything."
I wrote down 'zero' on a piece of scrap paper and went to get our nurse. I explained to her what happened. She was a very caring and skilled nurse. She buzzed our ER doctor who came right out from the doctor's lounge. While he examined the boy's eye, the nurse told our receptionist she had to make a chart. I had gotten his name and date of birth, but that's all. No phone, no address. But the boy needed help. Who cared about a couple of blank lines on a chart?
Our ER doctor, an excellent physician, decided a specialist needed to see the patient. We called the eye-surgeon on top of our on-call list. He arrived within an hour.
The surgeon looked at the chart and then asked me, "What was the reading of his bad eye on the vision test?"
"Zero," I said.
The doctor looked startled. "Zero? He certainly must have seen something."
I shook my head. "No. Nothing."
"My God." He hurried into the room. After examining the patient, the surgeon called Phoenix Desert Hospital to schedule an operating room.
"How bad is his eye?" I asked the surgeon.
"He needs surgery. Right away. It's good he came in. If he had waited, even a few more hours, he'd have completely lost his eyesight in that eye."
This surgeon had a great reputation so we knew the young man would be in good hands. We called a cab for the patient to get to the hospital and gave him a pre-paid voucher from the hospital. As he left, he smiled at all of us and said, "Thanks." Neither the doctor nor Phoenix Desert Hospital would make any money off that case, but we didn't care.
Thank God my curiosity had gotten the best of me and I rounded the corner to talk to him. I'm glad it was quiet that afternoon so he hadn't slipped out in the shuffle. I'm glad our wonderful nurse told the receptionist to check him into our computer system to produce a chart. I'm glad one of the best eye-surgeons in town helped him without any thought to payment.
And I'm glad we were able to help that young man. The thought of him going back to the field just a few feet away from us to live with that infected, painful eye, going blind in a few hours without any help, made me sick to my stomach.
Situations like this made all the stress of my job worthwhile. Loving my job and feeling useful helped me overlook the occasional rude person.
I still think of that young man every now and then after all these years, and I hope he isn't still homeless. He'd be in his forties by now. Today, I'm grateful he can walk by the building that once housed our facility and know the people in there years ago cared enough to save his sight.
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