i am a nurse, part two

i really wish i felt like looking for that photo of me at the first nursing job i held, but you will have to do without it. by the time i was writing the other night, i was tired and i forgot to tell you some of the things i wanted to tell you. first off, that "smock" that i was wearing as a student, was one of the UGLIEST things i have ever worn in my life. it was neon pink and heavy polyester. there was not one student that liked it. though i did keep it for years afterward, i finally burned it with the trash. do you know that polyester does not burn very well?
when i was going to nursing school, my husband at the time was not working. he was on unemployment. the first half of my training, he was really good to me and took care of the kids so i could study when i got home. the second half of the training, when i had to do clinicals, he was not so supportive. i had to take a weekend job so that i would have money for gas and lunches. after classes, i would come home to make meals and do household chores, then at night when i tried to study, he would not help with the kids any. therefore i had to help them with their studies and put them to bed. regardless of his efforts to pull me down and set me up for failure, my grades remained above the C average. his mother made him go to my graduation.
in january of 1985, i officially became a Licensed Practical Nurse.
my first position was over an hour from home. i worked there for three months making $5.25 an hour. it was in a nursing home. the reason i accepted the position so far from home is that this was the only facility i could find that would allow me to work before i had taken my boards. (that is the testing you take to earn your license). i worked under the supervision of a RN. my first night of passing medications on my own, i gave a patient the wrong medication. i was ready to throw in the towel and never return to nursing. the nurse i was working with laughed so hard she could barely speak to the doctor to tell him of the medication error. i could not call him as i was crying. she even had the doctor laughing. as you can tell, the medication was nothing that would harm the patient, so at least i had not begun my profession by killing off patients.
my favorite patient at this nursing home was a schizophrenic little lady. probably all of 5 foot tall and maybe weighed 100 pounds. she did not take kindly to other people. paranoid about what every one was doing around her, and would not even speak to the nurses when they spoke to her.
she always wore a dress that hung straight on her, and a sweater. on her feet, she wore white socks and tennis shoes. her short gray hair in a pixie cut. her eyes dark and troubled. she had taken to me. she would follow me around as i passed my medicines, or stand at the desk watching over it as i charted on other patients. i never had a problem out of her, though the other nurses warned me that i would.
i worked the evening shift. one day i arrived at work, and she rushed up to me. you could see that she was frightened. she grasped my arm tightly, telling me "there's something wrong with my feet". i looked down at her feet, and nothing seemed apparent. i asked her if they hurt, and she said no, they didn't. she repeatedly told me there was something wrong with her feet. when i sat her in a chair so that i could examine her feet, i asked her what was wrong with her feet. i am leaning down to remove her shoes and socks, which surprises all other staff members, as this woman lets no one touch her. they could get nothing out of her all day. she waited the whole day for me to arrive at work.
i am removing one of her shoes when she said to me, "they're black". i was not sure what she said, so i asked her "what?" my little lady said again, "they're black, my feet are black. they are dead and they will fall off. i have gangrene in my feet. they are black and they are dead".
as i was beginning to remove a sock, i had to stifle a laugh. her feet were perfectly pink. they were warm and pulses were strong. as i replaced her sock to her foot, i looked up to her and explained to her, "your feet are ok." i am still stifling my laugh as she again tells me, "no they are not ok, they are black." it took some time for me to get her to understand that it was not her feet that was black, that it was her socks.
it was one of the coldest years in illinois that winter. i drove a car that had no heater, and scraped the inside of the window with a piece of hard plastic so that i could see to drive to work. when i had a car with a heater in it, i blew a tire on the way home in nineteen below zero weather, with no spare tire. after i had my license in hand, i went to work closer to home. it was in a smaller nursing home, about 20 miles from home.
i worked the midnight shift, and had my first experience with a patient having a seizure. learned i loved taking care of the patients wounds. encountered my first case of shingles. when my husband at the time told me i still worked too far from home, i quit this position and got my third one within 5 miles of home.
this is the job i held, where i learned to be a nurse. and i want to thank my good friend, patty rowley for this. yes, patty is one of the women who carpooled with me to classes. and patty is the nurse i teamed up with to work midnight shift at a nursing home that was a place to learn in itself.
we had both been nurses for less than a year, but patty had worked as a nursing assistant for several years. therefore being more familiar with the type of work we were doing . patty taught me team work. we had about 100 patients to care for. on a good night, we had 4 nursing assistants to work with us. on a not so good night, well, patty and i became nursing assistants and helped turn and clean patients on rounds, as well as our nursing duties.
this nursing facility took in any type of patient that would come here. we had patients who had feeding tubes inserted through their nose into their stomachs. when they pulled them out, we had to replace them. this was before the time of all the formulas in cans, and we were putting pureed food into these tubes with syringes.
we had patients with ventilators. here we had to insert tracheostomy tubes because the patient would pull it out and toss it across the room. we had to learn to suction the patient through this trach so that he would not drown on his own secretions. we had to learn how to set up the ventilator and keep it going in a power outage. most of all, we had to learn how to reassure this patient that he was not going to die on our shift because he could not breathe properly. on midnight shift, we were the RN. no, we did not have that license, but we had only us. two new nurses learning together.
thank God one nurse was patty.
she was hungry for knowledge. she taught me to find answers. she taught me to fight for my patients to get the care they needed from the doctors. we were half of each other. what one did not know, the other probably did. we completed each other sentences. if we did a procedure together, we were each others hands, not having to tell the other what step to do next.
i was working with patty the night i had my first death. i had just checked on my patient. a woman in a room by herself. respiratory problems. now at the opposite end of the hall, patty called out to me, and i came back to her outside the womans room. patty asked me if i had checked on this woman, and i told her yes i did, and she said to me, "are you sure? she is dead you know".
"what! no she is not dead! i was just in there and she was breathing!"
"well, she must have been taking her last breath, because she is dead".
turning on the light, i went to her bedside. she took one last breath at this time, and then she was gone. that night, i learned to call a family, and tell them that their mom just took a turn for the worse and might not make it, then wait for them to arrive and tell them she passed just before they got there. i learned how to be there for the daughter because she just could not bear to say goodbye to mom by herself. you learn how to make the dead look like they are still alive, only sleeping. you learn that there is life after death, because even though your patient has died, you still have work to do.
we worked together in this nursing home for a couple of years. it seemed much longer than that. we learned so much together. we worked midnights, then evenings. i learned so much because of her. she was there when i got divorced, and she was there when i got married for a second time.
we had many nights of laughter, such as the night she set my one gray hair on fire. i had laid my head to rest on the table. she saw my gray hair, and thought she would do me a favor by burning it off my head, not thinking that the other hairs would catch fire also. luckily, she figured that out quite quickly, and it only sizzled the ends of my hair, but i got even. i have to laugh inside as i remember it. there are these large bandages, that look like old fashioned kotex pads, only wider. they are called a b d pads. they are soaker pads for large wounds. i took the abd pad and placed it on my head, tying it in place with a long piece of gauze, with a bow under my chin like an easter bonnet. i walked around like this the biggest part of the night, with patty laughing and crying at the same time because she felt so bad that she almost burned me up, but found my response so funny.
patty left me to go to california. she worked in a hospital there, and found her own husband. we lost touch over the years, but i will never forget her. i am the nurse that i am because of her.
that is about the first seven years of my nursing career. after that, i went to work at a hospital for 5 or 6 years. bed baths and pill passing. the staff i worked with was cold and non caring. the drive was too much for me, and after falling asleep coming home for the third time, i left there for another nursing home. so many stories, so many tears of joy and sadness. for seven years, i lost grandma too many times.
because i am a nurse, and because i deal with death quite frequently, it made it easier to let my mother go when her time came. i understood that wishing her to stay with us would only cause her more suffering and pain. i understood that as she neared death, she was ready for it. being a nurse, i was able to let her go.
all nurses should work in nursing homes. i don't mean for their entire career. it is too hard for some of us to do that. what i mean is, that all nurses should be required to spend a year or two in a nursing home so that they can learn how to work with love in your heart. how to help a patient die with dignity, and how to let one go. only in a nursing home do you get to feel the love of your patient because they become your family. you learn how to whisper them away when death comes for them. you hold their hand because they have no other family members left to hold their hand.
when you work in a nursing home, when you are having a bad day, "grandma" will hug it away. when you are having a good day, "grandpa" will remind you how quickly it can go bad. you know there is a God. you see miracles happen.
you ask me, if i enjoyed working in the nursing homes so much, why did i leave, why do i now work in a hospital?
unfortunately, because "grandma" died one too many times. my last one i was so attached too, when she passed on, the pain was so great, i found it hard to continue working at the home. only waiting to lose the next one.
in a hospital, we lose patients. yes we do, but we send more of them home.

it has been 25 years since i became a nurse. because of what we call "burn out", i almost quit nursing. instead i took up travel nursing. i remained on staff at my "home" hospital, on a per diem basis. i did not want to burn my bridges behind me, which is a good thing i didn't. right now i am unable to acquire any travel positions, so i work full time at my "home" position.

when you travel nurse, they do things differently in "other parts" of our country. lafayette, louisiana is where i landed my first travel position. i had much difficulty learning to understand the french cajun's speaking, but after i did we did well. i got to meet an alligator almost face to face.

they are a little more laid back in loueeseeana. a very enjoyable place to be. i got to meet alot of nurses from other parts of the country, and after 5 months there i got to move on to miami.

there i worked on the spinal cord unit of the veterans hospital. never think you know it all. my patients were paralyzed from just a tad bit, to partial, to complete. care for them is not what i was taught. it was a total different story. i will not go into detail of what i learned in caring for these people, but what i will tell you is that before miami, my paralyzed patients were not getting proper care. so far from it.

travel nursing has given me the ability to bring further learning/teaching back to my current position. it gave me the ability to show my co-workers how to better care for some of our patients today. how to make it easier to get someone in and out of bed with a lift. how to apply the sling to ensure better comfort for the patient.

i am ready to return to travel nursing. they are just not ready for me. so i stay home.

twenty five years ago, i had no idea i would still be doing this today. twenty five years ago, i could not even look at the needle as i prepared to give my first "shot in the butt".

this is the beginning of nine months in miami. gwen, rolanda, me, donna, kris, i forget, in back in blue is marsha then cathy. i don't remember the names of the others.

i am a nurse.