Somewhere I have a Polaroid of me on a Christmas morning all dressed up in my American Red Cross nurses uniform. It was a white dress with small red crosses on each lapel. It had a white nurses cap and a blue cape. I loved that cape. It made me feel like Florence Nightingale. My mother was a nurse and had , at one time, worn a very similar outfit, minus the cape. She might have been jealous of that beautiful cape to tell the truth. But she did have the starched collars and the cap.
My mom graduated from a hospital school of nursing program in 1956. Her yearbook is fabulous. We would sit and thumb through it together. That was the time when bed pans were made of stainless steel and intravenous bottles were made of glass. She would always point out the picture of her and a colleague standing with her favorite doctor. She had quite the crush but it happens to the best of us. But the best of us get smart and move on. Really it was all very romantic to me.
My mother loved being a nurse. It was her passion. She was organized and smart, a bit of no-nonsense and compassionate. The perfect blend for a nurse. She landed her dream job in the emergency room not too long after graduating. She worked the evening shift with a resident ( MD in training) and an LPN or aide. Yes I said emergency room with a staff of three. But remember this was over 40 years ago. She had quite a few stories from those days but the two I remember the most, due to gore factor , was the one about the farmer and the one about the "meat cleaver guy". The farmer was from Berlin and he had been gouged in the eye by one of his bulls. My mother left no detail unturned but I will spare you, plus I am not writing on a full stomach. The other poor soul was a man from a New Britain meat packing company whose arm had gotten caught in the meat cleaver and they had to bring him in meat cleaver and all. She would tell these stories with a twinkle in her eye and really if you didn't know her well you might have wanted to move a step or two away.
I was admitted to a nursing program myself in 1990. I am not sure what possessed me. I think it was all the romance of those photos and the starched white uniforms, whatever it was it was soon evident that in this arena it was safe to say I was not my mother's daughter.
First semester in and I am wandering a hospital unit, looking for the charts to read up on the patient I would care for that morning. My clinical instructor grabbed me. She had a familiar twinkle in her eye as she told me about a "debridement of an decubitus ucler." Honestly just the sentence ran a slight tingle down the backs of my knees. She pointed me to room and gave a gentle push. Reluctantly I entered the room and found two doctors standing on either side of an elderly man's bed. The man was swearing up a storm and who could blame him. He was positioned on his side with his bottom out for all the world to see. His ulcer was indeed not a pretty site and one of the doctor's had already begun the process of debriding. Within seconds he hit a nice vascular spot and I hit the floor. Well, I didn't hit the floor since someone caught me half way down.
When I retold this story to my mother later that night she laughed. I am thinking ,though, that this worried her. I imagine the conversation between my parents that night as they got ready for bed:
Mom: "Really what are we going to do with her? She can't take a little blood?"
Dad: "She'll be fine. Maybe she'll get a desk job."
Another year in and on a weekday morning, as I turned my hair dryer off I could hear my mother yelling for me. It wasn't her usual calm,"hey the phone is for you" kind of call but a bit of panic laced her voice so I ran out to our small living room to find my mother on the carpet , face down. Her highly sensitive control on her wheelchair had gotten caught on her sleeve and her foot had gotten caught behind the small front wheel , sending her in catapult fashion out of her chair and onto the floor. Blood was coming from above her eyes. I started running in circles, complete taken over by panic. Really when I saw the blood I didn't know where to start or what to do. Very calmly from the floor where half of her face was obscured by carpet my mother told me to get a towel because the blood was going to ruin her carpet. When I got to the drawer in the kitchen she heard the drawer open and yelled,"From the rag basket!" So I ran down the hall to the rag basket. Only my mother would be more worried about what towel I was using then how much blood was coming out of her head. Once the blood was contained and her foot released and her face no longer kissing the carpet our next dilemma was to get her up off the floor. Me lifting her was not an option since she was about 5'10" and I was about 5'2" and 100 pounds after a bath. Calling for an ambulance would cause too much curiosity in the neighborhood so our other option was to check on our neighbors down the street. A house full of men. A dad and his four sons. And just my luck the oldest was home. When I told him what happened he was out his door and had my mother back in her chair before I could even catch up to him. He picked her up like a normal person would pick a penny off the ground. I loved those guys After thanking our neighbor we headed to the emergency room since the bleeding would not stop. On the way home, after watching me turn green and nearly passing out in the ER watching the resident stitch my mother up, my mom gave me some advice about avoiding ER nursing.
Many years into it now and I have some of my own stories. The elderly woman in Maryland who I found sitting covered in black vomit and I all but called a code until her many children explained to me it was just her "chew". She had missed her "spit cup". She had given me a toothless smile as if forgiving me for being such a Yankee. And the man in South Carolina who ran naked from room to room yelling about white horses chasing him. My stories aren't too gorey and I have always been honest in telling people I do not care for blood and body fluids, mine or anyone else's. My mother found my aversion amusing and liked to compare her ER days with my calm days as a school nurse. No comparison really. But we both managed to find that place in a crazy profession where we felt needed and content. And my mother being the person she was was happy when her daughters were happy, even if meant having a nice desk job.
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