Hospital Stories

Dead Bodies

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Night Nurse Warner Brothers

Night Nurse Warner Brothers

I don’t think you can ever prepare someone for the sight of a real dead body.  I say real because the kind of dead body you see at a funeral home, with all the makeup, hair, jewelry, and fancy clothing looks nothing like a freshly dead corpse.

So, when I encountered my first dead body, I realized that not even nursing school had prepared me.  All that C.P.R. (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) training on a healthy looking dummy became a foggy memory when I was called to the bedside of my first dead patient.

She was a lovely  woman who had undergone hip surgery earlier that day. Other than a little indigestion, she had no complaints.  I set her up for dinner thinking that would help soothe her stomach, then went to the nurses station to chart.  Sometime later, her grandchildren came to the desk to tell me their grandmother ‘didn’t look right’, and could I come down and check on her.

Obviously they too had never seen a real dead body.

I walked down the hall to the last room on the right, entered, and to my horror I realized indeed, she was dead!  I panicked.  I ran out of the room, and back up the hall to find the R.N. I was working with (I was an L.P.N. at the time and less senior.  I was also seventeen years old, and just out of school.)  When I finally found her, the R.N. refused to leave her patient to come and help me.

“What the fuck?!!”

I ran to the next hallway, saw another R.N. I was friends with, grabbed her by the hand and said, “Run!” Hand in hand we ran back to the room, confirmed the patient was dead and called a code blue.  Unfortunately my patient died, and I went home and cried myself to sleep that night.

Many years have passed, and I’ve since become an old hand with dead bodies; I’m more shocked looking at dolled up cadavers in caskets, than bodies of the terminally ill.  But at some point in life we will all have to come face to face with a dead body and nothing can really prepare us for that moment.

We just have to experience that for ourselves.

Guidance Counselors

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Florence Nightingale courtesy of Asli Kutluay at aslikutluay.com

What’s up with high school guidance counselors?  Is there anyone out there in the world that has actually benefited from one?   Well, if you have, please feel free to share your good fortune.  I, on the other hand, have nothing but uncomfortable memories of my guidance counselor at a time when I really needed some sound advice.

When I was a sophomore, I thought about applying to the licensed practical nurse (L.P.N.) program at our local Boards of Cooperative Education Services (B.O.C.E.S), a vocational school open to both high school kids and adults seeking a higher level of education in the form of a trade.  Nobody, however, looked at B.O.C.E.S. as anything resembling higher education.  Quite the opposite, B.O.C.E.S. was considered a place where all the burnouts went for auto shop, or the girls with low I.Q.’s and high hair went for cosmetology.  I’m not sure what kind of losers the nursing students were, but let me tell you, if you were on that bus heading to B.O.C.E.S., people pitied you.

So making this kind of decision was tough.  My parents really didn’t know what to say, my friends thought I was crazy, my boyfriend’s mom, who was a nurse, pooh-poohed the idea.  This left me with only one other choice…my guidance counselor.

You have to understand this truly was my last resort!

If you’ve been fortunate enough in life to have read the Frog and Toad children’s stories, you’ll be able to relate to what my guidance counselor looked like.  If not, stop here, Google Frog and Toad and then come back…

His name was Mr. S.  He sat at his desk in the guidance office smoking cigarettes all day.  He was stout with a round belly that stood perched atop his upper thighs.  His voice was gravely, kind of like Wolf Man Jack’s.  I don’t remember being afraid of him by any means, but I also don’t remember looking forward to meeting with him.

But in I went, and down I sat as a smoke ring circled my head.  It didn’t bother me that he smoked; everybody smoked back then.  He asked me why I was there and I plead my case.  He listened politely, rummaging through my records, and to my surprise he too did not think B.O.C.E.S. was in my best interest.  I could tell he didn’t want to see me get on that bus.

Was that a look of pity that crossed his face?

I’m a pretty stubborn person.  I always have been.  It was at that moment I knew I was going to do the absolute opposite of what this gravely, smoking, toad like person, trapped in a windowless world wanted me to do.

What choice did I have?

So I filled out the application, sat for the entrance exam (something not required for auto shop admission I’m sure), and was accepted into the program.

That following September, with my head held high, I climbed the three short steps onto that B.O.C.E.S. bound bus and never looked back.

Oh yeah, and the guy from auto shop, well he’s living it up, charging a small fortune to fix those sporty European cars, and Cosmo girl, she owns a very swanky salon, a beautiful house, and still looks fabulous.  As for me, well I’ve had a successful career, live in a nice home with my husband and three kids, and am happy to have always forged my own path.

I’m not quite sure whatever happened to that guidance counselor though.  For all I know he’s still in that windowless room, giving out bad advice, with a nicotine patch stuck somewhere over his amphibious body.

My First Hospital Visit

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Courtesy of Asli Kutluay

Florence Nightingale. Courtesy of Asli Kutluay at aslikutluay.com

I was seven years old when I entered a hospital for the first time.  Not as a patient, but as a visitor.  My older brother had been newly diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes (insulin dependent diabetes mellitus), and I begged my mother to bring me to visit him.  My brother and I were pretty close and only two years apart.  I remember walking through the large, automatic, sliding glass doors into the lobby.  I ran to push the button for the elevator, and during that short wait I was struck by two things: hospital smell and medical personnel.  Unless you’re olfactory challenged, the smell of a hospital is an unforgettable experience for all those who cross that threshold.  But more importantly, it was the people I noticed who were about to change the course of my life.  Everybody was moving so fast: the nurses, the doctors, people wearing I.D. badges.  I was fascinated.  I knew at that very moment I wanted to be a part of that world.  I wanted to know what was going on behind those closed doors, and inside the minds of the people who chose to work there.

This was such a strong pull for me as a child that I went around telling anyone who would listen that I was going to become a doctor, a neurosurgeon to be exact.  I promised my beloved Aunt that I would buy her a mansion right next to mine.  I even went so far as to study the brain using our encyclopedia, as these were the pre-internet years.

Unfortunately, in high school, my S.A.T. scores weren’t up to par for medical school.  Despite some dissuasion from my guidance counselor, I decided to enter the field of nursing.  I began taking nursing courses along with my required high school classes.  After graduation,  went on to obtain my Registered Nurse license and start my nursing career.

It’s funny how life takes you in certain directions.  Had my brother never gotten ill, I’m not sure I would have ever had another reason to enter a hospital at that time, and I may have spent the last twenty years in a career that would have actually paid me enough money to buy those mansions.

No amount of money, though, could have saved my Aunt; while I was attending nursing school, she was diagnosed with Lymphoma.  I remember visiting her in one of the big city hospitals I eventually came to work in.  I was still naive, and so unprepared for the devastating effects of cancer.

But it was then that I understood how my presence at the bedside could be comforting to someone in their last days.  There was going to be no glory, no fancy title, and little compensation compared to the job at hand.  What I was going to lack in fame and fortune, I was about to make up in a lifetime of experiences: good and bad, happy and sad, fun and frustrating and every other emotion you can possibly think of.  I was also about to meet some of the best people I know along the way.

In a place that can seem so dark to so many, I am constantly enlightened and inspired by what I see and do in the hospital.  I hope to share these experiences throughout this blog that will make you laugh, cry and understand a litter better not only the life of this one nurse, but also how these nursing stories reveal how we all connect to one another.

National Nurses Week Launch

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Florence Nightingale. Courtesy of Asli Kutluay at aslikutluay.com

National Nurses week has just wrapped up (three weeks ago, yes I’m a little late), so I thought what better time than now to launch my new blog Nightingalechronicles.com

Nightingale chronicles is a place where you can come, kick back, have a glass of wine or a beer or a shot, and read some funny tales from a woman who’s been at her job way too long, is a little bitter, and has a sarcastic sense of humor; in other words, a nursing blog.

I hope you enjoy my tall tales and share some of your own.  If there’s one thing I love, it’s a funny story, and I believe nurses have some of the best stories…EVER!!

Without breaking any HIPPA violations, I wish to provide an after hours platform not just for me, but for all people (nurse or not) to share in a good laugh.

Welcome!!