Patient with a giant personality / Repost

We didn’t see his type often.

He walked in, chin up, thick belly, arms cocked at his side, gave me a smile, a mischievous smile, and I thought , oh well, every now and then, you gotta take care of someone you know is going to be different.

“Hi David, I’m going to be your nurse. We need to get your weight and height right over here.”

He gave me a ‘You must be crazy’ look, but he did comply. I jotted the numbers down and led him along with his female escort to his pre –op bay.

Paperwork completed, I closed the curtain, giving him privacy to change.

A small adult cuff fit his arm, Yay!, the O² saturation probe picked up fast, and I thought things were going well until the woman with him asked for help.

“Susan, we need to find a channel he likes, like fast!”

I started pushing the channel up button as quick as possible. I didn’t want a meltdown on my hands. He started to scowl. His face turned red. I flipped to high channels then back to low one. Panic was making me inconsistent. Why does the hospital need sixty-eight channels? I just passed a really hard test. I can’t believe how nervous this is making me.

Finally.

Channel 18.

The cartoon channel.

Crisis diverted.

Four year olds are cute, but I’ve changed my mind about being ready for grandparenthood!

 

For Your Consideration

Dear Blog family,

I am about to send the piece below off into the wild world of critics/ lovers of fiction. First I am going to drop it here. You’re family. I’m thinking you’ll help me one way or another; a sweet comment, a personal reflection, and possibly a nudge out the door

 

Reshuffling

Image via wikihow.com

                   “Start over!”

                   “No.” I know what is coming, a declaration that we have missing cards, she has one too many, or something like that.

                   Callie pauses and purses her lips. I ignore her. It’s hard to do when your Canasta opponent is a bald-headed- ten- year- old wearing bright orange pajamas and Donald Duck slippers. Last year it was Goofy slippers, just like a pair I’ve had since I was a kid. I told her about them, and we’ve been friends ever since.

                   As I watch her face, I can see Callie picking her next words. She’s eying me, waiting to see if I’ll crack. I get more comfortable among the bunched up blankets and sort my cards.

                   “I don’t think you shuffled well enough.” Callie says in her naturally squeaky voice.

                   I give her my I’m not messing around look.

                   “It’s Canasta sweetie. You’re gonna have all sorts of matches no matter what. Now wrap your tiny paws around your cards, and lay your melds on the table here.”

                   Callie gives me a harrumph and a bugged-eyed look before redirecting her attention.

                   For Callie, I normally would reshuffle the deck, but I’m planning to meet friends after work, and if I want to get out on time, I can’t dawdle. One person in the group is an old friend — to be more exact, a hot guy that I regret casting aside. I’ve been dateless for four long months.

                   Callie slaps the bedside table with her hand so the stacked cards tumble sideways. I can’t help smiling. When Callie’s trying to be obnoxious, she just gets cuter and cuter.

                   “Temper, Callie.”

                   While she’s straightening out the deck, I start to lay a row down, but I’m distracted by a flash of purple on the inside of Callie’s right arm — the beginnings of a bruise right in the bend of her elbow. Around the edges it’s pink and green.

                   “What the…?” I reach for her wrist, but she’s already snaked her arm back under the blanket.

                   “Why didn’t they use your port, Callie?”

I point to the spot below her collar bone where the quarter size implant protrudes from under her skin.

                   “My Chlorambucil was still running and they said they didn’t have time to come back.”

                   The way medical jargon tumbles out of her mouth — for a second I forget she’s only ten.

                   “Call me next time, O.K?” I say it casually. I don’t want to be overbearing. Callie’s parents are major helicopters, hovering over every single staffer. Callie confided that she finds it embarrassing.

                   When I was twelve, I had Mono and was in the hospital for six weeks with my mother making everyone nervous.

                   I get it.

                   We resume playing.

                   Swish-swish. Thump-thump.

                   The speed of our card slaps gives our game a hip-hop rhythm. With each card I pull, Callie adds body moves by bending at the elbow and drawing her fanned out deck to her chin.

                   We pull and discard as fast as we can until there are two in the deck, Callie’s got three, I’ve got four, and it’s my turn to draw. She’s wiggling around on her bottom and singing before I get the card in my hand.

                   “I’m gonna win. I’m gonna win,” Callie chants.

                   I drag one of the two remaining cards slowly toward me and hold it to my chest before looking. With a deliberate “hmm,” then an “ah,” I add it to the pair of fours in my hand and with a grin, lay the threesome on the table. “I win,” I announce.

                   Callie responds by sticking her tongue out at me and scrunching up her nose. I’m thinking about what I want to wear tonight.

                   Then she leans over and grabs my forearms. My resolve crumbles.

                   “Please. One more round. Come on Aubrey. You’ve only been here, like, like, twenty minutes,” she whines.

                   I resettle at the foot of her bed and deal new cards.

                   Soon the tempo of card slaps and swooshes returns until Callie’s oversized Kidoozie clock alarms.

                   It’s 3:00 pm.

                   I snap my head up and put my cards down. “Callie, I have to go.”

                   “But the game?”

                   I think the crestfallen look on her face is a little much, a tactic she uses. Guilt creeps up from my subconscious but I push it away. Tonight is too important. Callie’s too young to understand. Jumping up from the bed and walking towards the door, I talk fast. “I’ll see your tomorrow. If I win again, I get your slippers!” I hike up my scrubs belligerently, mocking the threat. Callie smiles and I know we’re okay. I run over, give her a quick hug, and leave.

                   A lab tech passes me in the doorway and I think about Callie’s bruised arm, but I want to get ready. I’ll leave it for tomorrow.

 

 

Everyone I pass is quiet. Not I haven’t had my coffee quiet, but the kind of quiet that demand immediate pause. I quicken my pace and reach the unit just as housekeeping walks out of room 467.

                   Callie’s room.

                   “…clot…pulmonary artery…,”I hear, and then nothing but the ocean pounding in my ears. Thirty minutes later, I sit on the bathroom floor. My boss gives me the day off, but by the time I’m in my car, I’ve decided to transfer.

***

Adult Oncology. Three months. I do overtime in the radiation lab. If I learn the medicines, I’ll fit in, I think. It’s not working. When I’m in a patient’s room and his grandchildren are there, I feel displaced, like an outsider.

                   I set up a meeting with my old manager.

***

                   “Hi, I’m Aubrey. I’ll be your nurse today.”

                   The twelve-year- old sitting cross-legged on the bed has a deck of cards in her hand. She has an Osteosarcoma and will have surgery in two days.

                   “Playing Solitaire, huh.” The triggered memory shakes me.

                   “Yeah, but I’d like to have someone to play with. You could fix that.” She says it to me matter-of-fact. I avoid eye contact. I don’t want her to see my eyes getting red.

                   “Can I sit and talk to you while you play?”

                   “Sure. Wanna play Crazy Eights with me?”

                   “Sure.” It’s only one word, but it sticks in my throat.

                   I just stare. She probably thinks I’m nuts. “Yes” might be moving forward or back, I don’t know which.

                   She cups the deck in her left hand, then grabbing a handful in her right, I watch her position her thumbs to fan out the cards. They fall with a dull thwack when she arches the piles back between her thumb and index finger.

                   “That wasn’t very good.” She lets out a sigh of exasperation and pushes the cards to where I sit gingerly at the edge of her bed. “Here. You do it.”

                   I miss Callie.

                   “No, I think you should do it.” I pick up the cards and place them back in front of her.

                   “Split the deck and try again.”

Pediatric nurses > the rest of us RNs’

Now I know, I really, really know, I could never be a pediatric nurse.

   Here’s the reason why:

I knew before I met her she had Cerebral palsy. Her date of birth placed her at twenty-four, but since I knew that 30-40% of people with CP have some degrees of developmental delay, her cognitive functioning would be below the average for someone of her age. She was having dental work under LMAC (that means anesthesia wouldn’t have to put a tube down her throat). You tie it all together and what you have is a pediatric case, the only exception being the patient has the BMI of an average adult.

But I’m digressing here – getting carried away with facts when what I want to do stay open- and share.

So, I’ll start by calling her Beth.

Beth arrived in a wheelchair. With her Dad’s help, she could stand, pivot, and move her right arm enough so Mom could change her into a surgical gown.

Dora the Explorer sat snugly under her right arm.  Beth’s affect was that of a six year old.

She smiled and giggled when I said “Mom, Dad, you also have to wear gowns and funny blue hats!” Beth winced when the blood pressure cuff tightened, and when I asked her if she was okay, she shook her head up and down and said “I’m a big girl.”

Then I had to start her IV.

Her father held her left arm straight for me and I went for the forearm. No luck. People with CP have as a result of the disorder, low muscle tone. Veins sit low, not close to the surface

Beth started whimpering at this point. We three were trying to sooth her, giving her encouragement. Her Dad, apparently used to this experience, was gently turning her arm around. He knew I had to find a spot. And I did, right on the inside of her wrist – one of the most sensitive places to start an IV.

Beth’s whimpering turned into crying. She wasn’t  trying to jerk her arm away. She was just lying there crying.  Total Submission.

I had a lump in my throat when I started with some lidocaine under her skin. Then I made the mistake of looking at her. She looked back with pure panic in her eyes. My chest started to hurt (and it wasn’t my arrhythmia).

Now I’m sitting there trying to hold back my own tears. I felt nothing but guilt. There was no this is for your own good – I’m a nurse doing my job kind of feeling. I couldn’t separate. For a moment I froze. I remember thinking I can’t do this to her.

I got the IV on the second try and with some Versed in her IV, Beth got smiley and sleepy.

I hear people say all the time “Nurses are special”. Maybe we are. But pediatric nurses…

THEY ARE AMAZING.

The Most Important Post of My Life

They say most accidents happen within two miles from home and they are right. I was close to home, but I was safe — three car lengths from the intersection and sitting inside two thousand pounds of sculpted metal. In front of me on the other side of the road, several shadowing figures stood in a circle. The light overhead made them look almost angelic.

With my car wedged in front, back, and to the left side by a median, the first thirty seconds were spent hollering at the cluster twenty yards from me.

I wanted to know was if the dark figure on the ground was breathing. The first person that turned said, “It’s too late.”

The crowd parted for a moment and I could see that it was a child, six, maybe seven.

Then I rolled my window down, and with my hand squeezing the door handle, started yelling like an idiot to anyone that passed me. The first person confirmed that 911 had been called. A female jogger slowed as she passed me and said that she’d checked — “the little girl was breathing”.

It left me reticent to get out of my car — people need to move their vehicles and not rubber neck at accident scenes. I had a flash of anger. I wanted to help, but, this is not about me. This post is about doing something, not just standing around watching. Thankfully less than a minute after the jogger passed, I saw the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle coming from the opposite direction and, in the distance behind me, a second one.

The street light had gone to red then back to green again.

As I passed, I saw the little girl curled on her side and couldn’t help but notice that she was oddly still. A man in his late thirties, maybe her father, was kneeling beside her, his hand on her shoulder, an anxious look on his face. Two teens plus an older woman stood close, eyes down, hugging themselves. Two heartbeats later, I’m crying.

TAKE A CPR CLASS !!

YES, THIS BEING IN CAPS MEANS I AM YELLING!

TAKE A CLASS IN BASIC CPR!

MAKE IT A GROUP THING!

GO WITH FRIENDS!

Seriously, if they are not breathing, you can’t make it any worse. It can only get better. Don’t be one of those people intrigued by the oddity of witnessing someone dangling between our world and the other. It could be you or someone you love who leaves early because no one had inkling what to do.

If you are struggling to come up with a reason to take a CPR class, here’s one: OM at aopinionatedman.com is fearless in pointing out how selfish we all are as humans, so …do it for you, do it because you could be a hero to someone, or someone’s family, or just in your own head because that’s where it matters to you.