Legs

Many years ago, when I worked at Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, 3 incidents made an impression on my mind about legs. The first tale occurred when I was working night shift on a med/surg floor. A female patient who hated men was a diabetic and would feign swooning because of her problems. She would also be incontinent and need her linens changed. She was rather large and one night the other nurses asked me to help. When she heard my voice, she stiffened and asked, “Is there a man in my room?” When the nurses tried to explain that I was a nurse and was only trying to help, she shouted “I don’t care if he’s Jesus Christ. Get him out of my room,” her eyes remained tightly closed. Sometime later she had one leg removed and was readmitted to have the other leg removed, telling the nurses she already named the first Pete, now she was here for “repeat.” I told the nurse the story of me being in the room, then I said “As much as she hates men, she should have said, I named the first Kate and the second duplicate.”

The second memory happened within the first month of transfer into the emergency department. A man who was helping a friend was run over by a caterpillar nearly severing both of his legs at the thighs. The EMT’s did a wonderful job finding ice in the middle of nowhere to pack his legs, but the damage was so severe, that the surgeon finished amputating the thin bands of tissue remaining and dropped them into trash bags that I held.

The third storey is more amusing. One of the ward clerks in the emergency room was gathering information for a new patient’s chart while he was sitting in front of her on a wheelchair. He crossed his legs and to the ward clerk’s surprise, the leg fell off and landed at her feet. She jumped from her chair, began to dance in circles. The man said, “Don’t fuss honey. It happens all the time.” The old man had a loose fitting prosthetic leg.