Just Like a Ghost

This next story isn’t quite a ghost story, but it is in the same vein I will tell it anyway. I had just taken the body of a deceased person to the morgue, placed the cart in the cooler, and was doing the paper work in the log, when I heard voices in the storeroom through a connecting vent high on the wall. It was our maintenance man, Frank and Nicki, one of the female central supply techs. They were retrieving a bariatric bed. Bariatric beds are oversized beds for the larger patients. The bed was stored directly beneath the vent.

I moved across the morgue until I was underneath the vent. I cupped my hands around my mouth and making a funnel I moaned, “W-O-O-O-O-O-O! W-O-O-O-O-O!”

They immediately stopped talking. Then I heard Nicki ask, “Frank, did you hear that!”

When Frank didn’t answer right away, she persisted, “Did you hear that?”

Frank said “Yes! Yes I did.”

“What was that?” She asked.

I heard Frank shush her.

They were quiet and I could tell they were listening. So I waited. When I heard them start to move the bed in the next room, I again moaned, “W-O-O-O-O-O! W-O-O-O-O-O!”

Nicki said, “Let’s get out of here!” I heard the supply room door pop open and the bed rolled out of the room at a high rate of speed.

Later, I met Frank in the hallway and told him what I had done. He laughed and said, “I didn’t know what that noise was. I knew the morgue was next door, so I thought at first it could have been a ghost. The second time you moaned, Nicki’s eyes bugged out. She grabbed my arm and almost climbed up onto my shoulders. I think she would have if I would have let her.”

            We never told Nicki. Nicki, if you read this, I apologize.

Confused and Disoriented

Sometimes when an elderly person is taken out of their home environment and placed in a hospital setting, everything is new; smells, sounds, and furniture. They can become disoriented and should you add new medications, you only compound the problem.

In the intensive care areas, sensory deprivation also becomes another concern. They call it “Unit psychosis.”

I was supervising one busy night and the critical care unit was hopping with activity. We had just pulled one patient back form death’s door by our resuscitation efforts, when another patient tried to go down the tubes and coded. We drug the crash cart from an adjoining unit, because I hadn’t had time to replace the first one.

Both had been intubated and were on ventilators. Both had gotten central lines. The unit had been in turmoil for most of the night.

One of the other female patients in the unit had been alert at the beginning of the shift, but with the increased activity and noise, she had become disoriented. In her mind, she had confused the frantic comings and goings into a strange ideation.

She said to her nurse later. “I saw what went on!” She shook her finger at the nurse. “I saw that doctor and nurse getting married. He was Hawaiian and if I told you his name, you’d know him.”

“You were having a party. I saw them using an Ellis machine. “

The nurse tried to reorient her to time and place, but the woman’s conversation kept coming back to the Ellis machine.

“Well, what is an Ellis machine?” the nurse finally asked.

The woman explained, “The Ellis machine is big and red. It serves cold beer out of one side and French fries out of the other.” If someone could invent one, they’d be rich.

Our crash carts are large and red. They are similar to the tool chests sold commercially for mechanics.

I got a call from the nurse explaining what the patient had said and asked if she should fill out an incident form. I thought that anyone with half a brain would know that the woman was confused. Who would believe what she was saying?

I told the nurse that it wasn’t necessary, but to chart that the woman was confused and disoriented.

Of course that is not how the hospital hierarchy functions. When the patient satisfaction officer rounded, she heard the woman’s story. She called the nurse at home. The nurse had worked night shift and it was before noon. The satisfaction officer made the nurse come back in and do an incident sheet.

The patient satisfaction officer went to the Directress of Nursing and shared the patient’s complaint. She wanted me to be called in and explain why I had said not to fill out an incident sheet. The D. O. N. was intelligent enough to understand that something wasn’t right somewhere in the story. She went to speak to the woman herself.

Later when the D. O. N. saw me, she said “I spent only five minutes with the patient and knew why you said “it didn’t need to have an incident sheet completed.” She did not agree with the satisfaction officer’s interpretation and the whole incident was dropped.

How much unnecessary paperwork is done in our hospitals and out government because of some well-meaning but completely out-of-touch bureaucrat who pushes papers all day needs to feel important and to justify their job? How much extra paperwork is done because of “policy” not tempered with common sense and intelligence?

 

When the A Frame Falls Out

An ambulance delivered a twenty-seven year old female to us. She and her husband had just attended a funeral and were returning home when the A-frame fell out from under their car. The car lurched sideways, the passenger door kicked open, and she was thrown out onto the asphalt roadway. She skidded along the tarmac for several yards on her backside.

All that was left of her underwear and panty hose was the toes and the waist band. All else had been eaten away from the roughness of the pavement. The back and inner surface of her legs had a heavy case of “road rash” The dirty abrasions that occur from falling or sliding on a road’s surface or gravel.

After the doctor examined her, he was kind enough to have us medicate her for pain, before we began the daunting task of cleaning and dressing the expansive dirty wound.

As we cleaned her, picking pieces of gravel and dirt from her wounds, we noticed that the abrasions ran from her heels to her upper thighs and even up into her vagina.

Once her wounds were clean, we started to cover the abrasions with Silvadene cream and tried to apply the bandages. They were bulky, difficult to place, and would not cover those wounds inside of her vagina.

I began to think, “How is she going to keep the bandages clean when she has to go to the restroom?”

I told the other nurses to stop for a bit. “I need to talk to the doctor.”

“Doctor,” I said. “Did you notice that those abrasions went up inside her vagina?”

When he didn’t answer, I continued. “The first time that woman passes her urine, she’s going to come back in here and punch you right in the face.” Everyone knows what it’s like to get sweat into a scratch. This would be even worse. “You need to stick a Foley catheter into her for a few days until she has a chance to heal.”

Dr. Jaimie followed me as I went back to help with the bandaging. He re-evaluated the wound. He called her physician to get the okay for us to insert the catheter and have her admitted for pain control.

The Elephant That Sat on My Chest

I was supervising on an afternoon shift, when I heard an overhead page for a “Blue alert” on our obstetric and gynecology unit. It made the hair stand up on my arms. That was an occurrence that had never happened to me before and I hurried to see what was happening on the unit.

The patient was a middle aged woman who had delivered an infant girl earlier in the day. The woman’s heart had stopped. When I arrived, CPR was already started and I took over doing chest compressions to relieve the nurse who was tiring. The closed chest compressions were necessary to keep the woman alive. Apparently the stress of labor and delivery was too much for her and she had a heart attack.

With our compressions, the support of her breathing function, and medications we were able to get her heart going again. She was transferred to our coronary care unit for monitoring and recovery.

When I checked on her the next evening, I explained that I was one of the hospital’s nursing supervisors and that I had done compressions on her chest when she arrested downstairs in the O.B. unit the day before.

She said, “So, you’re the elephant who sat on my chest.”

I laughed and we talked a bit more before I left her room.

Her nurse came over to me when I walked into the nursing station and said, “I heard what she said to you and just wanted to show you something.” She opened the chart and pointed to what she had written while charting earlier. “Patient states ‘It feels as though an elephant sat on my chest.’”

I chuckled and left the unit feeling good that the woman was alive because "Me, the elephant” had done my job.

Many years later, a woman stopped me in the hallway of the hospital. She was with a beautiful teen aged girl. The woman turned to the girl and introduced me as “The elephant who sat on my chest when you were born.” Then she turned to me and said, “She’s graduating high school this year.”

I was awestruck. I am sure that my mouth was hanging open. This young lady was going to graduate this year and her mom was going to be around to see it. That was a great feeling to know that I had a part in keeping her mother alive for this milestone in the young girl’s life.

But the story doesn’t end there. A few years later, I heard my name being called. I turned and there was the same lady and her daughter.

            “We’re here for some blood tests.” She said. “My daughter is getting married this month.” and broke into a wide smile.

            I didn’t know what to say other than “Congratulations!” Such a feeling of wonderment and accomplishment flowed over me. Standing before me was this beautiful young woman about to be married and her mother was still living and able to see her walk down the aisle. What a rush of good feelings engulfed me.

Mistaken Identity

On one busy night, we were caring for a tall, gangly, older black man who had an unsteady gait and had almost fallen several times. When he wandered into another room with female patients, we decided to bring him to the nursing station for the night and put him in a geri-chair. They were legal then.

            A geri-chair is a padded, tall backed seat that had a tray fastened to it. The tray could be placed over the person’s lap, much like a child’s highchair. This kept the person seated and kept them from wandering, falling and being injured.

            We finally managed to get him to sit in the chair and fastened the tray over his lap. A few minutes later, he said, “I got to go to the bathroom.”

            Monica, a thin blonde nursing aide asked, “Do you have to pee?”

            “No. I got to poop.” He answered.

            Mona said, “We just got you into that chair. I’m going to get you a bed pan.”

            She moved the chair to his room which was directly across from the station, and pulled the curtain. She had him lift his butt and slid the pan between his legs. She stood outside the curtain. We could hear a “PFFART, PFFARTT!” sound.

            “Are you finished?” Mona asked.

            “I’m done.” the voice from behind the curtain said.

            Mona lifted the man’s gown and there was a dark blob on the bottom of the bedpan. Monica put on gloves, wrapped toilet tissue around her hand, and began the task of wiping the old man’s bottom.

            All of a sudden, he stiffened and sat straight up in the chair exclaiming, “White woman, leggo of my balls!!”

            Mona was so embarrassed. She had mistaken the man’s scrotum that was resting on the bottom of the pan for a bowel movement.

I am putting on the blog a few stories from the book that I am attempting to write about my career as a corpsman, student, and a nurse. These are already written and I need to take a break, but do not want to disappoint those who are reading my writings.

 

As a nursing supervisor, the tasks I was called on to do are many and varied. Because the supervisors are the resource persons for all the shifts, weekends, and holidays. Everyday problems with bed assignments and staffing always abound. They are challenging but often other problems arise when least expected. These unusual occurrences often appear out of left field with no warning at all.

These things can pop up and you stand amazed, wondering “What happened?” or they may fall into gray areas. These are areas that have no written policies about them, or they are problems that had never occurred before, or they were concerns that had ever been addressed formally. The supervisor then is “Going where no man (or woman) has gone before.” At those times, a supervisor must use past experiences, weigh their options, and make expected and reasonable judgment calls.

            Late one night, I received a telephone call from the critical care unit. A woman had shown up in the waiting area and wanted to come inside to pray for the patients that were there. They told me that the visitor had no relatives in the unit and to protect the clients’ privacy, they couldn’t let her come inside. Even then, it would have been highly irregular to permit her to do so.  Her intentions seemed good. Now, with HIPPA regulations, it would have been illegal for allow her to do so. The nurses were also concerned about the woman’s mental state. Although her intentions seemed harmless, was she?

            As I walked to the unit, I had time to collect my thoughts, sort them out, rearrange them, and try to come up with a solution. I wanted to satisfy the woman’s well-meaning desires and yet I still needed to protect the patients and the staff.

I approached the waiting area.

Through the window, I could see a middle-aged female sitting on the edge of one of the chairs, twisting a handkerchief in her hands. She looked up as I entered the waiting area. I smiled, introduced myself, taking a seat across from her, I asked. “What can I do you for you tonight?”

            She explained, “Today is the second anniversary of my mom’s death. She passed away exactly two years ago.” She nodded her head towards the unit. Tears glistened in her eyes. “I was at home alone tonight and felt the need to come here and pray for the patients inside the unit.”

            Now that I knew the reason for her being here, I understood it was an especially tender and as highly emotional moment for her. What could I do? My thoughts were still racing, trying to find an acceptable solution, one that would satisfy her needs and also our need to protect our clients’ privacy. As we talked, a vague idea started to form.

            I began by explaining why I couldn’t allow her to go inside the unit to pray. “Because the patients are very sick, I can’t allow you to disturb them. They need their rest and privacy, but (The light bulb came on.) I know a place and a way for you to pray for each and every person in the whole hospital. Can you come with me?”

She nodded.

            I stood and she started to follow. I noticed as I held the door open for her, the woman walked with a pronounced limp. I only hoped that I had really found a way to accommodate her wishes and that my proposed solution would satisfy her.

            We talked as I lead her through the hallways to the hospital’s chapel. I opened the door to allow her to enter. It was quiet there with the lights inside lowered and soft. The crimson colored padded pews filled the back of the chapel, and at the far end, was a stained glass window, an altar, and a thick oak and wine colored padded kneeler. On the altar sat a wooden Star of David, a polished brass cross, and an opened Bible.

            I placed my census list of the hospital’s patients that I always carried, face down, on the top rail of the kneeler. I turned to her and said, “This is a list of every patient in the hospital. Although I can’t show you their names, you can put your hands on these papers and pray for each one of them, not just the ones in the critical care unit. You can ask a blessing for them and all of the staff working here tonight, if you like.”

            She gave me a small smile and limped to the kneeler. She knelt and placed her hands on the top of my papers. She bowed her head. After about five minutes or so, she raised her head. There were tears in her eyes.

            I pulled a tissue from a box in the chapel and handed it to her.

“Thank you.” She said and rose to her feet.

I replied, “You’re quite welcome.” Then I added, “Now that you know where the chapel is located, anytime that you feel the need to pray you can come in here. The chapel is always open. If it is after visiting hours, just stop by the guards and let them know what you are doing and where you are going. Please feel free to come back anytime you feel the need.”

            As she limped off, down the hallway, I prayed that I had met her needs and made a difficult time for her, easier to bear.

The Trailer

My sister and her husband Douglas had a mobile home on some property that my mom and dad owned. The trailer was already set up and they had been living in it when they decided that it was too high and wanted to lower it to build porches.

Doug’s family and our family, including Uncle Dale gathered to do the work and to lower it. Jacks, blocks, and a come-along; chains and pry bars; roller pipes and ropes all were laid out to use as needed. The first task was to remove the under-skirting. It was a dirty, splinter producing job. When it was done, we started to lower the trailer one section at a time. Bit by bit, until we could go to the next section. It was tedious and time consuming.

Dale said, “We can lower one side at a time, with the jacks in place. Slowly let the trailer down onto the shorter cinder block pillars. It will save a lot of time and trouble.”

It did save time. We placed the jacks along one side. We jacked them up until we could remove one set of blocks. When they were removed, we slowly lowered the trailer until it settled on the supporting blocks. It went well for the first time. We needed to remove one more set of blocks to have the height where they wanted their mobile home. Lining the jacks up along the length of the trailer, we got ready to lift the weight of the trailer off the piers and remove another set of blocks. I was the one under the trailer, pulling out the blocks. The jacks lifted the trailer. I am scooting around under the floor of the mobile home when we noticed that the trailer was moving sideways. That was not in our plans. I tossed one of the blocks back onto the pier just in time. The trailer moved several feet to the side and dropped about ten inches. I thought, “Here we go. I’m dead meat.”

The trailer settled on the last block I threw up, but not before it had folded me double. I thought I was going to be smashed, but was able to slide my upper body to the side and work my way out.

My mom and Rosemary, Doug’s mom, were sitting in the yard watching. When the building shifter, they jumped out of their seats and rushed to the side of the trailer. Neither one knew who was underneath, but they were trying to help and keep the trailer from tumbling on its side. Rosemary grabbed and tried to lift it and my mom pushed against the side. If I hadn’t placed that last block, probably both would have been crushed. My sister, Kathy says that a miracle occurred and believes that Rosemary and Mom were given strength to stop the accident from being a tragedy. I can’t say. I was underneath wondering why my head hadn’t gone through the floor of the mobile home.

What had happened to cause the accident? One of the jacks had been placed on softer ground, and the jack started to sink, throwing all of the others off and allowed to trailer to list to the side.

Dale used the come-along to pull the errant end of the trailer back onto the piers. I wasn’t underneath this time. The trailer was the right height and that was all of the work we did that evening.

It was time for me to go home. My shoulder was hurting and I couldn’t raise it. When the trailer came down and partially pinned me, it dropped onto my right shoulder and pushed me to the side or I might have been crushed.

Cindy, my wife decided she would drive us home. She was so upset that she backed down the berm instead of the highway when we left. We managed to get home safely, but she was still shaken up.

I wasn’t sure what happened to my shoulder, but with the pain and limited mobility, I decided to shower, get into some clean clothing and head for the emergency department. It was the hospital where I worked. I wasn’t going in dirty.

I drove. I wanted to get to the hospital and Cindy was still shaken. X-rays revealed nothing, but I think my shoulder was dislocated and spontaneously was relocated. I still have some range of motion issues and pain with that arm.