What is a Nurses shift in their day to day life?
I would also add how they maintain the living and do so.
while we grumble about lack of supplies and other mundane elements.
This entry is for Nurses.
Does it really matter if they be RN, LPN or newer titles created I have yet to gain an understanding of.
A wee bit of my background with Nurses in my 61 years of life.
My Mother, Marion F. Darus was a Nurse around WWII. She worked a few hospitals in her life before marrying my father where they in their union created my sisters and I.
She did a few years at a place called Turney Tech (which basically was a State Funded Mental Ward for the Insane.) It was Officially called THE CLEVELAND STATE HOSPITAL.
https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/576
Oh, my, the stories of that time in her life she shared with me!
Imagine being a Nurse in the 1940's.
Imagine being a Nurse treating those with mental illnesses during that era. Other than Frontal Lobotomies, morphine and other Opiates to sedate, how did she care for these ill patients under her care?
Let's take a walk down a few roads my loving mother shared with me while I was quite young. Maybe she knew I'd write something for others while telling me what she dealt with every day for a few years.
This is written as I think my Mother would have wanted from her perspective.
I arrive at work at 2PM on a sunny July day. The humidity is horrendous, stifling and causing my cotton clothing to stick to my body. Not liking this as I walk toward the Dark Foreboding place we call TURNEY TECH, I yank on my blouse to take the sticky/clingyness away from me.
While walking the pathway to the entrance, I notice a few crows squawking and eating something and squirrels doing laps around oak trees chasing and playing. I smile at these things. The air, though humid, smelled clear.
Enter the building of the Insane.
When I walk into this place each and everyday, it takes me a while to adjust to the odor of this place. Everything smells like either shit or alcohol mixed with bleach.
I do this 5 shifts a week and face this fucking hellhole and try to maintain some sense of dignity for our patients as well as myself.
This so-called STATE Hospital is a horror show.
Before clocking in, I scope the lay of the land before me:
There's two people on the floor tossing around unattended by anyone except gawkers watching their bodies act like fish out of water.
Okay, I think, just a normal day at work. I do my job requires me to do and clock in.
My Head Nurse, Mary, approaches me and says I am needed in bed 17 on this floor.
17?!? I thought to myself , how lovely this shift will start...
"Oh, God, what did he do this time?"
Mary looked at me with a weird combination of sad and smiling expression, saying: "You'll see... Sorry, Marion..."
Sorry my ass.
I wonder what a mere 50 steps down a stinky illuminated corridor I will encounter at Bed 17.
While heading there, a visitor, somehow having fallen to the floor, grabs my right ankle, causing me to fall and smack the disgusting tile floor. I gave an OUCH! As I helped the fallen lady to rise, she apologized and I went about my shift.
Not really surprising for visitors to fall down in a place like this. So many wheelchairs covering the walls on both sides of aisle ways where WWII injured taken outside their rooms to perhaps socialize with one another. So many of these boys shattered, my heart cried out for them, more often than not the staring with blank expressions after having lost a leg/arm/eyesight as they served Our Country to protect us and others across the globe.
Heading, as my HeadNurse said I should do, my mind is thinking about something to make me happier. Perhaps an embrace from a man named Ted..
Such dream wishes fall short as....
I'm approached by a man I only am allowed to know as 'h' as I begin my rounds. I say "Hi H!"
"Mare, you need to get to 17!" he says to me clearly as his so fragile body appears so tiny in a wheelchair after having lost both arms and legs during the D-day invasion on June 6th this year. God love him! His mind and thinking is as clear as a bell.
"Thanks, H!' I saying, reaching down and giving him a hug. Feeling his scruffy face against mine, I say to him: "If I get a chance I'm gonna give you a shave."
"Mare, do I really need a face lashing, darling?" he said with a thick Scottish accent , a wicked smile mating his mouth to eyes for sincerity.
"Well, Sir! You most certainly do and I will do that for you."
END OF PART ONE OF THIS SERIES.
I thank you for reading,
Love and Hugs to you all!
-MARK WILLIAM DARUS
PS: This before placing this on FB.
Call this an author editor share...
About a Nurses Life: Part 1
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