Nurses

Originally posted on
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

A few more notes from my stay in the ICU:

I went to Creighton University for my undergrad. This small school had a massive pre-med and nursing population. Freshman year, it was hard to meet people who weren't going to be doctors and nurses.

As a result, the whole campus had to suffer with these people as they bemoaned every Biology and Organic Chemistry exam that came down the shoot. That's the one thing I didn't like about dorm life, hearing way too often in the halls: "Oh I am so stressed. Orgo is just killing me." Yeah? Then take a nap.

I would tell these people that I was majoring in English and Philosophy and they would say first, "Oh that sounds like fun," and then, "Are you going to teach with that?"

My only comfort was found in my fellow English and Philosophy majors, and Business friends, who would snark at the pre-medders with me. (Are you reading this, Nick? Jeff??? Frazier????? I'm talkin' about you guys!) It was kind of like being in a fraternity of We Who Wish To Avoid Gross Body Things.

Flash forward several years, and here I am, very glad that there are people professionally devoted to gross body things.

There was Michelle, the day time nurse. Sweet as could be. Totally OK with the gross stuff. Like "stripping my tubes."

I'm only going to describe this because it's pretty amazing. You're about to hear of the most basic of physics principles applied ingeniously to solve a medical problem with surgery.

The problem:   What do you do with the fluid that builds up as a response to a wound when you've sewn the wound shut? How do you drain it?

I didn't know until I was staring down at my chest at a long, kind of thick, alien worm looking shape stuck under my skin. This was a drainage tube. Placed up near my armpit, and then snaking down across the length of my chest, and then out somewhere on my side, almost on my back.

Did they make the hole in my skin back there and poke the tube through and then sew the skin flaps down? I don't know. I probably don't want to know. You're probably wishing I hadn't begun this line of discussion.

Attached to the tube was a little pastic ball with a valve that pops open. They squeezed the air out of it while the valve was open, then shut the valve, and this simple mechanism of suction pulled out all the excess fluid from the wound! I had two tubes, one from the armpit and one that I wasn't as dramatic from the actual breast removal. And the two little pastic balls sucked and sucked.

Disgusting.

And this nurse--and the others, whom I'll get to--came in with their gloves and emptied the balls out, measuring the fluid. Michelle was the first to "strip" the tubes, meaning she pulled on them to move along the little clots and make sure there was enough flow to do the job. I kept saying, "This is so gross. I'm so sorry you have to do this." As I actually felt the suction in the wound--weird.

And she'd say, "This is no problem at all. This is not gross. Don't worry about it."

And I wanted to say, "I'm so sorry I didn't really like your kind way back in college," but I didn't.

(Six days after surgery, I went into the clinic and a different nurse pulled the tubes out. OOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!! At one point, I was saying to myself, "I will not drop an f-bomb. I will NOT drop an f-bomb."

She said, "You're body is healing so quickly, this is amazing," and I said, "Half the country is praying for me. Of course I'm healing quickly.)

Then there was Desiree, the night nurse. She was also very nice. Maybe a little more liberal than Michelle. For instance, when it was time for her to run a catheter for me, she referred to my urethra as "Mr. Wink."

"Mr. Wink?" I asked, as I lay in a compromising position.

"Yeah, I call him that because he kinds of winks at you when you look for him."

Keep that helpful tip in mind, friends, for next time you go looking for someone's urethra.

I wanted to tell her, "See? If you'd majored in either English or Philosophy as well as nursing, you might have come across the notion that it's not right to refer to female anatomy as anything male. How about Mrs. Wink? Wouldn't that work?" but I didn't.

My last night there, Matthew was on duty instead of Desiree. Laurie and Bryan were visiting the whole evening, and the three of us were having a great time, laughing a lot, talking up a storm. This nurse would manufacture reasons to come in and he'd join in the conversation where he could. It's like he wanted to be part of the party. A real chatty Cathy, that Matthew.

My company left, I found myself embroiled in some kind of conversation with this nurse as the hour drew late. I finally said, "Well, I think I should get to sleep now"--and he took the hint and went back to his lonely desk in the hallway.

But he still had to come in for vitals, and at 3 AM, when he was there, I asked for a blanket. This launched him into chit chat about the weather, and then humidity, and then somehow the Midwest, and I think--because this is how insanely compulsive I am about conversation--I asked in my sleepy haze whether he'd spent much time in the Midwest. There was more talking, but I do not remember it, what with the drugs and the sleep and the hour. . .

But the next morning, right before his shift change, he came in again and I asked, "Was I hallucinating last night, or did you say you went to Creighton University?"

"No, that was real. I said I was a nursing student there. And you majored in English and Philosophy."

Dang. Really? I mean: seriously? And yet I am not making any of this up. When you read the next part, you're going to think I am fabricating, just for dramatic effect, but I'm not.

He said, "So did you end up teaching with that?"