In A Night's Work
Last night I began my work shift by helping a woman change the bandage on her open abdominal sore, I gave her some morphine to ease the pain of stab wounds and poor digestion.
I next went to the room of a man who needed his body turned into a new position so the sore on his hip wouldn’t grow worse with immobility and I changed his sheets which had wet fresh vomit over them, from months of sickness and pain.
The woman in the bathroom was crying out for someone to hold her hand while she walked back to her bed, I assisted her to a lying position and then hung 2 units of blood for her, flushed out her IV line because her machine was beeping and took note of her vital signs.
Her roommate was screaming profanity at the lab technician who tried patiently to find a vein on her thin, bruised arms. She told all of us to “Go to Hell!” and then let us redress her in a new gown.
My coworker asked for help from anyone not busy to come to her patient who was refusing his medicine. Confused and angry he told her that he was sick and tired of being sick and tired and was going home. I looked him in the eyes and asked him to tell me about his thoughts, to say why he was resistant to the antibiotic the doctor had asked we give him. He spoke about feeling lost and then let me give him the shot.
After this he accepted the injection he said, "I don't like you at all, you've been pushing me for two years now!"
"Sir this is the first time we've met."
Silence.
There were scarce few moments I could sit, before an alarm went off and we were calling the doctors to help us cardiovert a new onset of tachacardia which translated means a woman’s heart beat began to go faster than is safe and we had to act quickly with medical attention to change it back to a safer pace.
While we were pouring our attention over the woman, a surgical patient was wheeled down the hall, his eyes groggy with fear and pain. I helped tuck him in, take off some orders, spoke with a doctor and darted off to give another patient something for nausea.
This morning at 6 am I helped gently place the body of a woman into a thick blue bag and zip it up. She was elderly and had suffered, her soul had finally allowed itself to soar free.
Her daughter and son in law cried in the hallway with the funeral director who had come to take her with him. She was placed on a thin stretcher. The room was filled with soft light and quiet solitude.
By eight I was in my car praying for peace of mind. By 1:00 pm I was waking up to make coffee, write this blog and get ready to go back to my patients again.