Nurses are angels.
OK, that’s all. See you next week.
Oh, you want more? Well, OK, I can try to elaborate on that theme, but you probably know it already.
I truly cannot fathom why anyone would willingly spend years studying incomprehensible subjects like chemistry to have a nursing career, where you ultimately spend far too much of your time dealing with bodily effluvia.
Let’s face it, most of us spend a significant amount of time trying to avoid other people’s bodily fluids, even if we steeled ourselves to endure them daily as parents.
Walking down Bourbon Street in New Orleans, you’ll detour across the street to avoid that aromatic spot of congealing vomit on the sidewalk — which despite the city’s murder rate is actually one of the main dangers there.
Yet nurses voluntarily wade into a world that most of us find intolerable. I’m going to spare you — and not go through a litany of nauseating things that they deal with daily, (send me $1 please) but I know you can imagine them yourself.
Many nurses exist in a state of high stress, where one mistake could kill a patient and get them sued or at least fired. No matter how long their shifts or how tired they are, they’re held to a standard of perfect recall, wisdom and judgment, by the general public if not by their colleagues. Pretty sure I would kill someone on my first day, since I can’t even remember where I put my phone.
Having been a patient myself more times than I care to remember, I can attest that they have to put up with rude, surly people, sometimes being ordered around like servants when in fact they’re highly trained professionals. And that’s just from the doctors.
The patients can be even worse. When my father was dying in the cancer ward of a hospital in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he became such a complaining curmudgeon, I was mortified for the nurses who had to help him. Dad was so out of it that he didn’t really know what he was doing, and it was impossible to scold him, so I just apologized 100 times a day. And who knows what a complainer I become when I’m in the hospital myself?
That’s when I realized that anyone who willingly took that job had to be an angel in disguise.
Remember the political flap 20 years ago, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to oppose nurses and teachers and their unions over issues like school funding, teacher tenure and hospital staffing ratios?
I’m no political pundit, but I remember shaking my head at the time and thinking, “Arnie, Arnie, Arnie. You are going after two of the most beloved groups in America. Not your best decision.” And, indeed, his initiatives were dealt a powerful defeat from which he never entirely recovered.
Having been in the hospital a time or two myself, first with a brain tumor and then with that pesky thing called cancer, I experienced first-hand the small kindnesses of nurses who went out of their way to do things for me that made my life there more bearable.
When I had brain surgery to remove a benign tumor, they couldn’t give me anything for the pain except Tylenol. Yeah. Imagine having your skull cut open and then getting Tylenol afterward. Thankfully, they didn’t have to shave off all my long hair, but afterward it was heavy and pulled on the incision. This hurt like the devil every time I moved.
But then an ICU nurse noticed my discomfort. “I’m going to find a scrunchy to put up your hair,” she announced. She spent her breaks for the rest of the day running around the hospital, finding a scrunchy for me. When she returned and pulled back my hair, the relief was immediate and blessed.
Later that same day, she brought me an ice pack to put on the incision. Again, blessed, blessed relief. Today, we all rely on pills for everything. But sometimes old-fashioned methods like ice packs can work even better. Again, thank you.
A practical nurse going off her shift noticed my misery and need to take a shower, when I couldn’t even stand up alone. On her own time, she got me up into the shower and helped me wash the dried blood out of my matted hair, which made me feel infinitely better. Again, not her job. Just an angel.
If you’re a nurse and you’re reading this, thank you for coming down from heaven. During the pandemic, you even risked your life for us. Next time I go to the hospital, I’ll bring you some chocolate.
Want to write to me? Tell me a brief story about how a nurse helped you, and I might put it in a future column. Email me at mfisher@scng.com. You can also find me at facebook.com/FrumpyMiddleagedMom.