Inevitability
I am dreading going to work today. My boss may know I have said something now and I am worried she takes it out on me. I wander slowly into the ward looking down at the highly polished floor. A cheery smiling Polish cleaner all dressed in green smiles at me and says ‘cheer up miss, it surely is not that bad.’ I smile back knowing that this cleaner is always smiling. I wished I could be so happy in my work. I say hello to him and say that 'I am sure I will be alright.' I always speak to the cleaners, they provide a great service in the hospital and they often get such bad media attention for our hospitals being dirty. Their salary too is terrible. If your hospital is dirty don’t blame the cleaners they are an easy target, it is down to poor staffing and the nurses extended roles. We are supposed to clean up body fluids, mattresses, beds the lot. It is often difficult to clean everything when there is lack of staff. My priorities are the patients and you may argue that cleaning does affect patient health. It does, but if I have a dying patient while at the same time I need to clean a patient locker. My choice is always the patient. If we do not have enough staff then we must always prioritise. It annoys me that they say also that we never wash our hands. Of course we do and who the hell has time to record our frequency of hand washing with statistics, please get a life! Spend the money on getting us some staff please? Oh and one more thing while we are on this subject, I bet those that design hospitals never regularly burn their hands on the hot taps, most of the wards I am in do not have mixer taps and the water is too hot. Come on those doing the research, let me watch you put your hands under a scalding tap. If you do research you need to account for all your intervening variables like scalding hot taps. Oh, well, I have reached the report room and I walk in. I almost sit down when Sister Poppins walks through the door very harshly. She stares at me in a very frightening way. She does not speak, and just keeps staring at me. I feel on edge and so I just stand looking back like the rabbit staring at the headlights. I observe the red blotches around her nose, she must have been blowing it again she always does that. I also see the pink coloured lipstick that has missed her mouth and strayed into the creases up above her lips. Her hair looks neat today but her eyes are filled with rage. I could almost swear she has the rage virus out of the film 28 Weeks but she is doing her best to hide it. There is a whole lot of psychology going on between us. I feel like we are two angry cats sizing each other up. My anger is through being tortured. I feel hate towards her for what she is putting me through and I am filling up with emotion and I want to shout at her. I just want her to treat me like a normal human being. I would love to write here in words what went through my head but somehow this does not come easy and perhaps only those who have been bullied would understand that. We both gently backed away like two cats, not daring to show our backs.
Rebel with a Cause
She walked out the room. Everyone who was sitting down asked each other what that was about. I looked down at the grey carpet and shrugged my shoulders. I was not part of their team because I was ostracised anyway, she had made sure of that. I was always sent away. Today was no different; I walked away along the corridor to a ward I had not been in. I walk in and it is quiet. I am just in time to hear their report. So perfectly put, with good handover sheets and the nurses verbalising the patients’ conditions. I discuss with the nurse who I am working with, our plans for the general organisation of our shift. She comes over as being really nice. She tells me she is from Africa and she has a lovely manner with the patients. I can tell she really enjoys her job; she is a real nursing gem. We coordinate our work well. One thing, I do notice is that this ward shares facilities with the ward next door. A patient asks me for a drink of water and I go to the shared kitchen. I search everywhere for glasses and jugs. There are none other than a tray with many glasses and jugs on a trolley with a big white sheet of paper on top, with writing clearly marked in red pen, “Everything on this trolley is for the use of patients in ward 14 only” So, rather than annoy anyone, I went back to the other nurse and asked what we do for jugs and glasses. She said, that we just need to search around and that the staff on the other ward gets annoyed if we use their equipment. I search everywhere and I go to the main kitchen. All I see are tea cups. This is insane, I am searching everywhere for a container to get a glass of water and there is a trolley with jugs on it. Do we not share the same hospital? So, my patient should become dehydrated and do without water? Not on my duty they won’t. I go back to the kitchen and take a jug and glass from the trolley, feeling like a real rebel. Oh and if they complained when they counted their glasses and jugs I left them a little note to say, ‘I am sorry but I took the glass and jug because I thought we all work for the same NHS and patients come first.’ This insanity is rife in our hospitals. This equipment belongs to our ward and you can’t use it. Let us thrash this nonsense out, so we have a pot of money that goes to the NHS and it obviously gets shared out between services. So, wards have their own budgets and they want to keep what they have bought for their own patients. So, there is perhaps some logic in what they are trying to achieve but it has created room for nonsense and utter misery when trying to care for patients. How about we have a central store in a hospital and if we need equipment we go and get it, that’s more logical. Why are we short of anything in the first place? It’s crazy that we have nurses hoarding sheets, towels and other items to stop it being used by any other wards. Stop this insanity now!
What’s your Poison?
I spend the majority of my shift taking disorientated patients safely back to bed as they go for a wander. Many of them are at risk of falling and are so fragile that if they do fall they will break a bone. I give an elderly patient her medication, she is very confused. She asks me if I am a poisoning her. I smile and pat her gently on the shoulder and say ‘of course not but I am sure it will taste like poison.’ She looks up at my face which is very close to mine as I am leaning over smiling at her. She says, ‘I know you wouldn’t poison me dear, you have a very nice caring face.’ This fills me with warmth. I go through and speak to a male patient who has written some questions for me on a piece of paper. He asks why he is not a candidate for an operation as he has been told by consultants that he will not be fit enough for it. I look at his history and note he has a very bad heart condition. I say that I do not quite know the specifics of what the consultant said but my guess could be due to his heart problems. He informed me of languages he spoke and mentioned his big academic background. I looked at him and could see that he was now very frail. He seemed very proud of his academia. I showed an interest and asked about his languages. I got him to teach me some words and he smiled at his opportunity to use it. He told me I was a real tonic and that nobody in here speaks to him. Sometimes we can be so busy that we just deal with the physical ailments of a person that we ignore the whole person. The man smiled and I wished I could speak longer but had to deal with other patients. It was just nice to see him smile. Smiling is a good healer. It is a pity I could not do more for another patient. The lady was too ill to be resuscitated and would not make it if the doctors made any attempt. This side of nursing can be sad. We need to comfort these patients until their heartbeats are no more. This lady had terminal cancer and there was nothing more that could be done. The other nurse and I noticed how she was deteriorating. I quickly phoned her husband to say that his wife was very poorly and he must come quickly. While awaiting the husband, the patient slowly slipped away while we both held her frail soft hands. There is always an air of serenity and death always emits the same odour but it is not a foul odour, it is just death. We quickly tidied the patient up and changed her clothes to make her presentable. I brushed her hair and gently closed her wide open mouth. Music plays..."Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist, Muse"
Eerie whispers
trapped beneath my pillow
won't let me sleep
your memories
and I know you're in this room
I'm sure I heard you sigh
Floating in between
where our worlds collide
scares the hell out of me
and the end is all I can see
and it scares the hell out of me
and the end is all I can see
and I know the moment's near
and there's nothing you can do
look through a faithless eye
are you afraid to die?
it scares the hell out of me
and the end is all I can see
and it scares the hell out of me
and the end is all I can see
It scares the hell out of me
and the end is all I can see
and it scares the hell out of me
and the end is all I can see
Love Hurts
Birth and death bring opposite emotions but are both inevitable in life. We need to present death to the relatives with great care as it has lasting closure on an individual’s life. When the husband appeared I knew the patient was already dead and so I calmly asked him to come with me to the relatives’ room, knowing I had to tell him the bad news. It is always such a long walk. The silence to the relatives’ room is always so difficult. I imagined their long life together and how difficult it would be for this man left without his wife. I sat him down in the room and I sat close to him. He stared at me searching my face in desperation. I went through the sequence of events and told him with great care. I sat for a little while just listening to him talk while the news digested inside him unfolding like a flower in spring opening up for the first time. Tears rolled from his eyes and I knew my words came like boulders hitting him deep in the heart but I could not lessen them. I could feel my own emotion as usual and the knot in my stomach as I felt my own brown eyes glass over. I put my arm on his shoulder. I said that his wife is waiting on him if he would like to say goodbye. His family joined him as they came rushing up the corridor to hear the bad news. They all broke down in tears. I escorted them to the patient. I put down chairs for them and told them they can spend as long as they like. This was now their time, I patted the husband on the shoulder gently showing I care and left the room. I wanted to wrap my wings around them all and make their hurt go away but love hurts.
I pick up my rucksack and throw it over my shoulder. My shift is finished, my shift was difficult but I worked with a nice nurse. My meeting with my bosses and my union is next week. I wonder what to have for my tea, I have not eaten much today and my mouth is dehydrated as usual, we had no water dispenser let alone a cup to drink out today. I drive off, thinking of the relatives I left behind and how they will be left to cope. I turn on music by Incubus and the song is Love Hurts.
Tonight we drink to youth
And holding fast to truth
don't want to lose what I had as a boy
My heart still has a beat
But love is now a feat
(as common as a cold day in LA)
Sometimes when I'm alone I wonder
Is there a spell that I am under
Keeping me from seeing the real thing
Love hurts.....
But sometimes it's a good hurt
And it feels like I'm alive
Love sings
When it transcends the bad things
Have a heart and try me
'Cause without love I won't survive.
I'm fettered and abused
Stand naked and accused
Should I surface this one man submarine
I only want the truth
So tonight we drink to youth
I'll never lose what I had as a boy
Sometimes when I'm alone, I wonder
Is there a spell that I am under
Keeping me from seeing the real thing
Love hurts
But sometimes it's a good hurt
And it feels like I'm alive
Love sings
When it transcends the bad things
Have a heart and try me
'Cause without love I won't survive
Love hurts
But sometimes it's a good hurt
And it feels like I'm alive
Love sings
When it transcends the bad things
Have a heart and try me
'Cause without love I won't survive
Love hurts, oh
Love hurts
Without love I won't survive
Love hurts, oh
Love hurts
Without love I won't survive
