NursingZen

For July 4th, I partied as though I didn’t have to be up at 5 a.m for my first day of clinicals at the hospital. Excitement and a hangover woke up my mind at 4:30 a.m. I slowly brought my body out of stasis with three unbearably stiff sun salutations.

6:45 a.m. at the hospital: The buzz around the nurse’s station was the true wake-up call. Until then it hadn’t fully registered in my mind that there were nurses working while I slept, and care was truly being provided 24 hours a day.

I also never realized how many hip, young, good-looking nurses there could be in one place. Dang. Meanwhile, we students looked liked tired lemmings.

The preceptor I was assigned to fit the former description too. She was nice but not sweet, a badass but not a hard-ass. She could be professional one minute, then shoot off a wisecrack or flippant remark another minute. I could tell she wasn’t thrilled to have someone shadowing her for–how did she put it—“the rest of our lives”—but she knew it was important and she took me on seriously and with intention.

Hour 1, 8 a.m.: My preceptor gets organized for her four patients of the day. Night-shift nurses give reports on patients to morning-shift nurses. Good communication and listening are essential.

Hour 2, 9 a.m.: My preceptor helps an obese (400-pound) woman on to her bathroom commode. She then conveniently says, “You can do her blood pressure, right? I have to go do something,” and runs off. While the patient has a long and labored No. 2 in the commode, I tryto take her blood pressure. But the cuff won’t fit properly. I don’t know what to do–Am I supposed to leave her to shit in peace? Stand there and keep her company? Should I leave? Should I keep trying to take her blood pressure?–I probably choose to do the most naive thing possible: I remain in the room and make small talk. While she sat on the john. My rationale is that I should get used to the smell of someone else’s poop sooner than later. In retrospect, though, I’m not sure if there was any “therapeutic” rationale for me to be in that room at that time.

Hour 3, 10 a.m.: My feet and lower back are starting to kill me. I look at the clock and laugh that it’s only 10 a.m.

“My” patients this week were:

• a spunky, 60 year old German woman with a deep wound/abscess in her knee. During a dressing change she gladly showed me how deep her wound was by poking a cotton-swab stick right into it; it went in about 3 inches.
• an 80+ year old Chinese woman in palliative care. This means she was no longer being treated for her cancer but was being allowed to die naturally and as comfortably as possible. I talked with her awesome daughter in Chinese. I later learned that their family owns one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in SF.
• a 56-year-old man with very aggressive thyroid cancer. In the 2 days I saw him he went from upbeat and talkative to no longer able to swallow. His wife, his high school sweetheart, was with him the whole time.
• the 30-year-old 400+ pound woman who was going on her 4th week in the hospital, more for psychosocial treatment than medical.