I posted this story at allnurses.com and thought I would share it here with you all. There is a section to post your nursing stories about patients so I posted instead about my experance as a patient.
I was injured at the age of nine when a mosquito bite became infected and turned into cellulitus. three weeks later I developed oseomylitis in my right femur which started many years of surgeries and long hospitalization in Shriners. For now I won't say which one. I spent from 1973-1980 in and out of Shriners hospital (I was injured in 1972).... the longest admission was 13 months. It's where I got my first kiss, met my first girl friend, experienced the death of a close friend my age and met kids just like me... that could do some AMAZING THINGS! The story I'll share is this one, one that puts a human face on health care workers and, as I watched that Randy Pausch video last night (the last lecture) reminds me that nothing is more important than kids and what we pass on to them in lessons that we learned in our life (head fake #2). So relax, grab some coffee and read on.
I have some time now, my wife is away taking ACLS. She hasn't taken it in 18 years! Our business is failing (thanks to this wonderful economy.. GW Bush) and she has to go back to hospital nursing after being out for 17 years! So here I go.
It was summer, I think about 1978. After my third hip replacements failed and my third revision to the cup failed also, I was being "serial casted" to reduce the flexion contracture of 55 degrees in my right leg. Every week or two I had to go back to the casting room and be placed on the spika table, have the old cast removed, 2-3 residents would force my leg down to stretch the tendons (sending me screaming in pain) and then they would recast me in another hip spika. This went on for about 7 months.
The grounds outside of Shriners was beautiful. The apple orchard attracted deer every night that would feed on the fallen and fermenting apples. The nurses and residents would push us kids in wheelchairs, gurneys, beds or even carry us out to the ball field to watch the deer or to just play.
Leonard Skenard was just becoming popular. The residents and aides had a little party planed for us this day out by this ball field back by the lawn shed on a hot summer day. We had a picnic complete with a baseball game. I was on a wheeled gurney, on my stomach so I could wheel myself. I didn't play baseball that day but watched my friends run on stumps (without there prosthetics) and those who could run, pushed a child bound to a wheelchair after he hit the ball around the bases.
Toward the end of the day, we all were hot. The resident broke out baskets of water balloons and we got into a huge water fight.... not the kind of thing that mixes well in those days with plaster cast! When we were done... we lined up at the casting room (the smell I can still remember of silver nitrate, pedals of lambs skin and dead skin flaking off or a dirty wet cast) to have all of our cast changed... as they got so wet they softened and were in risk of falling apart. The residents stayed up late that night, changing all of our cast. the Chief of Staff never found out and we never told on them.
That day we got to act as kids again, if only for a few moments we secured our time in line in the casting room to pay for our fun. We never did that again. I feared the casting table for many years, the small spike that balances a patient while the are entombed in plaster is cold and hurts. But I faced it that time with honor and was glad that theses resident treated us as kids not as patients.