When Colleagues Die

 
This is an "old" poem from thirty years ago. A highly respected, universally loved physician had a cardiac arrest at a nearby tennis court. Paramedics brought him to the hospital for direct delivery to the Cardiac Cath lab and then he was rushed to our Coronary Care ICU. I volunteered to be the receiving nurse. Our new patient was completely unstable, in cardiogenic shock and as soon as he was brought to the room his cardiac rhythm was V.Fib. The code-blue was run for about thirty minutes without success and his loss was a devastating blow to everyone who knew and worked with him.

A couple weeks later, I wrote the following poem.

Our Colleague, Our Friend

The sadness comes and goes
But never really leaves,
Good friends die on our doorstep
And everybody grieves,
Most of us struggle home
Drained to the core of our being,
I was there at his side
And now I am fleeing,
Running and hiding
With a feeling I can't shake,
I want to retire
Because there's too much at stake.

A glass of wine helps
I can rhyme with real meaning,
The feelings tumble out
Without desensitized screening,
I can talk the emotion
Though I don’t know the price,
Will it ever be resolved?
When my soul feels like ice.

There’s so much at stake
But I keep going back,
There are people to care for
And we have the knack,
To reach into their lives
And find a place where we fit,
Everybody’s different
It just takes a little bit,
Of thoughtfulness and attention
To inspire some hope,
But for us, the noble caregivers
How do we cope?

This was the end of the road
The last of all dances,
Where everyone in the room 
Ran out of chances,
And I walked away
Feeling empty and sad,
This unfortunate fellow
A husband and Dad,
And I silently prayed
Until the very end,
Lord, comfort this soul
Of our colleague and friend.

------------------

I still feel the emotion + sadness to this day, every time I read this poem

Back Then

 

Something in the news about the renaming of a planetary observation platform (telescope) caused me to think about the advances in the science of human medicine. I have worked in healthcare more than forty years and have witnessed all kinds of great ideas, advancements, groundbreaking therapies, medications that came and left due to dangerous side effects and so on. Some inventions were worth keeping and some were cast aside.

Persons of all disciplines must be careful how they view past history and try not to bash it too much. After all, your own history might become controversial later on too. 

We did a lot of things back then

That we don’t do now,

Heck, we didn’t even have the science

To clone a cow.

So don’t take it upon yourself

To destroy our reputations,

We saved thousands of lives

And deserve salutations.

Food Poisoning

 
I suspect everyone has had a bout of food poisoning. In 2008 at the hospital there was an annual event breakfast, where the Physicians cooked and served other staff members. I opted for the pancakes and potatoes and about an hour after arriving at home, my GI tract rejected the recent input. 

This current poem describes a different incident and it was only 4 days ago. Packaged salsa from the new neighborhood grocery store. However, the disturbing GI development occurred soon after arriving at the ACLS renewal the next morning; that was unexpected!

I think I got food poisoning
From yesterday’s Salsa,
The substance coming out of me
Looked like finely ground balsa,
I can not think of any
Other probable cause,
It was an unwelcome incident
Giving a momentary pause.

Now it’s three hours later
And I wonder what will happen,
When I return home
Will there be more bouts of crappen?
Well one thing for certain
I won’t buy that stuff again,
Unless I need to prep for a colonoscopy
That’s the only time when.

Randy Grandpa's

 

It's the new year and I have two new poems having something to do with S-E X. 
Luckily, it has to do with our patients and of course, nothing about me.

Randy Grandpa's
They exist,
But the ones who bragged at the hospital
Were boorish and probably not kissed,
After a procedure
They would ask about sex,
I might reply, you can do it with yourself
Without any protects.

Taboo Subject

 

Here is something I never wrote about in all of the years. A topic that was gossiped about because somebody is doing it somewhere and that's just how it is. The "what everybody knows" taboo subject.

If in someway you-the-reader are offended by my selection of pronouns.........just do a switcheroo in your brain.

Opposite the hospital
There is a Catholic church,
He is keeping an eye on you
Yes, Jesus on his perch,
He knows what you are doing
He knows when you’re afraid,
And the smile on Doctor’s face?
Suggests he just got his bed made.

Check the Residents sleep room
Look for contraband,
If you find some throw away wrappers
Then you’ll understand,
That after flirting for the past eight weeks 
With that hottie over on tower-7;
I bet Jesus over at the Catholic church
Is thinking, “Now you’ve had a glimpse of heaven”.

Stealthy Healer

 
I have written about things like this over the years, but not a lot. When unexplainable (not yet well understood in our science) things happen (and they do), we Nurses don't talk about it much. I have seen people clinically designated as dead, absolutely flatline, named dead by an Emergency Room Doctor, without having CPR, allowed to die as a DNR...........come back to life at least 20 minutes later. Yes; I was there and at that time, I was a Respiratory Therapist in 1982 in an ICU (there we at least four other witnesses) I have seen folks talk to their ancestors and I have felt souls leave the room. Some of you have also witnessed these things. Our mainstream science is still in its infancy; time will come (many, many years forward) and there will be answers to these oddities, that will no longer be couched in explanations regarding Psychiatry. 

And now, let's talk about healing. After all, healing is the role that millions of persons have been drawn to perform in a variety of settings. Most of that business has been lodged in our cultural memory and experience. Modern medicine is just that; relatively new and measurable. As of yet, although it looks really technical and eye-catching, modern medicine ignores much of what has already been deeply studied for millenia.

Nurses are Healers and some of them have extra training or innate genetic healing memory. Can I prove that? No; but you can not disprove it, either. 

Perhaps the healer is aware

They have so much power,

They realize

They can only expend a 

Little bit per hour,

Such that others won't notice

During the moments of observation,

If Joe Bob jumps out of bed

Good Lord! Consternation!

He might say

"Well, all I remember is a blinding light,

When this guy who says he's a Nurse

Held my hand super tight,

And that's all I remember

Until I awoke in this bed,

Won't somebody tell me what's going on

Damn, I thought I was dead!"

Healer Nurses

Well, that’s what we do,

Although I might be trained

I’m no better than you.

Your Grandma may have been a Shaman

It’s a bloodline, maternal,

Just keep it on the lowdown

Perhaps record it in a journal.

I studied Reiki, Acupressure

Tuina massage and Wuji Gong,

Quite a few other things

Plus a Nursing degree as a follow along,

And when I applied techniques of healing

They were a mishmash of all of the above,

After all, how does one heal?

It is always about Love.

Blood Saints

 

This is the part where I say a big Thank You to those folks who work in Blood banks and Donation Centers and all of the great work they do. 

And this is the true story of a first-time blood donor.

Blood Saints

To the team 
That took such good care of my wife,
After she was stabbed by that needle
That looked as big as a knife,
Wifey told me she felt good
No problems had occurred,
But then she passed out
When her tea was being stirred.

For a first time impression
That was incomparable,
From her perspective
It was somewhat unbearable,
To get tossed to the floor
Then placed on a mat,
If she had been awake
She wouldn’t agree with that.

Suffice to say
The Blood Saints responded quickly,
As soon as I called out
"She's dizzy, hot and sickly",
As they came to our table
It was lights out for my spouse,
Not a brain cell was stirring
In dear Lhakpa's house.

I got out of their way
They were an efficient crew,
Although I checked for a pulse
That's what good husbands do,
Who are planning the next move
In this kind of game,
Let the rescuers do their thing
So the husband won’t get the blame.

And a great job they did
Over the course of the next hour,
They helped her wake up
So she could drink a whisky-sour,
It was a remedy we never used
When I worked in critical-care,
But those Blood Saints are so powerful
My wife is now breathing air.

Vitalant probably discourages
Monetary awards,
It is not in the bylaws
Nor in the Geneva Accords,
But having worked in the industry
I know the things they appreciate,
Yes, coffee and chocolate
Are never too late.

What Nurses Do At Home

 

We Nurses know how to bend the rules at work, so I know for a fact we do it at home as well. But heaven forbid, there is certainly stuff we won't say in front of our family.

Things I Can’t Tell My Family

Things I can't tell my family
About that toothpaste cap,
I dropped it into the toilet
That's not the same as on my lap,
I didn't want to throw it away
The toothpaste might dry up,
So I placed it in the UV sterilizer
Then I soaked it in an alcohol cup.

I’m pretty sure the e-coli
The clostridium and staphylococcus,
Was rendered completely inactive
Unlike a toilet sourced in Caracas,
And truthfully the cap only dunked
In the water for a tenth of a minute,
I’m absolutely sure it was sterilized
Not an inkling of doubt of what’s in it.

1/23/22

The story that belongs to the next post

 

In 2014 I had a position in a very busy Diagnostic Cardiology unit. We did pre-op and post-op care and recovery for persons having Cardiac procedures such as Angiograms for heart and peripheral studies as well as acute MI emergencies. Our services also included Dysrhythmia ablations, recoveries for Radiology procedures and also procedural sedation for Bronchoscopy. Strangely, we were not designated as an official surgical recovery area, but we did all kinds of recoveries following general anesthesia. It was crazy. We were also doing recoveries following all kinds of catheter-based heart valve replacements like TAVR, MVVR, Watchman, etc. At the time I was hired, I became the 2nd "ICU" experienced nurse for the unit. 

My story here is regarding a fresh-new-just-graduated RN with no prior hospital experience; this person was completely unqualified to work in our unit. I admit it was hard to find qualified nurses to work in our area; people needed a lot of cardiac experience. So I can't understand at all why this person was hired, except that Management was desperate and the newbie seemed sweet and nice. 

On the day of the event I came to work at 0930, immediately hearing a Doctor demanding to talk to the Charge nurse about the nurse who had been present during a Bronchoscopy. One of our Administrative Charge nurses (she made the decision the day before) and the person who was filling in for her, apparently thought it was reasonable to assign the new inexperienced nurse for the Bronchoscopy. No wonder the Doctor was flaming mad!

I did some precepting with this new nurse and that was a role I was commonly assigned and enjoyed. This new person was the type that always replied "Yes" when asked if he knew how to do a task. One busy evening when I was occupied with a new sedation-recovery, the newbie was staying late to help us. I had a patient that needed to ambulate before discharge to go home. A foley-catheter had been inserted during their procedure. I asked newbie if he knew how to remove a Foley-catheter and he replied, “Yes”. I handed him an empty 10-cc syringe which is necessary to remove the sterile water from the inner tip of the catheter that is located in the bladder. Okay; a few minutes later I noticed him standing at the door of the room I was in. He said, “I need some help, the catheter won’t come out”. I wondered about that and followed him into the room. I asked him if he had removed the water from the catheter balloon, since I did see the syringe out of its package at the bedside. Newbie had a vacant look on his face so I knew he didn’t know jack about removing a Foley catheter.

 Unfortunately, there were quite a few more events just like that, where he had originally said, “Yes, I understand how to do that”. One day he had been assigned to administer sedation for a Cardioversion and the patient became apneic. He didn’t know what to do. Well of course he didn’t; he was untrained, unqualified and had not even had a procedural sedation class. But who was in Charge? Mother-Charge-nurse who loved him. 

Inexperienced

 

What nonsense! This decision
To assign to the neophyte,
Be the Bronchoscopy nurse
Like an untrained boxer in a fight,
Who has had no previous training
What’s there to know? Just make a fist,
Well, the Doctor surely noticed
And he was properly pissed.

I heard about the plan yesterday
When Ma Boss made that dumb decision,
And she wasn’t even here today
To witness the failure of her vision,
Her favorite little acolyte 
Won’t speak up to say, “Not me,
I know that I’m not qualified
I’ve never done it, can’t you see?”

What a team they make, these two
Like mother and son,
The two of them are dangerous
When all is said and done,
She ignores his weakness
And he says “yes” to everything,
Boldly going where he should not
While mother coos and sings.

When I arrived the Doctor was fuming
And spoke his pretty piece,
I totally agreed with him
About the boiling grease,
Then I volunteered my services
For the next bronchoscopy,
An expert for that procedure
Of course, that would be me.

Advanced airway skills?; check
Expert cardiac of course,
Highly trained in procedural sedation
I could anesthetize a horse,
Code-Blue master of renown
A crash and burn magician,
Or just assign the newbie nurse?
Ya, that’s our public mission.

Well, there were no complications
At Bronchoscopy number one,
But I’m sure if that had happened
Mother would still have coddled her son. 

What Every New Nurse Should Know

 

Your first Nursing Instruction in the Hospital.

On Admission
 
The most important thing
That we explain,
It's not the heart
It's not the brain,
It's not the
End of life decision,
It's the wired remote
To the television.
 
What is more important
Than our Nursing role?
The channel-choosing
Volume control,
But heed my warning
You better listen, right now,
That Nurse-call button?
Don't teach them how!

Remember Tamiflu in 2009?

  

Here we are again with another Fluish dilemma. I wrote about it in 2009.

Tamiflu
 

I got myself to thinking
Why they call it Tamiflu,
The aggravating aching joints
Are what come over you,
When you fail to take precautions
In the presence of the beast,
I'm warning you be careful
Cover your ears to say the least.
 
The Tamiflu vaccine
Is highly recommended,
It offers wide protection
In the case that you're dead ended,
In the hallway near the kitchen
By the linen cart and more,
The Tamiflu vaccine, my friend
Will even up the score.
 
It was tested in the morning
It was trialed in the night,
Yes, the Tamiflu protection
Was clearly out of sight,
A shield of cosmic ions
Floats gently around your face,
So the Tamiflu infection
Can not violate your space.
 
Supplies are currently limited
While demand is ever growing,
The Tamiflu is spreading
Despite everybody knowing,
That the best way to prevent it
Is avoidance at all cost,
If Tamiflu gets a hold of you
Why surely you'll be lost.

How I was Blessed One Time

Gesundheit !

I wonder sometimes
What stories I'll tell,
On my way to Heaven
Not heading for Hell,
Some might think I am crazy
The things that I'm saying,
But if you are religious
I know that you're praying.

At work that one night
I performed some good feat,
The nurse that I helped said
God bless you, Pete,
And it caused me to wonder
If she somehow had the power,
Bestowed on her by God
To bless me that hour.

I didn't notice any difference
That a blessing could have made,
Perhaps the blessing is in storage
To be sometime later played,
To my better advantage
In a time of greater need,
Like when I stick myself with a needle
Causing me to bleed.

What makes people think
They can randomly send a blessing,
As personal agents of God
It's almost depressing,
Because that's what the whackos say
Before they poison their flock,
It fills me with trepidation
As I prepare for the blessing shock.

Who knows what it means
When you're blessed for a sneeze,
Though I've always preferred
"Gesundheit", if you please,
That kind German wish
To offer me good health,
But I'd really prefer ten dollars
And wish me good wealth.

 

Heavy Lifting

 

In the trenches of bedside nursing everything is like the movie scenario presented in "Groundhog Day". The same events happening over and over and over and so on, until somebody realizes the way to get out. 

Nursing exists in its own Groundhog Day. I've been writing about the same topics every decade with only nuances of change. I have a lot of poems regarding the difficulty (logistics) of Nursing care with very weighty people. However, it is worth noting that in 1978 when I began a healthcare career in a hospital, the prevalence of morbid obesity was quite low. (Major medical center in Los Angeles).

Here I address the claim that hospitals are looking out for us and providing Lift Equipment and making it available to everywhere in the hospital (but not everywhere at any given moment)

Buxom and Girth

Dear Bertha with the buxom bosom

Had sepsis, pneumonia and shock,

To keep her alive we infused 30 liters

Adding four-stone in four hours on the clock,

Each turn in the bed for her skin care

‘Twould take the muscles of three mighty nurses,

Pausing to share a reflection

And sort out their favorite curses.

With a gnashing of teeth and straining of spine

These three groaned in triplicate unity,

Knowing quite well if they busted their backs

The hospital would deny with impunity,

Management argues we have the equipment

To maneuver the oversized clients,

They blame us for slack or impatience

Without truly understanding the science.

Suffice to say we nurses are tougher

From the keelhaul we had this past decade,

Throw anything at us and we will just cuss

We don’t succumb to the brute or the blade,

Better to back Nurses than Wall Street

Unlike a bitcoin account, we add worth,

Protect the nurses who are the backbone of the workforce

In this arena of buxom and girth.

Prognostic Lament

 

Perpetual pandemic? Not likely. However, it is going on far longer than the average bear can tolerate or understand. I read the tea leaves today and this is what came through via Haiku. 

Please Bro, make it stop
Covid is such a bummer,
So tired of the idiots.

Price-Check Incontinence

 

When you work in healthcare, whether you take care of babies or adults, the likelihood is that you (like the rest of us) have had it up to your ears in bodily secretions. I won't write the names of these things because I would rather not trigger a seizure or panic attack in my audience. 

While reviewing the past forty years of writings I realized that the fullest category of poems is that which talks about all the gross stuff. Here is a new one:

Holy crap!
I don't know why I never looked this up before,
How much does a Flexi-Seal cost?
Don't ask; it will blow you out the door.

Heck, those things were flying off the shelf
Back in the MICU,
When 60% of the patients had C-diff
And if you didn't wash your hands enough
So would you.

When I "Googled" Flexi-Seal
It was in the #1 position,
The second listing was Flex Seal
Like the runner up at the audition, 
The first one requires a Doctor's order
And the patient is charged over four hundred bucks,
Whereas Flex Seal costs fifteen dollars
Leaving enough money left over for
Seventeen, 30-per-pack, Chux. 

Nurses are really smart
When faced with adversity they show no fear,
They could easily imagine how to configure a garbage bag
Along with Flex Seal, to the average patient's rear,
Once again my genius ingenuity
Is proven to be without bounds,
Oh, wait a second, I have to get out of here
I think I hear the Sheriff with the hounds.

NurseMart.........just another .99 Cent Store

 

I am a multi-decade ICU nurse and retired from the hospital for three years. Yes folks, I do miss it and I cringe at the reports of what current nurses are experiencing. I know what you know; one of the primary reasons regarding staffing shortages (as are reported today) has to do with the sucky treatment of nurses by hospital administrations. The following is what I wrote in 2008 (and probably ten years earlier too).

If only we were in the business
Like the local grocery store,
We'd earn a flat percentage
For every pill and chore,
Every spoken word of teaching
Every gesture of compassion,
There'd be seasonal variations
Like the latest winter fashions.
 
For special big events
There could be a bonus format,
It would beat the present system
Where we're treated like a doormat,
For example, we could compensate
Events like CPR,
If you succeed and bring them back
You win the big cigar.
 
Your patient was combative
He tried to stab the Candy-Striper,
She’s the daughter of the CEO
You win the keys to his Dodge Viper,
Or you work an extra night shift
Like it’s really no big deal,
Seven patients with infections
Every one of them with difficele,
By morning you’re exhausted
And finally feeling old,
Your boss comes in, says, “Way to go”
And hands you coins of gold.
  
There would be no nursing shortage
If these silly thoughts were true,
Pay us like celebrities
It is long way overdue!

2008

Careful with those words, Boss

I am a certain kind of writer because I pay attention to the usage of words and terms. During my 40+ years in healthcare I paid close attention to the things that were being communicated to me. As a result, I have laughed a lot.

If you work in the hospital you must know about the Johns Hopkins Appraisal Tool for Fall Risk Assessment. At the most recent facility I worked at, it was identified as the Johns Hopkins Tool. If you are a warm blooded adult, you may be aware that there are alternative definitions for the term "tool". Sometimes I wonder who is sitting on the panel of professionals, when they all agree on the naming of something. It reminds me of the acronym of SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation); now consider what FUBAR alludes to: Effed Up Beyond All Repair. 

Johns Hopkins Tool

I don't think I want to know
About Johns Hopkins tool,
I may be a Nurse
But I'm not a fool,
To be poking around
In his business that way,
I'd rather read a report
Than see that tool, any day.
 
I really don't care
About Johns Hopkins tool,
I learned all about that stuff
Way back in school,
And if he wanted us to know
Don'tcha think he'd send a letter,
Nope, I don't want to see it
'Cuz it don't get any better.
 
You see, I don't understand
How seeing Johns Hopkins tool,
Will make me any smarter
And I'm already cool,
So what could be the point
Of this mandatory class?
It better not be something
About Johns Hopkins ass!

New Poem - Old Problem

 

Bullying, harassment, threatening behaviors definitely do occur in the Tribe of Nursing. There were numerous times over the years where I experienced bullying and/or harassment. Most of those times I blatantly ignored it and went on my way. My method to deal with it was to become better qualified and more valuable, such that I received a more favorable status. 

Now, I can put up with harassment about three times and then, I fight back. The event described in the poem below did result in a conference with my Nurse Manager and Charge-nurse regarding my outburst of aberrant behavior. Fortunately, my nurse adversary was just acting the way she frequently did with other persons. I was the catalyst for her soon-to-be, future departure.

I was better than some
No worse than others
Perhaps the same as a mythical creature,
All the tools that I owned
I brought to the table,
Some complained about a singular feature,
I might propose, a better solution
And offer it up with a question,
Apparently that ruffled 
A couple chicks feathers
Upsetting their delicate digestion.

After absorbing a singular attack
From a colleague at work one night,
I silently decided enough is enough
The next time I will openly fight,
And sure as sure in a couple more weeks 
During night-to-dayshift-report,
Bianca the weirdo demanded details unneeded
I exploded like a gun at the fort.

I slammed the chart on the table
‘Twas like a gunshot in a crowded mall,
All heads turned in our direction
As if waiting for the bodies to fall,
And fall they did, when I demanded 
"Bianca, just take my report",
I felt a silent collective agreement
Bianca’s harassment did abruptly abort.

When DNR is revoked for a few hours

 
Many times I witnessed this sorry state of affairs; the person who is identified as DNR and then, he or she is not allowed to die. Yes, it is true. A DNR designated patient is coerced / urged / guided to undergo some kind of safe surgery and the surgeon declares that the DNR designation is "suspended" during the surgical procedure. This is where doctors think they are gods; where nothing could possibly go wrong that they can't handle. Oops, Mr. Billy coded on the table and the team can't possibly let him die. Well, the primary reason for that has to do with the Physician, the medical practice and the hospital reputation status. It doesn't look good when patients die during surgery. And there you go, Mr. DNR was not allowed to die and quite likely his QOL is now worse than it was preop. In fact, he might suffer fifty times more on the way to his natural death.

Free Resuscitation

When I got too old
To drive my car,
My doctor made me
A DNR,
But when I went in
For my surgery,
They offered resuscitation
Completely free.

That's a heck of a deal
The surgeon said,
If you crump on the table
We'll bring you back from the dead,
Because we don't want people dying
In our operation room,
It's bad for our reputation
It's a flippin', dollar doom.

But worry not, sir
There ain't nobody better,
We operate by the book
Down to the last letter,
And the gist of all this talk
Is about risks and regulations,
You'll come through with flying colors
And standing ovations.

So you did poorly, after surgery
Well, it's clearly not our fault,
We performed what we promised
And you didn't tell us to halt,
When you had the opportunity
Before morbidity and mortality,
Would get the upper hand
And you'd become a fatality.

You should have put your foot down
And stayed a DNR,
Before you let that doctor
Be the driver in your car.