Saturday Stories

I enjoy working with neurologic (brain) patients, specifically head injuries. I enjoy it because their condition changes rapidly, often for the better. I like to see the change- the difference I am making. They are often also very entertaining. : )

One such patient I had while I was working my way through college as a nurse's aid. She had been found unconscious on the side of the road by an ambulance. I still don't know how she got there. It was my job to bathe her and check her vital signs every two hours and report to the nurse. They had placed a small tube through her nose into her stomach to feed her. For a day and a half she just slept there, then she began to come around. At first she only moaned when I moved her, but soon she was moving on her own. At that point she started to pull on her IV and other tubes so I was assigned to sit with her in her room all day and keep her out of trouble. It takes a lot of patience to work with someone with a brain injury because they are very forgetful. I'm quite sure that I said, "Don't pull that!" every two minutes for a couple of hours...

Once she began to talk I had a constant stream of amusement: "Look at all those pretty fishes out the window!" We were on the ninth floor in Tulsa, but she told me this was a wonderful cruise. Every two hours we would go over who she was and what day it was and where we were and who was president. She didn't remember any of it for about three days. Every so often she would sit up and say, "There goes that pretty kitty cat again!"

Once she began to swallow without choking I was allowed to pull the tube out of her nose. I let her have the satisfaction since she had been trying for two days. Then began the adventure that was meal time. She hadn't quite got her balance and coordination back yet, so she made a big mess and every little while she would just fall over in a random direction. I always stood very close.

Then the day came when she was well enough to not need to be watched every minute. The maintenance department brought up a "mesh bed". It was basically a large play pen that fit over the bed frame and zipped close from the outside. This would prevent her from getting out of bed on her own and falling. I knew that sometimes patients did not like this confinement, and believing that perception is a big part of a person's reality; I said in an eager voice, "You're going to get a new bed today! It is a very pretty blue bed!"

"Ooohh!" she was entranced when they brought it in. Mission accomplished. I took care of her for a couple more days and she was ready to go home. I had very much enjoyed helping her to recover and was happy-sad to see her go.