Mr. Barns
I remember the day well. Walking into the room I noticed that it was cold and sterile, even for a hospital room. I guess that happens when a patient has no family or friends, the staff likes to put them in the crappy room.
I felt sorry for Mr. Barns, not because he had no friends or family to come visit, but mainly for the huge gash on his leg. I sat at his bed side watching him sleep and observed a large gob of goo on his face. As I sat there watching him the voice of an old patient entered my mind. 'I hate it when people watch me sleep. I never know if I am drooling.'
I think that Mr. Barns would be ok with me watching him, he was not drooling. Then I realized why I had walked into the room. I had to check on Mr. Barns, but then I had a new issue facing me. The goo.
What was the goo? Why was it on his face? Who put it there? I could only deal with one question at a time. So I tackled the issue of trying to figure out what the goo was. I touched it. It was slimy. I have felt slimy things like that before, so it was not odd or foreign to me. You see, I am as nurse, I have touched many slimy things. I gathered my nerves and took a small sniff at first. Who knows it could had a fowl odor, lucky for me, it did not.
I cleaned off my hand and went back to the far reaches of my mind to pull out some of the useless things that I leaned in nursing school, I looked at his chart. It took me a little bit to read the chart, not because I did not know how to read it, but my God, do these doctors not know how to write? Their hand writing is like an attorney, you can't read it.
I began to wonder how many people on are death row because someone could not read an attorney's hand writing. Poor guy, to have to sit in a cell and do nothing but think about dying and all you did was run a red light. I guess justice is blind.
I was finally able to figure out the chart and what was on Mr. Barns. It was a triple antibiotic ointment! Why were they applying to three times a day? Oh, because the chart said to. Well that one was easy to figure out.
I now knew what the goo was, now I had to figure out why it was on his face. This one was going to take me a little longer to figure out.
Again I reached way back into the recesses of my mind. I guess that I did not go back far enough, because nothing was coming to me. Then like a bolt of lightening, it hit me! I looked at his chart again to see if he had any more injuries when he came in. Darn, he didn’t, just the gash in his leg.
I kept digging, nothing. I decided to move on to the next issue, who put it there? That was an easy one, a no brainer really. He didn’t have friends or family that came to visit, so it had to be someone on the hospital staff. But who? I don’t care. If I would have to guess it would have to be the guy that flunked anatomy, twice.
The last thing that I had to figure out was what should I do? Remove it and put the poor guy at risk of dying? But if I leave it he could over dose, have a seizure, his toes would curl up so tight that it would block the blood flow to his brain and certain death.
Then what if I took it off and his eyes filled with blood and he began to bleed internally through his ears? That would just be gross, then there would be a mess that would have to be cleaned up. Not to mention the malpractice law suit.
What do I do? Should I go ask The Shadow? Can’t do that, I have to show her that I can do this job. I had to take a chance. I made a decision.
I put on a pair of gloves, got a paper towel and wiped off the goo. Mr. Barns took a deep breath. That scared me, so I made a note on his chart but signed someone else’s name and ran out of the room.
I found out later that Mr. Barns passed away. Not from my actions on that cold spring day, but from the infection that formed in the untreated gash in his leg.
copy write 2010
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