Night Nurse: Just Call Me Grace

**VivaLasViejas**, ASN, RN

I'm not kidding.

Now, I have been blessed with a good many talents, but the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time is not among them. My mother used to say I could trip over smoke. I'd walk over to a window to look outside and knock myself half-senseless when my forehead got there a split second before the rest of me. I once even lost my balance in an outhouse and dropped a five-cell flashlight down the hole during my one and only camping trip with friends. It's probably still down there, lit. That little trick earned me hostile glares for the rest of the weekend, as well as the nickname "Grace".

So, as the reader may well imagine, nursing presents a wide range of pitfalls for those of us who are 'fluffy' and have never quite mastered the art of proprioception.

This particular incident, for which I am still somewhat famous among my former co-workers, occurred during the Summer of 1999 on a sweltering August night. It was the kind of shift every nurse dreads: there was a full moon, and predictably, the ER was getting slammed with the customary assortment of MVAs, assault victims, and the intoxicated. Needless to say, we were running at top speed up on the floors to accommodate the flood of admissions......." running" being the operative term. And that is NEVER good news for someone like me.

About four AM, an aide and I went into room 218 to check on one of our more aggressive detox patients, who---after several generous doses of Vitamin "A"---had finally calmed down and gone to sleep. Not wanting to turn on the light and risk awakening him, I used the moonlight streaming through the window to assess his respirations and check his IV while the aide tidied up the bathroom. Unfortunately, I didn't see the full water pitcher perched on the edge of the bedside table........and when I turned around to leave, my elbow knocked it to the floor. SPLASH!

I should have known that this was only a sign of things to come. I opened a cabinet to look for some towels I could throw down to sop up some of the water while waiting for the aide to get the mop.....only to have dozens of paper drinking cups tumble out onto my head. In the process of playing 52-pickup, I bumped my head on the corner of the open door, which made me see stars and almost sent me sprawling.

Still, my patient snored on and undoubtedly would have continued to do so if I didn't have the bad luck to trip over his catheter tubing while mopping the floor, giving it a good yank---OUCH. I then delivered the coup-de-grace by backing into an enormous flower arrangement, which (naturally) sent it to the linoleum floor with a horrendous crash that woke up not only my patient but everyone on that end of the unit.

For some reason, this disaster struck me funny, and I broke up. I couldn't help myself. I laughed so hard that tears actually squirted out of my eyes. This, of course, was appreciated by no one except for my aide, who was also cackling madly as she helped me sweep up shards of glass and mop up yet another puddle. The next morning I was called into the nursing supervisor's office and sternly reprimanded for being the source of complaints about "all the noise and laughing on night shift". But even though I'm older now and have learned to control those rotten giggles a little better---especially when giving in to them would be inappropriate---I still chuckle at the memory of that night, for I know it could happen again, anytime, anywhere. After all, they don't call me "Grace" for nothing! :wink2:

Night Nurse: Just Call Me Grace

About VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN

More Like This