By 0500 we heard our tanks were moving back, leaving us unprotected. I was too naive—and too busy—to be scared.
At 0700 I went off duty as I heard the colonel yelling into the inadequate telephone, “This is Red Hot Six. This is Red Hot Six,” but I was too exhausted to be alarmed. I broke the ice on some water in my mess cup and brushed my teeth, put on my pajamas, crawled into my freezing mummy bag, pulled the blankets over my head, and fell asleep. At 0900, a nurse shook me and yelled, “Get dressed, pack up, and go back on duty so the day nurses can get packed. We’re moving out.”
The stench of gangrene greeted me as I walked into an isolation room. Some American prisoners had been rescued from the North Korean camp. Their feet were badly frozen, black, and gangrenous. They undoubtedly would have to be amputated later. As each new bunch of casualties came in, I asked them where they had been hit. One group said, “We were ambushed between Kunuri and Sunchon,” which meant we were nearly surrounded. We certainly couldn’t escape the way we had arrived, but had to take a much longer route in order to get to Pyongyang.
Nurses usually rode in ambulances when we moved, but this time all the ambulances were needed to evacuate the patients to a small, nearby airstrip where C-47s flew all the patients out. So we nurses rode in the back of an army truck, our knees crowded against the generator, which took up the center space. I kept my eyes on the mountainous horizon, thinking any minute the Chinese in their off-white quilted cotton uniforms would come swarming like ants to devour us. Travel was very slow on the clogged, bumpy dirt roads. It seemed we were always being delayed. At one point, the colonel chose to take the right fork in the road. We heard later that troops and convoys who took the left fork were trapped at a Communist roadblock, nearly all of them killed or taken prisoner.
We stopped briefly at the 8063 MASH for dinner. They were relieved that we hadn’t been captured.We continued on during the long cold night, all of us uncomfortably cramped in the truck, wondering if we’d make it out alive.
We finally arrived at the 171st Evacuation Hospital in Pyongyang at 0300. The next day we moved and set up our evacuation hospital in South Korea.
We arrived there at lunchtime and, while eating in their mess hall, overheard the conversation at the next table.
“Isn’t it terrible! All the nurses in the 8076 MASH were taken prisoner!”
“Are you sure? I heard they were all killed.”
Mary and I turned to face them. “We’re nurses from the 8076 MASH and we’re very much alive.”
Jean Kirnak
Back to Life
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw
As a 911 nurse, I was a part of a well-coordinated team of professionals that systematically assessed and treated cardiac arrests and other life-threatening events. On one particular call, we were dispatched to a pub near a local university to find a man in his late fifties receiving CPR from the fire department.
One of my first duties as the team leader was to assess the quality and effectiveness of the CPR by checking for a pulse. The victim was being intubated by a respiratory therapist, a fireman was doing chest compressions, and the other respiratory therapist was putting electrical leads on his chest. I could not get to his neck to check for a carotid pulse, so I unzipped the man’s pants to gain access to the femoral pulse in his groin area.
After several defibrillator shocks, the man’s pulse stabilized and he was made ready for transport to the nearest hospital. I picked up supplies, empty syringes, and other medications so I could accompany him, and became aware of my surroundings for the first time.
Two male college students sat in a booth immediately adjacent to our resuscitation area. As I was leaving, I heard one of them say to the other, “I think I’d come back to life again, too, if she put her hands in my pants!”
L. Sue Booth
Reprinted by permission of Jonny Hawkins. © 2006 Jonny Hawkins.
Stumbling onto Something Real
Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Victor Hugo
I had just returned to Milwaukee after nine years in Colorado. Discouraged and brokenhearted after a failed engagement, I took a nursing position at a local hospice and enrolled in graduate school. I think that is how I got so many college degrees—whenever my life wasn’t working, I went back to school.
About the third month on the job, a young man named Michael was admitted to the unit. Only thirty-three years old, he was dying of a brain tumor. An engineer and accomplished skydiver,Michael owned a business designing skydiving equipment. I was assigned to be his primary nurse.
I walked down the hall and entered Michael’s room to get a psychosocial history before planning his care. He was reclining in a leather Barcalounger watching TV, his half-eaten tray of lunch food pushed to the side. He was paralyzed on the right side from the tumor; his cane leaned against his chair along with the nurse’s call button.
After introducing myself, Michael made it clear that he preferred to be called by his nickname, Shoobie. He explained that all of his skydiving friends have nicknames: Wishbone, Charlie Oatmeal, Freakbrother, Wildman, and others. Pulling out a picture calendar showing skydivers linked in a star free-fall pattern, Shoobie described how they went to jump meets across the country, often living out of the back of a van.
“See, that’s a ‘twelve-man,’” he explained. “It’s great! I’ve done it all. And I’m not done yet. You see, when I die, I’m going to roller-skate straight down Pikes Peak.” Then he erupted in peels of laughter.
There was a knock on the door and eighteen people walked into the room, several carrying six-packs of beer. With every person in the suite looking at me, Shoobie asked if they could have a party. Never one to worry about rules, I assured them it was fine and closed the door on my way out.
Shoobie—always the host, always in a good mood, joking with his friends—shared many evenings like that with the skydivers. I was impressed at how many nice people he knew and how much they thought of him.
One evening after his friends left, he asked, “Why do you look so sad tonight?”
I soon found myself telling him about my failed engagement, and my history of dating losers.
“You need to find someone, a nice guy; a hero in your life.”
“Yeah, I guess I do need to find a nice guy, but heroes are hard to find.”
“We are all heroes to each other. You have helped me so much; you need to find someone that helps you. Like I said, you need to find a nice guy. Someone like Charlie Oatmeal.”
Laughing out loud, I responded, “Charlie Oatmeal! He’s not my type. He’s too quiet, too soft-spoken. Don’t be silly!”
Talking softly, Shoobie said, “Maybe the type you want isn’t the type you need. Look for what you need.” With that, he got into bed.
I thought carefully about what Shoobie had said. Maybe Shoobie came into my life for a reason, just as I had entered his. Maybe Shoobie was right. Perhaps what I needed wasn’t what I had been looking for.
As we entered the dog days of summer, it was clear that Shoobie was deteriorating. Not as many friends came anymore and Shoobie had limited energy when they did. He began to have more and more days where he slept most of the day, and eventually was barely conscious. There were times the nursing staff thought he would die in his sleep, only to find him sitting up and lucid a couple of hours later.
After one particularly difficult day, the elevator doors opened and I intercepted Charlie Oatmeal as he started down the hall.
“Charlie, Shoobie really isn’t doing very well. You may not want to stay.”
He paused for a minute, and then looked me in the eyes. “Will he know if I am here?”
“Well yes, perhaps. They say even people in a coma can hear. He’ll probably know you’re here.”
“Well, that is good enough for me. He might need me.” He turned and s
tarted down the hall to Shoobie’s room.
Charlie spent the next six hours sitting at the bedside, talking with Shoobie. Holding his hand, he related one skydiving story after another. When free, I went down to sit on the other side of the bed and listen. Occasionally, Shoobie would smile as Charlie talked of jumping nude into the Running Bear Nudist Colony or being stranded in a cornfield, miles from the drop zone.
“You know the best jumpsuits ever made were sewn by Shoobie,” Charlie said to me. Shoobie smiled.
“No, I didn’t know that,” I said softly, watching carefully. Shoobie was right. There was something very special about Charlie. A special kind of person that sits at the side of his dying friend telling stories and making sure he is not alone. I found myself staring at Charlie as he comforted his friend that night. I was struck with the feeling that maybe this was the hero I had been waiting for.
Shoobie died two days later. He was given a skydiver’s burial; the body cremated and the ashes taken to 10,000 feet. Charlie participated in the burial jump and described how the contents from the urn slowly rose in a spiral as a stream of light came down through the clouds.
The next week, Charlie called me and asked me out.
We were married the following spring, and honeymooned in Colorado. I could have sworn I heard roller skates when we were at the summit of Pikes Peak.
Barbara Bartlein
Do That Voodoo That You Do So Well
His eyes said it all. They had to. With a ventilator tube protruding from his mouth, Max couldn’t tell me how awful the pain was, but I knew just by looking into those beautiful blue eyes that it was unbearable.
Max, my husband, had just undergone an eight-hour operation to replace his almost useless liver with one from an anonymous donor who had died just hours before. This incredible gift would give Max the possibility to live longer than his forty years. He would be able to watch our two children grow into adulthood and we would fulfill our dream of growing old together.
At the time Max received his transplant, doctors felt it unwise to give much pain medication after the surgery, giving the new liver a better chance of functioning properly. I’m sure they told us about this when they explained about the surgery but with so many details this one either went unheard—or we just didn’t want to hear it.
That is how I found myself sitting in the recovery room watching the man I loved wracked with pain that no one could do anything to relieve. I felt powerless. I felt frustrated. I felt like I would go crazy. I had visions of running down the halls, screaming at the top of my lungs, and going right out the hospital door. I had never felt so helpless in my life. But Max needed me. I knew I had to pull myself together and do something other than nervously stroke his hand.
Why was I thinking so irrationally? After all, I was no stranger to stress and pain. Then it occurred to me. I knew what to do. I knew how to deal with pain. As a childbirth educator for the last fourteen years, I taught women how to cope with the pain of childbirth—and what pain could be worse than that? I knew the drill—take a deep breath and concentrate on relaxing.
In a soothing, yet firm voice, I said, “Max, you’re going to have to listen to me and do exactly what I say. I believe I can help you deal with the pain.”
This was a risk. Max had little use for our Lamaze classes when we were expecting our first child. In fact, he embarrassed me by falling asleep during most of them. Then, when I trained as a childbirth educator and began teaching classes myself, he used to tease that I was teaching these women “voodoo.”
If I hadn’t been so panicked, I’d probably have chuckled. Max was a “captive audience” and I was going to do my “voodoo” on him.
I began by using a common relaxation exercise. I talked our way through his body telling him to relax first his forehead and then his eyes; his cheeks and then his jaw; his neck and then his shoulders. I told him how he could relax his chest muscles and not fight the ventilator and how he could relax his abdominal muscles to ease the pain there. We went all through his body, relaxing each tight muscle all the way down to his toes.
At first it helped but soon the pain became apparent on his face again. I also could tell by the look in his eyes that he was a bit annoyed with my ordering him around, but I knew I had to keep trying to find something to help.
I then decided to use another pain management technique that works well for laboring women—visualization. I began talking softly about a trip Max and I had taken years before to Martha’s Vineyard. “See the boat ride over to the island and how we fed the seagulls midair.” Then I went on to describe our room in the quaint little bed and breakfast. I talked about our walks along the shore. “Remember how the salty breeze felt on our faces, and how the sand squished beneath our feet?”
My voice was as shaky as I was feeling. But soon I was so lost in the memory that I forgot how scared and helpless I felt. The best part was that I could see that Max was starting to relax too. His face reflected the calmness I could feel flowing through his body. The hand that had tightly gripped mine was now just resting in my palm.
I knew the secret to making this kind of pain management technique really work was to incorporate all the senses in the images. Max needed to smell the smells, hear the sounds, feel the air on his skin, and see the beautiful, blue sky all in his mind’s eye. And he did.
When I could sense that it was harder for him to pay attention and that he was beginning to suffer the pain again, I’d just switch stories. That night we relived every trip we’d ever taken together. When I ran out of those, I began describing trips we had fantasized about.
During that long night, Max would drift off to sleep and I did too. But when the pain woke him, I started in on another travelogue. One nurse even asked if I was his travel agent.
By the next day, Max’s pain had eased and they were able to remove the ventilator. His first words were a scratchy, “I can’t believe you used that stuff on me!”
But the twinkle in his eye thanked me for that “voodoo” that I did so well.
Karen Rowinsky
A Nurse’s Prayer
Lord, as I go to work today
I sense that You are near.
Here on my knees, I bow my head
In hopes that You might hear.
Oh Lord, I’m just a simple nurse
And humbly now I pray
That with Your help, I will make
A difference today.
Let me give them comfort, Lord
At times when things are rough
And give me courage to go on
When I have had enough.
Let me say just one kind word
That, in sadness, brings a smile
And give me time, that with the lonely
I can talk a while.
Let me touch one single life.
Let me ease one single pain.
Let me lend my shoulder to cry upon
When tears freely fall like rain.
Lord, guide my simple words today
When it’s answers that they seek.
Give me strength to carry on
When my body’s tired and weak.
Let me ease one broken heart.
Let me soothe one crying child.
Give me calm when chaos breaks
And everything turns wild.
Ease the shaking of my hands.
My spirit, please renew.
And when it seems there is no hope
Let me put my faith in You.
Let them see compassion, Lord
Each time I shed a tear.
And when, in death, I hold their hand
Let them feel Your presence near.
I ask this all of You, dear Lord
As on my knees, I pray.
But most of all, I ask of You
Help me make it through the day!
Ruth Kephart
5
BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY
There are risks and costs to a program of action.
But they are far less than the long-range risk and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy
The Promise
For the promise is to you and your children and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.
Acts 2:39
It was my fifth year working on the telemetry unit. On this particular day, I was assigned to take care of Mr. E., an American Indian in his late forties. As I read the chart, I remembered him instantly because I had taken care of him before. I was the first nurse to admit him to our unit years ago. He was a father of four, ages six to nineteen. He lived on the Indian reservation with his close-knit family.
In the past years, he’d been diagnosed with diabetes and severe peripheral neuropathy. He was a very quiet, reserved man, but always had a grin and sparkle in his eyes when I asked about his children. He never complained or asked for anything, but eventually I knew his routine and was able to anticipate his needs.
As the years went by, he lost both legs and had to undergo dialysis treatments three times a week. Even if I was not his nurse and he was on our unit, I often dropped by his room to say hello.
This time, after I got the report from the night nurse, she said, “I don’t know what else we can do; he’s in a coma and the dopamine drip is the only thing that is keeping him alive.”
I gave a deep sigh, thinking about his children.
As I entered his room, it was dark and a little bit chilly. Mr. E. was covered with a white sheet. I almost did not recognize him because he had lost a lot of weight. In the corner was his petite, teary-eyed wife, looking tired and helpless. I’d never met her before, so I introduced myself and told her that I knew her husband through the years of his hospitalizations.