52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 13
Prompt – Nearly Forgotten
Around 2005, Bill and I downsized from
our rather large house to approximately 900 square feet, two bedroom
condo. I started downsizing by going through all my photographs and
removing them from their photo albums and consolidating them into
elasticized batches. The bookcases of photo albums became one tote
bin. At the same time I decided to start scanning these photos to
our computer. It has been quite a project but after a dozen years or
so I finally got them into my computer. In the past month or so I started going through them and fixing them such as
straightening, cropping, adjusting their color and generally just
improving their looks. It has been therapeutic in times of craziness
and uncertainty.
I came upon my nursing photos. During our COVID 19 pandemic cities are struggling to get enough medical staff including nurses. The government had
suggested that it would bring nurses out of retirement to help. My
daughters asked me if I thought it was something that I would do. I
believe they were concerned for my well being. My answer was; “No
way in hell would I go back now!” Afterwards I felt selfish for
such a response and lack of respect for those nurses who must be
going through their own version of hell right now. I began reflecting on the
twists and turns of my life as a nurse. It did bring back things I
had nearly forgotten about as Wendy, R.N.
1974 - Wendy R.N. |
It seems I
had always wanted to be a nurse. There was a time that I was thinking about becoming a teacher or a pharmacist. However in my teens I volunteered as a
candystriper in a local hospital which seemed to confirm that my calling should be a
nurse.
There was three ways to become a nurse. The first was taking a four year course at university. I never
considered this because one it was too costly and secondly, truly I
didn't think I was bright enough to go to University. However looking
back, I wished I had gone to University. If only I had been encouraged
to believe in myself as capable of being a university student.
The second was taking it from a
hospital and living in nurses' residence. Usually it was a three year
course. At the time there was no in-hospital training in Saskatoon. The closest of this type was in Calgary. My girlfriend and I had
planned to go to Foothill's Hospital together. My mom forbade me from
going away to nursing school. I am sure it had to do with lack of
money in our family and not being able to afford it especially the
cost of living in residence. My girlfriend did go and became a Foothill's Hospital nurse.
The third way to become a Registered
Nurse was by going to a technical school. This was the route I traveled. I took it at Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Arts and
Science in Saskatoon. It was a two year course where upon completion
we wrote our exams and if we passed we became Registered Nurses just
like the hospital trained nurses and the University nurses. The
degree nurses were able to do more administrative work, work in
public health and teach in the nursing schools.
My memories of student nursing were
exhausting hours of book work and hospital training. The first year
ran from September to June.
The second year ran from mid August to
mid July. Yes that was 11 long months. In the second year we were
required to take some of our rotations outside of Saskatoon. I took
Psychiatric Nursing in North Battleford and Advanced Nursing in
Prince Albert. At the end of the second year we had 4 weeks to study
for our Canadian RN Exams. They were only given a few times a year and at
this time it was given in Mid August in Saskatoon. For 4 weeks I hid
out in my bedroom and at one time I had dad set up our tent trailer
so I could go out and study in it away from the family distractions.
The exams were brutal. They were 4 – 3 hour tests. Tuesday
afternoon, Wednesday morning and afternoon and Thursday morning.
Once they were done I was too tired to celebrate. However I believe
that our graduation ceremony was within the week of the final exam.
Wendy With Her Parents After Grad Ceremonies |
Back Row: Bill, Wendy RN & BFF Kay. Front Row is Mom & Dad & Sister Diane & Grandma M. |
I applied for nursing positions at all 3 hospitals in Saskatoon. My first choice would have been at St. Paul's Hospital however I got a job at City Hospital. This was probably because I had just finished my final student nursing shifts at City Hospital. I had applied for Obstetrics or Pediatrics or at the very least Surgery, but again this was not to be. I got a position on a 33 bed active medical ward. I started after the September long weekend. Our marks did not come out until late September or early October and therefore you worked as a “graduate nurse” until the marks came in. It was a reduced pay schedule and a little less responsibility as I remember. Once your marks came in and passed you earned the Registered nurse designation with retro pay making up the difference in wage. The City Hospital medical director for the medical wards was a legendary nightmare. She was a nun (yes in a city hospital) and strict. Shortly after I received my marks she sought me out on the floor. I remember the scene like it was yesterday. My patient had gone for a test and I was taking this time to make his bed. In those days, hospital beds were re-made with fresh linen everyday. She started helping me make the bed and asked me about my marks. I told her that my highest mark was in Psychiatric nursing. She just clicked her tongue and said curtly what about your medical mark. I told her it was my lowest. Without missing a beat she said well it was a good thing that they got me on the medical floor because now they would teach me what the school had almost failed to do. For months I felt she trailed me. But then you see – new nurses were always tested with the most difficult, crazy and absurd patients. That is just what happened.
At this time nurses wore white uniforms
except for the pediatric nurses who could wear pastel green, pink or
blue. Pant suits had just come in a few years before that. I had a
few dress uniforms but really they were not practical because you
often had to hitch them up as you hiked up on the bed to turn a
patient. We were required to wear our pin we got at graduation to
let everyone know where one got your training.
A nurse's hat was
required. It was a badge of honor as well as a way of
distinguishing nurses from student nurses from nurse's assistants
called LPN's or Licensed Practical Nurses. Hats were a damn
nuisance. They were forever getting caught in the curtains
surrounding the patient beds pulling them off our heads and
dismantling our done up hair because no nurse could have hair longer
than the collars of our uniforms. It was a godsend when someone
finally did a study on nurse's hat and found them one of the least hygienic thing in the hospitals.
My medical job was a full time
position. Part time employment had not existed yet. Also a
nurse worked all 3 shifts. There was no such thing as full time
nights or full time days. The union had not yet brought in mandatory working
conditions such as every second weekend off or minimum number of
hours between one shift and the next shift. The head nurse made up
the 12 week rotation and you followed it lest the coverage on the
floor went to hell. My first summer of working as a nurse I worked
every weekend from the May Long weekend until Labour Day. I figure
that it was punishment for taking two weeks off after my May 3rd
wedding for our honeymoon.
My favorite nursing story from this
nursing period is a tale of bats and dementia patients. City
Hospital was next to a huge park just off the Saskatchewan river. On
those beautiful spring and summer nights we would often open the
windows for our patients. There were no screens on the windows. This
one particular week that I was working evenings we had a bad run on
bats entering the ward. They were usually found by following the
screams of terror as opposed to screams of pain from the patients. We would be required to catch them and put them in a stool specimen
cup to send to the lab in the morning. This one particular bat was
rather elusive. We called in the orderlies to help us run up and
down the hallways with our bed sheets and towels and try to catch it.
They finally got it cornered in a patient room beside our nursing
station desk and closed the door to keep it contained. Unfortunately
there was a few patients in that room and they were our dementia
patients. We liked them close to watch them as they would often wander away. The two orderlies did finally catch the bat but it
sounded like quite a fight. The patients were none the wiser. Or so
we thought that. The next evening when I was on shift and I was
giving meds to the women in this room, a daughter of one of these ladies
was visiting and the mother proceeded to tell her that there were men
in her room last night running around and also a bat landed on her
pillow. The daughter patted her mother's hand and told her mother
that she was just having a bad dream and she looked at me and rolled
her eyes .I could not bring myself to tell the truth regarding
the bat in her mom's room. It was a shared story on the unit for
months to come.
In May of 1976 Bill finished his
degree in Electrical Engineering. He landed his first engineering
job in Regina. I quit my job and we moved to Regina.
My last week of work at City I worked 8
night shifts in a row. There was 8 deaths from cancer on our unit. Unfortunately they happened one per day on the shifts I worked. It was sadly overwhelming. The second last evening shift
I was driving home and when the car in front of me ran over and
killed a cat. I cried and cried. It seemed wrong to me to have more
empathy for a cat that I did not know than the patients that died on
my ward that week. It seemed messed up to me.
In nursing there is an ebb and flow in
staffing of the hospital. When I arrived in Regina I could not find
a job in nursing. I decided to take the summer off to rejuvenate.
It was still impossible to find a nursing job at the end of the
summer. I applied for and was accepted into a 6 month nursing course
for operating room nurses to start after the September Long Weekend.
For reasons I have not been able to figure out, I bailed on the
course. Shortly thereafter I got a job as a bank teller at The Bank
of Montreal in the mall across from our apartment. I worked at the
bank over the next 11 years. Needless to say my nursing registration
lapsed. I did try to go back the year Jackie was born and try to get
the hours I needed to maintain my registration. I had until December 31st to get the required hours. Alas the hospital
did not have the hours to give to me so that I might maintain my RN Status. I was
deflated and returned to banking.
In 1988 / 1989 I decided I wanted to go
back to nursing. Both of my girls were in school at this time. I
enrolled in a refresher course. It was a self study program that
could take up to a year to complete. I started in fall of 1988. In
January of 1989 Bill got a new engineering job in Edmonton that
started in mid March. I called Alberta nursing association to see
if I could continue my course there and they said no I would have to
start over. Thus I turned on the after burners to finish the courses
and get my clinical practicum done before moving to Edmonton. All
this happened while we readied the house for selling, sold the
house and prepared to move. Also Bill had to start in Edmonton
before the move was done and I had to balance working night shifts on my practicum with finding card for the girls. Somehow I got it done and I put in my
last clinical shift the day before the movers came.
In Edmonton I had arrived during a time
of Alberta wealth and prosperity. Thus I was able to get a job by mid
May. I worked at The Grey Nun's hospital and worked a .6 FTE (6
shifts per two weeks) on a medical floor. I worked night shifts only
because it seemed like the best fit for a mother with kids in school. I would get home from work in time to send them off to school. I
would wake up as they got home from school and have the evening with
them. Things went well for the first few years. I felt that I was
back where I belonged. Then came one of many downturns in Alberta
which inevitably meant cuts to Alberta health and thus nursing staff. The system of
downsizing the nursing staff was done strictly on seniority and a fun
thing called bumping. I was bumped from my position meaning a nurse
with more seniority was given my position. The nurses who were
bumped from their positions went into the pool of nurses and when it
all settled out we got to choose from the remains of the part time
positions. Again this was done by seniority. The lucky thing was
that I was always the most senior nurse to choose from the left over
jobs. The first bump landed me on an orthopedics ward and I was
able to find a .6 FTE night shifts. I really did not appreciate
ortho. It was hip and knee replacements in a day where you kept the
patients in for a week or more. It was heavy exhausting work. I
only stayed there 6 months before I was bumped again in a second
round of cuts to nursing staff. I was once again the most senior of
the left over nurses who got to choose from the left over jobs. I
chose a .6 FTE night shifts on pediatrics. In all of my nursing
choices this was the best ward and most satisfying job. I loved
pediatrics. It loved me. I thrived on this ward.
In my reflection of my pediatric nursing gig, I
remembered an incident that rivaled the bat story. I worked the
night shift as usual. Children are the most vulnerable when in a strange place such as a hospital. At that time parents rarely stayed
overnight with their children and once they settled their child for the
night they would leave. In a report at shift change we were told that this particular
3 year old boy had a horrible evening and pretty much screamed the
whole shift. The child fell asleep at 11 pm and the exhausted
parents decided to go home. We were warned to try to tip toe our way
through our assessments of this little boy. Sometime around 2 AM I
went in to do some quiet vitals. Carefully I removed the bed
sheets to get a better look at the child's chest. Next to this
munchkin was his special plush animal. However it was not just any
plushie but the one and only “Tickle Me Elmo”. In touching this
hateful plushie I set off it's loud and very annoying giggle. Being a quick thinking nurse I
took the extra pillow and pushed it down on Elmo to shut him up or at
the very least mute him. Well as luck would have it, one of the other
nurses was passing by at the same time watching me with some
curiosity as I was suffocating Elmo. In the morning report it was
reported that the child had a good sleep and was improving however
his buddy Elmo suffered a life altering condition due to suffocation!
I was forever the nurse who suffocated Elmo.
After a year and a half the bumping
began again. Same scenario but the left over positions were becoming
less. I finally got a half time position in Emergency. They worked
12 hour shifts which I never got a handle on. Four of us took a month
long emergency room classroom course. I hated the work. Always
unpredictable and it was hard to get a handle on patients who came
and went in a flash of an eye.
I was in Emergency for a half a year
before the dreaded bumping began again. Again I was the first of the
leftover nurses to get my choice on the very few leftover postings.
I got a .4 FTE position in ICN – Intermediate Care Nursery. Again four of us were on a month long ICN classroom crash course. Generally I
loved this unit. We admitted the newborns (the freshly born babes
from the delivery room) to ICN and assessed them. They either
went with mom to maternity or they were admitted to our unit for
further care. Generally they were not the extremely sick babies as
those were transferred to the children's hospital. We were a kind of
step down unit where the less intensive babes were followed. Also we
received the babies from the children's hospital as their needs were
less intensive and primarily we were there to fatten up the preemies
so they could go home with their parents. Such beautiful little lambs these patients
were. It was a good place.
As life would have it - 6 months later
Bill got another job in Calgary. Once again I quit nursing hoping for
an easy transition to a Calgary hospital.
But oh no. No one was hiring in
Calgary. We had moved to Calgary in September and finally the next
spring I found a job as a nurse in a mediclinic office. My varied
experience served me well in this world of walk in clinics. We saw
it all. The obvious colds, sore throats and flus. We stitched up
people. We removed a nail from a man's hand. We put on and took off
casts. I did so many ECG's to rule out heart attacks. We medicated
the migraines. We removed foreign objects from people's ears, noses
and other orifices. It was busy. It was fast paced. It was a
nursing job that I worked from 10 to 2 each day. The hours suited me
fine. I worked here for a couple of years before finding a doctor's
office to transition into. It was a busy 6 doctor practice. It was a
Monday to Friday 8 to 4:30 job. It was very repetitive and
predictable. I worked at this office for about 4 or 5 years before I
left. I earned about half as much as a hospital nurse but was suppose
to be glad that I didn't have to work shift.
I would like to say that I moved on to
bigger and better things. I did not. I was mentally exhausted by it
all. There was a riff or maybe it was a difference of opinions between a few doctors, management and me. It was the final straw. I left nursing once again.
I took a few years off to reassess
life. During this time Bill and I decided to simplify our life and
downsize to a very small condo. After a few years of wanderlust and
self evaluation I decided I wanted to go back to some kind of work and it certainly was not going to be nursing. However my medical background found me a
job as seasonal flu clinic clerk. The women who hired me couldn't
quite understand why I was applying for the clerk job because she
had several nursing positions she needed to fill if I would be
interested. I said no and then she said she would hire me as a clerk if I
acknowledged that I could not give or advise clients medically
because I was hired as a clerk and not a nurse. We worked in
temporary clinics set up around the city to vaccinate the population
against flu. I loved it. I told no one that I was a former nurse
and it was lovely. It was mindless. Work ended when the doors
closed and I had no bad or unsettled feelings that I forgot to do
something for a patient. I worked seasonally for a few years
including the frantic year H1N1 hit. This seasonal job turned into
casual clerking in well child clinics in the city. Again no on knew
I was a nurse until I saw one of my former doctors from the medical
clinic who had come in for a tetanus update. I was sitting at the
front desk and she asked if I would be giving her the needle because
apparently I gave the best needles. Blush. My fellow clerks jaws dropped
and the gig was up.
I went from the seasonal work to part
time clerking in a well baby clinic and then on to a full
time clerk position in a well baby clinic. I believe I worked just
under a year and a half in this full time position. I earned more
than I did as a nurse in a doctor's office and about 6 dollars less
than a graduate nurse. It was good.
This job came to a crashing halt when
Bill had his Pulmonary Embolism and in my opinion almost died. We realized then
that life was really too short. Bill had already taken an early
retirement before this happened. I was going to work a few more
years but decided to retire from work after this. It was the most
satisfying decision in my life.
The best part of life has been being
retired with Bill. I enjoy it and hope to god I never ever have to
work again. I recommend retirement for everyone.
My sister Betty was also a nurse. I
was talking to her one time about my on again off again nursing
career. She said to me quite succinctly; “Well Wendy maybe you
really didn't like nursing.” True, too true, but I was not willing
to see it and acknowledge it.
Bless all the nurses and medical
staff who are working in these unprecedented times of COVID 19. I wish you strength, stamina and good health in your true calling.
Thank you.
Nursing During COVID 19 |
Thank you.
Wendy
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