52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 13 Prompt - Nearly Forgotten

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.

Nursing During COVID 19

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.

Wendy