They Look Okay

I remember as a kid, sitting in the doctor’s office.  The doctor had examined my wound, given some instructions to my mother, and told me the nurse would return in a few minutes.  The nurse walked into the adjoining room – I could see her through an open doorway, holding a syringe in front of her, asking where are you in a high-pitched sing-song voice like you might use to coax your dog or cat inside while you crouch behind the front door in your underwear.  She was to give me a shot.

It has dawned on me that it’s always the nurse will be in in a minute to give you the shot.  Honestly, I cannot recall ever receiving a shot from the doctor.  Is shot-giving not in the medical school curriculum?  Seriously.  It’s that way in the hospital, too.  No nurse has ever left the room explaining that the doctor will be in soon to give the shot!

I’m not bad-mouthing doctors because I certainly rely on their knowledge and expertise.  No, I’m actually earning some serious brownie points with my wife, the nurse, by explaining that nurses do a lot of the heavy lifting in health care, and part of it is by doing those tasks – like giving shots – that many of us prefer not to have done to us (who’s up for a catheter?).

In one of those “it’s a small world” instances, we saw a couple at a mutual friend’s house.  Dan and I had been friends in high school, and his wife, Brenda, had worked with Nancy when Nancy first moved to Kansas City.  In subsequent social gatherings, Nancy and Brenda will ask things like whatever happened to; and remember unique patients, like the guy the urologist nicked during surgery . . . which reminds me of a joke:

A young nurse’s aide was given the task on her first day in the hospital of giving sponge baths to patients.  She went into one room where the male patient nodded his assent given his difficulty in talking with the tube down his throat.  She began by gently washing his arms, then pulled the sheet to the side to wash his legs.  As she did so, he asked her, “Do my testicles look okay?”  She wasn’t sure what to do, and after he asked again, she decided to pull up his gown to inspect.  Satisfied, she lowered his gown and reported that they look okay.  The patient indicated that he wanted a pen and paper.  On it he wrote, “I asked, do my test results look okay.”

For every humorous story of something that happened in the hospital, there are many that speak to the pain and suffering of so many patients.  Nursing is a tough career.  For example, Nancy earned her creds with the Burn Unit nurses when she didn’t get sick or faint during her orientation to the floor, particularly when they got to the burned babies.  It’s understandable that attrition among nurses is high:  one study noted that 18% of new nurses resign within their first year, and the number jumps to 1/3 by the end of their second year.

Hospitals and healthcare workers have been overwhelmed with critically ill patients for the past year-and-a-half.  Just as hospitals were returning to more manageable levels of Covid patients, the number of infected patients resurged with a vengeance.  Major medical centers, which commonly accept transfer patients from smaller, less equipped hospitals, have stopped accepting transfers – they’re already full to their previously expanded capacities.  Patients with other serious illnesses are finding it difficult to get in:  my brother-in-law recently was taken to a triage-type emergency center for a suspected heart problem, where he had to lay on a gurney for about 12 hours before he could be taken to the affiliated hospital for tests and treatment.

About 2-½ years ago our great nephew caught the virus from hell.  As a toddler in daycare, he was of course exposed to all the snotty noses you expect to find in daycare, and all that snot is a cesspool of germs.  (I know from experience – we had a son in daycare!)  Over the course of that Christmas week, 13 family members contracted the virus from hell from that sweet little toddler.  It was so bad that our niece asked Nancy for help.  Infectious disease mitigation kicked in!

Nancy and I showed up at their empty house with a basket load of cleaning supplies and trash bags.  Not having the appropriate garb, we wore small trash bags over our feet, and the largest garbage bags I’ve seen over our bodies, with holes cut at the appropriate places for head and arms.  We wore hats, face masks, and rubber gloves.  If any of the neighbors had seen us enter in the dark of night, they would probably have thought we were a low-bid hazmat team.

We cleaned every touch surface in that house.  We cleaned every toy we found with a bleach solution, took them outside into the freezing night temperatures, sprayed them, and left them out there to segregate them from the house.  We cleaned bathrooms.  We did laundry.  We sprayed the carpets and furniture with disinfectant, vacuumed and sprayed them again. We stripped off our clothes in the garage and put on fresh clothes for the drive home.  Our infectious disease garb went into two trash bags – one for our clothes that would go into our washer when we arrived home, and one for all the bags, paper towels, and other things we used in cleaning.  It worked.

Can you imagine the health care workers who do that for every infectious disease patient in the hospital?  Most of the time, a hospital wouldn’t have the number of patients equivalent to cleaning the entire house.  During the pandemic their ICUs were stuffed full of infectious patients, and the hospitals had converted other units to Covid ICUs to double, triple, and even quadruple the capacity.

I looked it up – seven vaccinations/immunizations are required to attend public school in Missouri.  In 2014, the Missouri Senate unanimously passed a mandate requiring a meningitis vaccination for students who attended a Missouri state college – two college students had died, and the Senate worked quickly and collaboratively to stop it from happening to more.  As of August 20^th, Missouri has reported 733,759 Covid cases, and 10,185 deaths.

In elementary school, I remember when doctors and nurses came to the school.  All of us had to eat a sugar cube with some medicine in it.  Polio had been a devastating disease for decades, and a vaccine had finally been developed.  As part of a national public health initiative, immunizations were being given in virtually all the schools.  It allowed us to achieve herd immunity in a very short time, and we have effectively eradicated polio around the world.  Personally, I didn’t understand the disease, nor care about the medicine; I was in it for the sugar cube.

The next time someone asks about getting vaccinated, tell them it’s like getting a sugar cube . . . and let them know that their testicles look okay, too.

Note:  The “stop your heart” t-shirt is from Signals.com, which offers a cornucopia of shirts with different themes, in addition to other merchandise.

Note:  The “I believe in science” t-shirt is from Life is Good^®.  I love their shirts and highly recommend them.  Quality materials and creative messages.  This is not a paid endorsement . . . though I’m open to consideration! 🙂