Monday, May 6, 2013

A memorable patient

In honour of nurses' week I am going to share with you a story that I will never forget.

Once upon a time I worked in the float pool of the hospital.  That means that when I went to work each day I had no idea where I was going to work until I was given my assignment at the beginning of my shift.  I traveled from ward to ward, wherever they needed the most help.

One day my travels landed me on a surgical ward.  General? Ortho? It doesn't matter.  All that matters is that I was visibly pregnant and my patient was a young man who still lived at home and worked on the family farm.

I had been taking care of this young man from the time he came to the floor out of the recovery room, still groggy from anaesthetic.  He was a sweet guy and very polite and co-operative with me.  A dream patient, really.   He had sailed through his operation and was recovering well. 

At one point in my shift, right before I was about to step into his room with the  BP machine to take another set of  vital signs, a nurses' aide stopped me in the hallway and asked me about my pregnancy.  She asked the usual questions: how are you feeling, any cravings, blah blah blah and then she asked how far along I was.  I was not as far along as she guessed by looking at my growing belly.  She then started to go on and on about how big I was and even had the nerve to ask me how much I weighed!  I tried to extricate myself from the situation as quickly as I could.  I walked up to my patient's bedside.  He had overheard the conversation in the hallway and could see that I was a little flustered.

He told me not to worry.  Cows show early and get big quickly when they are pregnant too.

I am pretty sure that young man didn't have a girlfriend.

2 comments:

tammi said...

Bahaha! And here I thought you were going to say he'd been all sweet and made you feel all sexy or, something HELPFUL like that! Clearly, that young man had some growing up to do yet!

Farmer Jo said...

Ha!!! That is hilarious! I am not surprised you haven't forgotten him.