My adventures in the hospital continue. In my first post about my time in the hospital (Cart #984), I mentioned that I just kept talking with the Doctor from Anesthesiology when maybe I should have stopped. Well, this behavior continued throughout my 2-night stay in the hospital.
First I want to say that the nurses were absolutely fantastic! I was amazed at how quickly one would come to my room if I turned my call light one – sometimes more than one. Sometimes it wasn’t my nurse, but a different nurse would come in to help me until my nurse could get there.
My favorite thing about the nurses was how they worked so hard to maintain my dignity. After a few trips to the bathroom in a hospital gown, one soon just no longer cares if one’s behind is visible or not! However, the nurses always made sure, as they helped me to walk to the bathroom, that my gown successfully covered my buttocks (try to hear that like Forrest Gump is saying it!).
Most of my nurses worked regularly on the Orthopedics floor, but once in a while if a different department in the hospital was slower, and Orthopedics was busy, a nurse from a different department would “float” over to Orthopedics to help out.
This is exactly what happened one night. I was already asleep when this nurse (whose name I don’t remember – I’m blaming the drugs for this…..) first came into my room. For this post, I will call her Janet. As I said, I was sleeping when she first came into my room, but I woke up and said hello. Janet was all “business.” She accomplished what she needed to, made sure I was comfortable and went onto her next patient.
Later that same night I had to make a trip to the bathroom. And Janet performed exactly the same as all the other nurses. Once any appropriate monitoring devices were removed, and once I was sitting on the bed, and once the gait belt was put around me, and once I stood up, before I started to walk, Janet moved by gown so that my rear end was appropriately covered.
This is when I started to chuckle. Janet asked me why I was chuckling. (And this is where, once again, I probably should have stopped talking, but I did not!) I told Janet that four years earlier I had had my left knee replaced and been in this same hospital. During that hospitalization, I had this one very funny male nurse each night. At one point, I commented to him about being embarrassed that my butt was showing. And he said to me, “Well, with us nurses, we see so many butts that we become sort of immune to butts. A butt needs to extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad for us to even notice.”
At that point Janet started to laugh so hard I began to wonder if we were going to make it to the bathroom without doubling over!! As I sat in the bathroom, I could hear Janet continuing to laugh in my room. As she helped me back from the bathroom and into my bed she told me that was the funniest thing she had ever heard.
The funny thing was that even yet that morning before her shift ended, when Janet entered my room, she started chuckling …every ….single …..time.
Well, if I had to be in the hospital, I’m glad I was able to bring a little bit of joy to one of God’s angels – nurse Janet. Thank you and God bless you Janet and all the nurses who cared for me. You are all angels.