A Nurse's Life: Heart-warming and humorous tales from a 1950s student nurse (Nurse Jane Grant)

by Jane Grant

  A moment of agitation followed, when Phyllis discovered she had packed her uniform in her trunk, but between us we managed to fit her out, and apart from rather brown-looking black stockings, she looked quite presentable.

  Still smelling faintly of fish, and with such cracks as ‘Come on, Scaly,’ and ‘Okay, Cod’s Eyes,’ we went downstairs.

  Phyllis and I were put on the Women’s Surgical Ward, and we were each given five patients to look after.

  We had been there four or five days, when one of Phyllis’s patients had to have an operation for the removal of her gall bladder. Phyllis took the patient down to the theatre, and as she had never seen this operation before, she was allowed to stay and watch it.

  The surgeon of the Unit was a particularly unpleasant man known to the nurses as Pinching Percy Pilliner. The nickname was due to his habit of pinching any part of a nurse’s anatomy that came anywhere near him. He took a fancy to Phyllis, who was small and dark and lively. He gave her one or two inviting pinches in the course of the operation. She got increasingly angry with him, but could do nothing to restrain him at the time, so waited till they got back to the ward with the trolley. He stood at the head of the bed; Phyllis took the trolley from the porter and carefully ran it over his toe. He bellowed, so in seeming confusion Phyllis pushed the trolley farther up and it ran over his toes again.

  Instead of this having the desired effect of discouraging Pinching Percy, it appeared to increase his ardour. One evening, when we were about to go off duty, he came into the kitchen where we were clearing up.

  ‘How about a cup of cocoa?’ he said with a leer at Phyllis.

  ‘Of course,’ she said charmingly. ‘You just go and see your patients, while I fix you up a cup.’

  He went into the ward. Phyllis rushed out to the medicine cupboard and came back with some magnesium sulphate (Epsom Salts). She slipped a dose into his cup, then made some very strong cocoa on top.

  He came back and gulped the cocoa down, smacked his lips rather thoughtfully afterwards, and remarked that it tasted a bit funny. Phyllis pretended to be offended. He laughed heartily and asked her to go out next evening. Phyllis said she was sorry, but she was already booked.

  ‘Oh, you young things are all the same,’ he said, aiming a pinch at her. ‘Always after the boys!’

  Phyllis batted her eyelids coyly, said, ‘’Bye now, see you tomorrow. Come and have some more cocoa.’

  Next evening as we came off duty unpinched, she said to me, ‘Oh, I am disappointed! No cocoa time!’

  When we reached our rooms Mary came up to us, looking the picture of happiness. ‘Guess who’s got the new E.N.T. house job?’ she cried.

  ‘George,’ we suggested. George was Pat’s latest heart-throb.

  ‘No,’ said Mary, and added ecstatically, blushing, ‘Ginger!’

  We groaned. ‘I thought you’d buried him,’ said Phyllis.

  She went on enthusiastically. ‘Oh, isn’t it bliss? I might even be working on Eleven or Twelve when he comes!’

  ‘Oh, good show!’ said Phyllis sarcastically.

  I warned her, ‘You’ll have some stiff competition from Tarty Jessop.’ This was the Staff Nurse.

  Mary was offended and went to bed, but I noticed she had a fighting glint in her eye.

  As we had our first-year belts, we were allowed to relieve Head Nurse on night duty. When we were due for night duty, Mary found herself put on Eleven as relief, and I was sent there as extra nurse to ‘special’ the operation cases.

  Just a week after we had settled down on night duty, Ginger arrived. His presence upset Mary so much that, being Junior that night, she burnt the porridge, forgot to put the tea-urn on, and left two taps running with the plug in the sink.

  As the week progressed she calmed down, and by the end of it was only burning the porridge.

  Ginger, however, remained totally unaware of her adoration. I thought he must suspect something after he had come and asked me for a cup of cocoa, and turning round met Mary’s reproachful eyes, but all he said was, ‘Aren’t you the girl that busted up old Frank’s Rolls?’ He laughed heartily at the recollection, and Mary turned bright red.

  Wishing to be tactful, I said, ‘I must go and see to Mr. Robertson,’ and left the two young things together. But the meeting ended in disaster for Mary, as the cocoa she had beaten till her arm was stiff, was dismissed with, ‘This is too sweet for me,’ and poured down the sink. Then remarking, ‘I must go through to Twelve,’ Ginger left her flat.

  That week three patients came in, all with growths in the throat. When the Honorary, a big jovial man, was doing his rounds during the day, he gave Ginger a playful poke in the ribs.

  ‘You won’t get any sleep for a good week, old man,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll do old Thomas here tomorrow, and the other two on Thursday. First one you’ve ever had, isn’t it?’

  Ginger looked alarmed. ‘Yes, sir.’

  The surgeon laughed heartily. ‘You’ll be hopping about like a one-legged grasshopper,’ he remarked, as he strode out of the ward, with Sister trotting after, trying to catch him up.

  Ginger said to the Registrar, ‘Silly old fool, what’s he want to go and do three in one week for?’

  ‘He must want to give me some practice,’ said the Registrar. ‘He knows I’ve never done one either.’

  A few seconds later Sister came rushing up. She had only been on the ward two weeks.

  ‘Now for goodness’ sake, however do you nurse laryngectomies?’ she asked.

  The Registrar said airily, ‘Oh, it’s very easy. Just like any other laryngeal operation. Isn’t it, Ginger?’

  ‘Oh, lord, yes,’ said Ginger backing him up. ‘Three’s nothing. We had five on the go when I was a student here.’

  Sister gave a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, I thought it was something dreadful. As long as somebody knows!’

  There was a moment’s silence, then Ginger steered her gently towards her office. ‘It’s time you knew the facts of life, Sister. Neither of us has ever seen a laryngectomy case, and to be frank, I don’t think old Williams here had ever heard of one before.’

  The Registrar said indignantly, ‘Who asked who what it was?’

  ‘Better do some reading up,’ said Sister.

  The following night Mary, Sheila O’Hara, the Irish Head Nurse, and I were on duty. I was taken aside by Sister.

  ‘Now, Nurse, you realize this is a very serious operation. They totally remove the larynx, and then make an aperture in the neck and sew the trachea so that the opening is external. It is desperately important that the airway should be kept clear. You must never leave the patient at all. He is unconscious; he has an infusion of blood, he’s to have another two pints when that has gone through, and after that he is to have normal saline and dextrose. He has two drains in situ; the wound may be oozing a little, keep your eye on that anyway. He must be kept sitting up if it’s possible, that is if he isn’t too severely shocked. You must take a quarter-hourly pulse and respiration, and half-hourly blood pressure, unless Mr. Barnes tells you otherwise.’

  Mr. Barnes, I thought, was going to be a pretty slender reed to lean on. I sat anxiously by the bed of the sick man. His breath gurgled and bubbled; once or twice he opened his eyes; once he coughed violently. I put the sucker down his tube every quarter of an hour, and carried out all the other directions meticulously.

  The first half of the night Ginger spent pacing up and down at the foot of the bed, glancing at the patient at every turn. After a while, seeing that his condition remained unchanged, Ginger relaxed somewhat and decided to go to bed.

  ‘If you’re in the least worried, Nurse,’ he said, ‘call me at once.’

  The next morning the patient was partially conscious, and even able to give a thumbs-up sign when I asked him how he was feeling.

  If a patient cannot speak, one tends to believe that he cannot hear either. All instructions were given Mr. Thomas in a loud voice, or sometimes shouted.

  He was ve
ry good, obedient, and patient, and this made him progress quickly. When the Honorary came round that day, he slapped Ginger soundly on the back.

  ‘Excellent, Barnes, excellent! It’s rather a tricky time when they first come round though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ginger, not revealing that he had been asleep at the time.

  The following morning, the patient had his first feed, a rich mixture to sustain his strength, containing among other things, egg, milk, and brandy. This was to be poured down a tube that was placed in the patient’s nose and went into his oesophagus. Sheila, Mary, and I stood around the bed, and Ginger arrived to supervise. First the drugs and vitamins were crushed, put in water, and poured into a funnel and down the tube. Then I started to give the feed, while Ginger, pale with anxiety, kept issuing contrary instructions.

  ‘No ‒ not too much. Some more. Stop! Raise the funnel ‒ no, I mean lower it.’

  In my flustered efforts to follow the directions, the funnel, which did not fit very well, became disconnected, and the contents, in a hot sticky mess, poured out over my hands and the patient’s chest.

  Ginger was furious. ‘Here, give me that!’ he shouted, snatching the funnel and trying to fix it in the rubber. It kept slipping off, however, and at last in his clumsy agitation, he found himself unable to fit it at all.

  ‘Get on with it yourself,’ he said frowning at Sheila, as if it was her fault, and he almost hurled the funnel at her. With admirable calm, and a sweet smile for the patient, Sheila fitted on the tubing and gave the rest of the feed.

  Mary and I, after this incident, were such wrecks that we were incapable of carrying out any of our duties correctly, and we were most thankful to be relieved shortly afterwards by the day staff.

  By the next night there was another laryngectomy, and also a tracheotomy; both of these patients had special nurses. Some two nights later, the first crisis being over, Night Sister said that Mary and I, to show what we had learnt, were to lay a trolley containing all things necessary for the nursing of a laryngectomy. One of the requirements that was theoretically necessary was brandy, in case the patient should collapse. When I came to this item on my portion of the list, however, I found that the brandy had been carefully locked up by the Day Sister. After some thought, I went to the medicine cupboard and took out the first bottle containing a brown liquid, which happened to be an expectorant; stuck a piece of plaster over the label and wrote ‘Brandy’ on it. This I arranged with the other objects Mary and I had collected, on the trolley, for Sister’s inspection.

  It was the practice of the night staff to make up the first feed which the day staff would have to give in the morning, and when Mary could not find any brandy and saw on the trolley a large bottle boldly labelled, she took it and added two dessert spoons of the liquid to the expensive ingredients in each of the three prepared feeds.

  Sister looked at the trolley, questioned us on its various contents and their uses, nodded her approval and went away. I started to clear up, and taking the bottle back to the medicine cupboard, ripped off the label, saying cheerfully to Mary as I did so, ‘Now it’s an expectorant again.’

  Mary had in her hand two sterile dishes, one of which contained the very precious stitch scissors, which we had decided to keep sterile in case of sudden need. There was an awful crash as she dropped a dish, and the scissors, which are sharpened every week on a special stone, landed point downwards on the hard floor and one of the blades snapped.

  Mary said in a very small voice, ‘What did you say was in that bottle?’

  ‘Mist. Expect., old dear,’ I said airily.

  Mary was struck dumb for a moment, then she asked if it mattered if laryngectomies coughed a lot. I said I understood it was the last thing you would want a laryngectomy to do.

  Sheila, coming in, inquired, ‘What’s all this row?’ She picked up the broken scissors. ‘Crumbs! They cost two quid a pair.’

  Mary had taken three jugs out of the refrigerator, and was pouring the contents down the sink. ‘Five bob a go. Another fifteen bob,’ she said. ‘All because you muck about with labels, Jane. That’s two pounds fifteen shillings you owe the hospital.’

  ‘They’ll be lucky,’ I said in a northern accent.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The following night Mary was Head Nurse. There had been a heavy operating day, and one old man of seventy-seven had had a severe nose bleed for no known reason; he had lost over a pint of blood, and Ginger had set up an intravenous infusion.

  We had been on the ward about half an hour when the patient began to shiver violently; his pulse shot up to 140 and his temperature to 103.

  I said sagely to Mary, ‘In my considered opinion, he is having a reaction to the blood.’

  She replied with equal wisdom, ‘Yes, perhaps he is, just a little.’

  We called Night Sister, who came, and sent for Ginger. Ginger arrived and took down the infusion set, whereupon the old man’s nose instantly stopped bleeding, and he went to sleep.

  ‘I’ll do my round now, Nurse,’ said Ginger to Mary. ‘I want to have an early night.’ Mary gave him Report; he wrote up one or two drugs and then went off.

  The time was then half past nine. At a quarter to ten, one of the patients who had had a barbiturate sleeping-drug for the first time, sat up and called out wildly: ‘Alice, Alice ‒ get out! The house is on fire!’

  Mary went up to try to calm him. He grabbed hold of her arm. ‘If we crawl along the floor,’ he said eagerly, ‘we might just make it!’

  ‘Now you’re quite all right, Mr. Miller. The house isn’t on fire.’

  ‘Oh yes it is!’ shouted Mr. Miller. ‘Dial 999!’

  ‘Call Night Sister,’ said Mary in a resigned tone.

  The Junior, a well-meaning but empty-headed girl whose name was Freda, went off to tell Sister, who was then in the office. Sister telephoned for Ginger.

  Ginger was in his bath at the time of the call. He arrived five minutes later; his red hair wet and his expression impatient.

  ‘Silly old devil,’ he murmured. ‘Give him some paraldehyde. That ought to keep him quiet.’

  He walked up to Mr. Miller and gave him a sound slap on the face. ‘Mr. Miller!’ he shouted in a voice that might have come through a megaphone, ‘Wake up!’

  The patient grabbed Ginger’s arm. ‘Come on, Alice,’ he cried, ‘we’ll get out if we’re quick!’

  Ginger disentangled himself and looked disgusted. ‘Five cc.’s, Nurse.’

  Night Sister, Mary and I, held down the struggling Mr. Miller, while Ginger, none too gently, gave the injection. The struggles ceased; the patient gave a little sigh, and with an inane smile on his face, went to sleep.

  Ginger retired to bed without saying good night to anybody. Night Sister went back to her office, and we started to do the charts and report sheets that should have been done an hour ago.

  Ten minutes later, a boy of fifteen who had had his tonsils out, sat bolt upright. ‘Nurse!’ he called. ‘I feel sick!’

  I passed him a vomit bowl, and he filled it with bright red blood. I went out and measured it. There were sixteen ounces.

  ‘Freda,’ said Mary. ‘Fetch Night Sister.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Night Sister, when she arrived. ‘Call Mr. Barnes, Nurse.’

  Ginger arrived, fully dressed, but with the tail of his shirt showing beneath his coat.

  ‘Let’s see it,’ he said abruptly. Then in a resigned tone, ‘Bring him up to the treatment room.’

  In his haste Ginger had neglected to put on his white coat. He was soon to regret this. In the treatment room he sat on a chair opposite the boy, and shone a torch down his throat.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can just see a clot of blood there. I’ll leave that.’

  It was a pity he did not follow out his intentions. Instead he pushed forceps down to find the bleeding point and disturbed the clot. The boy coughed, spattered Ginger with blood before Mary could pass him a bowl, then vomited thirty-six ounces.<
br />
  Mary put the boy to bed quickly. When she got back to the treatment room, Ginger was looking thoughtfully at the ceiling.

  ‘Sixteen and thirty-six makes fifty-two, doesn’t it, Nurse? That’s two and a half pints of blood. And how much has he got in his body?’

  Mary replied nervously, as if at an examination: ‘Eight pints, sir.’

  ‘So he must be over a quarter shy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Get a drip trolley ready. I’ll put up some dextrose; that should tide him over till we can get him grouped.’

  After setting up an infusion, Ginger disappeared with a sample, and reappeared with a bottle of blood. He changed the vacoliter and walked towards the door. ‘Good night, Nurse,’ he said firmly.

  It was by now just after midnight, and the Junior had gone to Meal. Mr. Thomas, our first laryngectomy, sat up and rang the little hand-bell by his bed. I went to him, and he wrote on his pad, quite calmly, ‘I’m choking.’

  I put the sucker down his tube till it nearly disappeared, but it had no effect. His breath was becoming laboured. I got hold of the bayonet forceps and pushed these down the tube; there was no result. I called Mary over.

  ‘Go and fetch Night Sister,’ she said.

  I rushed round the block, but nowhere could I find Night Sister. She always hung her card outside the ward she was in, but there was no card on any door. I remembered that she sat in the theatre sitting-room at night when she was not on the wards; I ran down to theatres, but could not find her there. Then I hurried back to the ward, thinking she had perhaps arrived by then, but there was no sign of her.

  Mr. Thomas was looking blue as Mary and I conferred. He wrote a message on his pad, ‘You’re not worried, are you?’

  We said hastily in unison, ‘Oh, not at all!’

  I then telephoned the office, but there was no reply. In despair I ran round the block once more; still there was no sign of Sister.

  ‘We shall have to ring Ginger,’ said Mary.

  I telephoned the porter, and asked if he would get up Mr. Barnes, please? Then I went round after Sister again. When I got to theatres her card was on the door. I knocked on the sitting-room door, but there was no one there. I went in to Anaesthetic Room; nobody was there either. I opened the door into the theatre. Here was Sister, the Anaesthetist, one of the Registrars, and a patient, a little boy who had a broken arm.