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BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
work with clinical profiles doesn't give us license to stereotype
patients. How would I feel if the roles were reversed? I've been thinking about this lately, because recently they were.
When the nurse becomes the patient
I joke a lot about my lack of gracefulness and my klutzy near misses, but
one night at the hospital I tripped over something in the OR. I tried to
catch myself, but it was too late. My head hit the OR door and the rest of
me landed on the floor. Fortunately, I was working with a great team
that night. I was on a stretcher and in the emergency department before
I realized that the blood on my scrubs was my own and not the last
patient's.
I was treated and released. The next morning I visited a doc-in-thebox urgent care center to see if they could stitch up my left elbow,
something we'd missed in the ER. I healed up, returned to work and finished my traveling contract at the hospital. Everything seemed fine.
By the time I made the trip home, though, it was clear there were
some complications in my elbow. Within a week I was a name on the
surgery schedule, a patient some nurse was reading a history on. I'd
given them my age, my weight and everything else they could possibly
need to know. What conclusions were they going to draw about me?
Looks can be deceiving
Surgery was routine. They knocked me out, sent me home the same
day. I didn't ask who they'd imagined I'd be, based on my chart. Then
there's recovery, which is even more trying. My daughter's got her eye
on me: She's been treating me like I'm 90. My mother's had to come
over, twice, to wash and dry my hair, because I can't lift my arm over
my head with this barbaric torture apparatus of a splint on it. And I'm
J U N E 2013 | O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E
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