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When I got a nurse’s attention the next time I awoke, things happened rapidly.
- There was some accusatory discussion of who was responsible for my armboards still being attached before they were removed.
- I got water to sip through a bendy straw.
- I was shipped out of the Recovery Room.
Let the saga continue!
I have to comment on #3 above. Remember, my day started before 7:00 AM with the not quite strong enough pre-anesthesia shot. By the time I was leaving the Recovery Room, it was close to 3:30 PM. At that hospital, 3:30 PM was when the day shift left and the evening shift took over.
I was on a gurney. A nurse and a male orderly were ordered to take me up my room on the 5thFloor.
Gurneys are not easy to steer. It’s common for the person at the front of the moving gurney—the foot of the bed—to be nothing much more than the propulsion device. (S)He pulls the gurney through the hallways. Steering was relegated to the person at the back of the gurney—the head of the bed. In this case, the orderly should have been at the head of the bed with the nurse in the steering position.
However, since it was time to go home, the quicker I got delivered to my room, the faster the orderly would be able to leave. He took the head of the bed. Having limited if any experience at the foot of a moving gurney, the nurse protested. The orderly prevailed. He began to pushthe gurney.
It was immediately obvious to me, as passengeron this rolling bed, that the nurse lacked precision control of the gurney from her position in the leading end of the gurney. Everyone in the Recovery Room became aware of that within seconds.
As we neared the double doors to the Recovery Room, the nurse darted away from the gurney to push the automatic door-opening button. That left… no one steering.
The gurney hit the door frame at full speed. I slid down the bed with my feet clanging against the rail at the foot of the device. Remember, I’ve just had hours of back surgery.
The silence was immediate but short-lived. The Head Nurse of the Recovery Room spotted the departure from standard protocol. She informed the orderly that he and she would be having some one-on-one time before he left for the day. I sanitized that directive a bit. Okay, more than a bit.
After rearranging the driver and propeller, we made it to the elevator, up to the 5thFloor, and to my room without further mishap.
I was larger and heavier than most of the 5thFloor patients. After one feeble attempt to slide me off the gurney, there was a “y’all come” call for help in moving me from the gurney to my bed. Within minutes, five nurses and the orderly had arranged themselves three on a side.
Moving a patient from a gurney to a bed requires the two beds be placed side-by-side against one another. Half the movers reach across the patient’s in-room-bed and grab the sheet on the closest side of the gurney. The other half of the moving crew stands next to the gurney and grab the other side of the sheet.
After the obligatory, “One. Two. Three!” the movers on the in-room-bed side lift the sheet and pull the patient toward them. Meanwhile, the movers on the gurney-side lift and reach across the gurney as the patient rides the sheet onto the in-room-bed. That’s the theory.
5/6 of the movers were tall enough to perform the requisite actions. Mover #6 was a nurse who might have been 5’ tall if she measured her height in the morning in her nursing shoes. She was stationed on the gurney-side of the tableau and was responsible for the corner of the sheet closest to my right ankle.
Understand that the nurse in question was not on the in-room-bed side because the couldn’t reach across the bed, grab the sheet, lift and pull. She lacked the vertical dimension required for that. If you think about it, after the patient is moved, the people on the gurney-side end up in the starting position of the people on the in-room-bed side.
I’ll wait while you visualize…
…
…
Okay, if you don’t have that visualization by now, you might never get one.
As I was pulled off the gurney, about halfway on to my in-room-bed, the vertically-challenged nurse lost her corner of the sheet. I kind of bounced into my final resting position.
Part 8 had another episode with the short nurse very near the beginning.
Oh, yeah.
I GUARANTEE snowflakes in Part 8!
or 9
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