basric | LJIDOL SEASON 8 PROMPT 1

WHEN YOU PRAY, MOVE YOUR FEET

I am a Trauma nurse for a Level 1 Trauma Unit covering Middle Tennessee. The word through our medical center is a Trauma nurse is almost as arrogant as a Cardio-Thoracic nurse. It’s probably true. It irritates me to no end to be called an E.R. nurse. Our Emergency Room is where you go when you are sick, break your arm or have a heart attack (also known as a myocardial infraction or M.I.)

If you are in trauma there’s a one in three chance that you will die (the E.R.'s statistics are much better). That’s why dressed in Vanderbilt's colors of Black and gold we are called the Death Squad. I know my job, I don’t have the God complex MOST surgeons possess but I’m good at what I do. What I do is everything humanly possible and sometimes seemingly impossible to keep you alive when you are pushed through those automatic air-compression double doors into my triage so you don't end up in that one out of three.

I work nights, a difficult shift for trauma, especially weekends. Nurses who can handle it are even more difficult to find and keep. Tara was hired for nights; a ten year Trauma nurse from St. Barnabas Level 1 Trauma Center in the Bronx, NY. I’ve done travel nursing to NYC and a Wednesday night there is a weekend night in Nashville. Their weekends are a nightmare. Tara knew what to do when and where. This, for those of you who’ve read my entries before, was a relief.

Tara had one little problem. She had been recently touched by the Lord. Now, I am not saying this is a bad thing for Tara, but when you’re a nurse, you leave your personal life at the door. Tara couldn’t. She blessed everything--have a blessed day, here's your blessed pills. Did she think she was the Pope? She reviled any of us who did not attend church regularly reminding us we were damning our souls, refused to work Sunday condemned those of us who did (hospitals should close on Sunday?)—yadda . . . yadda. . . yadda. I ignored her until that faithful night that seems always fated to come when I’m in charge.

(Once again I throw it out there for your edification especially to those in their teens and twenties and those who just get their jollies cutting off tractor trailer trucks—your car may stop on a dime but an 18-wheeler takes double its length. So, you cut them off and slam on your brakes and they RUN OVER YOU and you end up under the trailer after the cab has RUN OVER you. Then there is the guy behind him who isn’t quite focused on his driving for whatever reason. That car ends up under the back of the trailer.)

This night we were forewarned of an incoming three car motor vehicle accident (MVA), three males in their twenties from the front car, a male in his thirties and his wife also in her thirties from the back. The truck driver was sent to the E.R. with minor injuries. We were prepared, our residents, Paula, Tara, two other nurses pulled from the floor and me.

I gave Tara the thirty year old male with head injuries and a strip of metal that pierced his thigh and was pulled out as he was removed from the wreckage, luckily the EMT reached him immediately after, since it had nicked the femoral artery.

I had the wife with head trauma and a crushing leg injury. I had just finished assisting my resident to stabilize our patient for surgery when Tara’s Resident yelled for me. I glanced back at Paula and the three patients in the bays. The charge nurse in me automatically noted two had been pronounced and they were working furiously to save the third. I turned back to the front.

It’s amazing how quickly you can DE-gown, DE-glove and replace them walking only a few feet. As I passed the patient I stopped; blood was pooled between his legs the bandage saturated, the patient was bleeding out. I folded an ABD pad (abdominal) pressed it against the leaking bandage and placed a stretched bandage tourniquet around it and checked his foot for a pulse. At the gurney head the resident thumbed toward Tara who stood holding the patient’s hand and praying. (FYI: we move patients from EMT gurney to our gurney instead of a bed because the patients either head for surgery or the morgue as they are stabilized.)

The resident's anger was evident, "Deal with her. I can't get her to move."

“Tara!”

“Hush! I’m praying with the patient. Please don’t intrude.”

HUSH. She did not just tell ME to hush.“TARA. Come here now.” Oh yes, I wanted to drag her to the bottom of the gurney.

She patted the patient, “I’ll be right back, Hon. Really, can’t you see I’m doing the Lord’s work.”

“Here, we let the Lord do his own work. Your work is to keep pressure on that artery and you were impeding the doctor from placing the central line and intubating.”

“The patient asked me to pray with him. His soul takes precedence over the body.”

I have admitted to having a raging temper due in part to my Comanche blood but I managed not to strangle her, barely, “The chaplain’s job is to pray with the patients; yours is to keep the patient ALIVE. No, be quiet. While you’re NOT doing YOUR job the patient is bleeding out. So you are praying him to death, literally. And blood can NOT be infused to replace the loss without a line. Look, already there is blood on the pressure dressing I just applied. Get another dressing and keep pressure until the doctor has him stabilized to go to surgery.”

“But. . .”

“Do your job or I will have you escorted out of triage and replace you with someone who can. You can pray for him to yourself while you hold pressure.”

(For those wondering, as soon as the line was placed, the patient was intubated and sedated.)

I was dealing with processing the three front crash Trauma patients for the morgue when the husband was wheeled out by the surgical techs.

Tara flew at me backing me up against a wall screeching, “You barbaric heathen, denying a man with what may have been his dying wish of prayers to our Lord.” (A note I only backed up because touching her during a verbal assault would have me arrested for assault & battery.)

“If you’d have kept praying, he would have died.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I know if blood comes out and none is put back in pretty soon the heart stops and the brain dies."

“You have no heart, no feelings what so ever. You are one of the living damned. These people are nothing but slabs of meat to you.”

I stopped those around me from defending me though they tried. I kicked her out of triage. She wrote me up. The resident wrote her up. She ended up on another floor.

Did she hurt my feelings? Hey, according to her I don’t have any. But there are mornings when I get home and reach for coffee or juice and some other mornings a wine cooler or two. And sometimes that little locked box in my head springs open and all the past pleas come rushing out. Eighteen to eighty, male and female, preacher to gang-banger -- begging me not to let them die, not to let their loved ones with them die; to pray with them, for them and sometimes knowing there was nothing I could do to help save them. So, in triage I guess I have no feelings. I can’t afford feelings or prayers when I need to be assessing, assisting, and moving. I’m going to try to help keep you alive.

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From:

ktdid525.livejournal.com

Amazing story.I see a lot of people fall into a trap of thinking Jesus is going to step in and save them, but he gives us the option to help ourselves too. Since he has given us that option I assume he would like us to use it ;-)

From:

LJIDOL SEASON 8 PROMPT 1

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