The Making of a Nurse (6 page)

But if nursing was both a science and an art, the science – the math and chemistry, etc. – was the easy part. The “art” involved lofty goals that were difficult, if not impossible, to attain. It was the “art” of nursing that required the nurse to enter the patient’s world, to understand the patient’s point of view and mitigate his isolation or her suffering. As a nurse, you were there to understand your patients’ existential questions and to assuage their pain, whether of body, mind, or spirit. You were expected to receive without judgment their emotional expression, whether it was to cry or to complain, or even to be rude to you. You were to praise them when they passed gas after surgery or had a successful bowel movement and then go off and empty the bedpan cheerfully. Your only need was to be needed and to meet other people’s needs. If a patient rang the call bell, you were to jump. You were there to make a cup of tea, if required. Along with all of that and above all, you were to assist your patient to achieve the ultimate, uncontested goal of all human beings: self-actualization. Oh yes, and don’t forget about their medications, fluid balances (their “in’s and out’s”),
IV
s, dressings, plus all the secretarial work, too. It was a tall order. No wonder they called us angels.

IT WASN’T UNTIL
second year that they finally let us get our hands on real, live “clients.” My first one was Mrs. Lenore Thompson, an eighty-three-year-old woman living in a retirement home in
downtown Toronto. (I had to chuckle when I noticed that the facility was located kitty corner to The Anti-Aging Store, a place that sold elixirs, balms, and potions, touted to be life-enhancing and prolonging.) I was supposed to interview her and identify any health problems. She was a regal, white-haired lady who opened her display case to show me her collection of glass unicorns with great pride. She brought out her blood-pressure pills and I made a note of their names and the dosages she was taking. Then, she invited me to join her for lunch in the communal dining room. She cut up a slice of pizza with her knife and fork and chewed slowly. Then she put two chocolate sundaes on a tray and asked me to carry it back to her room. We sat enjoying them, but then it was time for “business” and my hands suddenly got jittery when I asked if I could take her vital signs.

“Do you promise to return them to me afterwards?” she said impishly.

That morning, I had made sure to put on my watch that had a second hand so I would be able to take my patient’s pulse. It was eighty beats per minute, strong and steady. (I had taken mine earlier and it was right up there, racing at 122.) Her blood pressure was high at 160 over 95, but she promised to cut back on her sodium intake. I looked at the thermometer and hesitated. Should I tell her that she was extremely hypothermic? Her temperature was so low it barely registered! I broke the news to her.

“Perhaps it’s because of the ice cream, dear?” she asked helpfully.

“Ah, yes. Of course.” It reminded me of those myths of patients who prolonged their hospital stay by putting a thermometer in their mouth after drinking a hot beverage to simulate a fever.

Next, from the corner of my eye, without letting on what I was doing, I counted her respirations so that she would not speed them up or slow them down to confound me, as I’d heard that some patients did.

“You’re a nice girl, dearie,” she said, catching me watching her chest rise and fall. “You’ve a sweet face.”

“Thank you,” I said, but inside I cringed, thinking of my mother.
You’re wrong there, lady. I’m neither nice nor sweet
.

EVERY MORNING
, before leaving for my classes, I put out my mother’s pills for the day and made sure there were plenty of the small brown glass bottles filled with my father’s tiny white nitro-glycerin pills for chest pain. “Make sure they’re with him at all times,” his doctor had instructed me. “His life depends upon it.” My father claimed it was nothing but a sugar pill, but the label said
sublingual tablet, indicated for fast-acting vasodilation of the coronary arteries
. I put a bottle in the glove compartment in his car, one next to his typewriter, and one on the spice rack in between the marjoram and the oregano. He popped a few of those pills when he would pull up short on winter evenings and his face went ashen as he set out for his university classes in pre-Confederation history or art appreciation. Then he could carry on like an Arctic explorer, his breath frosty in the air and snow crunching under his feet.

When I came home from school, I fed my mother and got her ready for bed. Sometimes, I claimed to have a lot of schoolwork and let my father take over. Once, after putting her to bed, he joined me with his crossword puzzle and settled in front of the
TV
. “How do
you
do it?” I asked him.

“I love her,” he said simply. “Hey, Til, what’s a four-letter word for a Mexican pot?”

It was all he had to say on that matter, yet about everything else he spoke endlessly.

“IT WILL BE A
powerful experience,” said students in my Feminist Studies class, encouraging me to join them on a march for International Women’s Day. We had been learning about the history of women’s oppression by the male patriarchy, about the Women’s Liberation movement, and useful things such as “assertiveness training” and “consciousness-raising.” “There’ll be thousands of women marching in solidarity,” they said. “Don’t miss it.” On a
blustery day in March, I joined those women and some men, as we started on Queen Street and marched up Spadina Avenue, our arms linked. There were women of all colours, lesbians, straight, liberals, socialists, macrobiotics and vegans; professors, filmmakers, and abortion activists; women with babies on their backs, with children in hand. We wore buttons on our jean jackets that said: “Sisterhood Is Powerful,” and “Women Make Policy, Not Coffee.” “Take back the night,” we chanted. “Women’s right, women’s might!”

How thrilling it felt to belong! At the end of the march we hugged each other and pledged to keep up the good fight. I decided to stop off at a Kensington Market
groceria
to call my friend Joy on a pay phone. We were making dinner and our boyfriends were coming over that evening, and I wanted to find out if we needed anything. She picked up on the first ring. “Phone your brother,” she said. “Right away.”

“What for?” I said, ignoring the urgency in her voice.

“Just do it, now.”

So I did.

“I’ve got some bad news.” Stephen tried to soften his curt tone. “Are you sitting down?”

Like they say in the movies. Maybe this is a movie
.

“I don’t know how to say this …”

It was strange to hear a member of my family at a loss for words …

“Dad died.”

I held the phone away and tried to imagine my father gone. Impossible! My brother’s voice continued on, like the barking of a dog in the distance. I put the phone down with shaking hands and stumbled along the sawdust-strewn grocery aisles, toward the exit. Seeing my distress, the worried owner hurried after me but I waved him off and ran out into the cool air. The market was closing for the day. The vendors were putting away their baskets of fruits and vegetables, tubs of cheese, and bins of rice and grains. I ran through the grey slush in the streets as tears streamed down my face.

I CAN HARDLY REMEMBER
the funeral, I was in shock and preoccupied with holding my mother together and upright. Afterwards, I brought my mother home, and it was just the two of us. Now, I was in charge of everything. I put out her slippers and nightgown and went to get her ready for bed. The problem was, she was nowhere to be found. I searched the house, calling her name, but either she had wandered away or was playing a twisted game of hide-and-go-seek. At last, I found her in the basement, standing next to the furnace, shifting from foot to foot. I pulled her along up the stairs and tugged her nightgown down over her head. I shoved her feet into her terrycloth slippers and didn’t even bother brushing her teeth. I placed her pills on her tongue, held a glass of water to her lips, and waited impatiently. They stuck there melting. “Swallow them!” I shouted at her.
Do I have to do that for you, too?

“How do I know you’re not trying to poison me?” she asked with a demure smile.

Could she read my mind? If so, she would know that I wasn’t planning to kill her, but I would have preferred her dead instead of my father. I hated myself for my wicked thoughts. As I eased her down onto the toilet seat and handed her a wad of paper, I prayed she would wipe herself. She sat giggling. “It won’t come out.”

I looked away to give her privacy. At my tragic clown face in the mirror, I burst out laughing, a vicious, pathetic laughter.
How could my father do this to me?
I was furious, but cackled with laughter even more. I went to put away my mother’s clothes and turn down her covers, but when I came back, she was gone again. “Where are you?” I dashed from room to room and noticed the open front door. I ran outside and found her sitting behind the wheel of the car in the driveway. She turned the key in the ignition and the engine started up. “Mother, please come inside. It’s late. It’s cold.” She shifted into reverse. I opened the car door, but with surprising force she pulled it shut and released the hand brake. “Let me come with you.” I dashed around to the passenger side, climbed in, and just before she drove off I lunged for the keys and turned off the ignition. “Come back into the house,” I begged.

“Your father is at the subway station. I have to pick him up.”

“Mother,” I said, taking her hand, “I’m sorry to have to tell you, but he died.”

“Don’t you
do re mi
me, like all the rest.”

“Come back into the house. It’s time for bed.”

“Do you have any understanding of what’s going on?” She leaned on me as we walked back in.

“Very little,” I admitted.

“You know what?” She brightened with a plan. “I’m going to do what I’m going to do and afterwards, I’ll tell you what I’ve done.”

“Good idea.” I trudged up the stairs, guiding her up in front of me. I couldn’t wait to get into bed and escape behind my closed eyes. But sometime during the night she stood over me, shaking me awake. “Where’s the conductor? Who’s keeping the beat? The soloist is waiting.”

“What are you talking about?” I mumbled.

“I need to see samples of organisms. I have certain stipulations.”

“Go back to sleep, it’s too early to get up.” I rolled over but somewhere between sleep and morning, I heard her say, “I called the fire department and the police.” Next thing I knew, sirens wailed down the street toward our house.

I TRIED TO GET
back to my classes at the university, but I noticed that wherever I left my mother in the morning was where I usually found her when I returned home at the end of the day. One evening she pointed in an agitated manner at an empty chair and said, “Does that man come here every day?”

“Who are you talking to?” I barked at her, like a policeman to a suspected criminal.

“Salut!”
She clinked an imaginary glass at her imaginary companion. “Leave us alone.”

“Mother, do you know where you are?” I said wearily.

“Pay the driver and give me my change!”

Suddenly, I could see what was about to happen and I rushed over to her but it was too late. A dark wet puddle was spreading around her on the velvet chair, dripping down and onto the carpet. I pulled her out of the chair, dragged her along to her bedroom, put a diaper on her, and we both fell asleep.

“Severe cognitive impairment can occur after a psychological shock such as a sudden loss,” Dr. DeGroot explained when I called to tell her what was happening. “It’s a mild psychosis or a traumatic disorientation. It sounds like she’s pleasantly confused. How’s she managing with her
ADL?
“

Oh, those darn Activities of Daily Living! The very things that had always been so difficult for her: walking, talking, bathing, eating, and getting dressed. “With my help …,” I told the doctor and as I got off the phone, I sat there considering my own
ADL
of late: mulling, pondering, worrying, stewing, and wondering. I longed to lie in bed and sob for hours, but it was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I got up, got myself dressed, then my mother, poured cornflakes into a bowl, lifted spoonfuls to her mouth, eased her in and out of chairs, and then sat down to contemplate my life of servitude. I saw everything through a soft, fuzzy film of tears that I didn’t even wipe away. Why bother? More came. Tiny pulses of energy kept me going, but at times I gave up and joined my mother as we sat in our nightgowns watching game shows and evangelical healers on the television.

“What have you been up to?” Joy called to ask. “My mother is very worried about you.”

“We get up. We watch
The Friendly Giant
and
The Price Is Right.”

Joy’s mother, Bunny, got on the phone. “Tilda dear, you have to get some help. Ask your brothers if you can afford to hire someone to help you.”

“I promised her I’d always take care of her.”
But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? It’s a promise I can no longer keep
.

“It’s too much for you on your own,” Bunny insisted.

My brother Stephen had taken over managing the finances and had been giving me money for groceries and medications. He told
me that there were sufficient funds to hire a caregiver for my mother and so I called the Loving Care Agency (because of the name) and hired a Personal Support Worker. I had to avert my eyes from my mother’s accusatory glare when Pearl Bernard arrived, but Pearl soon won her over. And when she put her strong arms around me, I shivered at her warm touch. “You must have loved your dear father,” she said. Tears sprung to my eyes. Yes, I did, but only now that he was gone did I realize just how much. Yes, I loved him, but I hadn’t shown it and had never told him. Too often, I had been irritated and impatient at his corny jokes. I had refused his exotic meals and hadn’t played along with his word games or puzzles.

Pearl prepared hearty foods like Callaloo soup, salt fish, and mashed plantains, and my mother quickly regained her appetite. I went shopping for a pair of orthopedic shoes, a raised toilet seat and railing, and finally, with Pearl’s gentle persuasion, the wheelchair my mother had resisted for so long. Grief had brought me to a standstill. My life had been shutting down, but Pearl got us all going again. I even returned to my classes, and the professors and other students all helped me ease back in. Thanks to Pearl, a nurse in her own right, I managed to finish my third year at university.