Just Keep Breathing

When we arrived at the IPU this morning, the nurses were trying to administer an IV into a man. It was the same man who was muttering nonsense yesterday as I held his hand. Today he was staring off into space, not blinking, not flinching or showing any signs of response as he was prodded over and over with needles into his collapsed veins. The nurses tried to get the needle into him for almost 45 minutes. They said, “He had already started to go cold”. He lay on his bed motionless, lifeless. His concave chest was exposed. His chest rose with each breath, then back down. I waited in anticipation for his chest to rise every time. There was about 5 seconds in between each gasping breath. Through out the day when I would look at him, I was always surprised when his chest would rise again with breath. All day he looked as if he was sleeping with his eyes open. They never got the needle into his veins.

Today Nurse Barnard taught us the precise way to make beds. I never knew there was such technique to it. He showed us exactly which sheets and blanekts must go in what order, and folded exactly which way. When putting the sheets on you must center the crease of the sheet, aligning it at the top first. You should try to fold the corners of a sheet like an envelope to tuck it into the bottom. There is a correct way to fold the sheets at the top. Nurse Barnard pays attention to every detail, as it will affect the patient. The sheets must be pulled tightly, with no creases, because bumps in the sheets can cause stress sores to the patients. Also, if a patient is tall, you shouldn’t tuck the bottom of the sheet into the bed, because it might stress the feet. Nurse Barnard amazes me. He is caring for the patients even when he is simply making their beds. So we made every bed in all the wards of the IPU. For the patients who are mobile, they took a break outside in the sun so that we could make their beds. During this time the patient Thabo cleaned his sneakers in anticipation of being discharged. Many of the patients are bed ridden. For some of them we just adjusted their linens with them in the beds. For others we managed to help them into a chair next to their bed so we could do a full change of bedding. Nurse Barnard was instructing us and helping us the whole way. I can’t get over how caring he is. He was so attentive to teaching us because he knows that we want to be nurses and doctors, and he believes that we will be better with our future patients because of this training. He even taught us to tie up the curtains with out any ties, so that it is aesthetically pleasing.

There was a new patient in the male ward today. He seemed in critical condition. I spoon-fed him his lunch. When I first took a spoon full of the egg salad and put it to his mouth he shook his head. So then I put the bowl in front of him and pointed at the different options in the bowl. He nodded his head when I pointed to the beans. He ate the entire serving of beans. He settled next on the beats. When he had enough he gave me a thumbs up. Noticing that Nurse Barnard wiped a patients mouth after feeding him, I cleaned up the man who I was feeding. I wet some gauze and tried to gently scrub the red beats from his lips, trying to be sensitive to the sores on his lips. Afterwards I held his hand for a bit. He didn’t talk all day.

In the late morning a woman in the female ward died. We summoned the courage to visit her. She looked a lot more peaceful than I expected. Her body was stiff, but looked as if she was just resting. Her face was the difficult part to look at. There were wet paper towels resting on her eyes to help them close. There was a bandage from the top of her head along her jaw. This was meant to help shut her mouth. Her mouth was not shut though. We watched Nurse Barnard as he kept pushing her mouth shut, but it would just keep opening. He put her pillow on her chest, with the edge against the bottom of her jaw. This seemed to help close her mouth better. Later she was taken away.