The Most Dangerous Day

Candystriper life. Seeing a lot of unexpected things working in a hospital environment maybe helped me grow up fast in some ways... or grow up weird. There's that. Because so much there was literally life and death, the culture at High School wasn't all that compelling to me. So during the school year, I was more committed to spending weekends at the hospital rather than at football games and parties. I felt strangely mature because I was treated that way there by patients and staff, and I seemed to handle emergencies and dire circumstances there well. Calmly.

Until that one day. October 27, 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The most dangerous day in human history. When Nuclear War was suddenly ominous and imminent. The world had spiraled out of control. President Kennedy was addressing the nation and all the patients' televisions were simultaneously pulsing with the bleak and terrifying reality. Never had we been closer to the annihilation we had been getting ready for since the air raid sirens sent us under our desks in elementary school and Jr. High. Immediately I accepted that I wouldn't be going home from the Hospital to tell my family I loved them and to face the end together with them that afternoon. Overwhelming. And the only thing left to do was keep helping people where I was. Calmly. Until we were wiped out.

It probably sounds really dramatic, but it actually was that close. Life on planet earth was hanging by a thread. Blink, and what happens? Perhaps we all are closer at times to the final curtain than we realize. What would you do if you suddenly you found yourself out basically alone and the apocalyptic end was a breath away? 

I don't know if you believe in miracles or not, but there's the story of the one man who truly saved the world at that critical moment. https://www.gzcenter.org/the-man-who-saved-the-world-from-a-nuclear-war/

For more details:https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2021/june/black-saturday-declassified

The Irony

Does it make any sense to you at all that on many days, tiny me was "in charge" of our tiny ER? Me neither. But there I was in the diminutive (2 exam tables) room across from the hospital kitchen and next door to the Morgue. That was it! Dr. Andy Nowakowski was the official Elgin Police Department Physician, so accidents, crimes, DOA's, etc. were supposedly sent to (125 bed) St. Jo's instead of to the newer, bigger Sherman Hospital a few blocks away. Hmmm.  

At any rate, when I was there, always by myself, if someone came in (no advance notice back then (no cell phones, etc.) ambulance or walk in, there would just suddenly be people showing up at the door), well there I was! Just me. Can you imagine how reassuring it would be to rush into a hospital ER in sheer desperation, only to be met by a 13 year old volunteer who would get you on an examining table? Yep. So I would immediately call up to the 4th floor Surgery Department, and a Resident Dr. accompanied by a Surgical Nurse would jump on the somewhat rickety service elevator and appear a few minutes later to save the day. Or at least try to. 

To pass the time in between these pressing emergencies to deal with, I would assemble surgical trays for the sterilizer. Some days were slow. Some days anything but.

Somehow I never reacted emotionally. I got used to different situations and was always able to be calm regardless of the degree of injury. Until that one day. They brought a baby in from an auto accident. This was an age of no seat belts, no car seats, not much in the way of accident prevention; but according to my perception there was a heck of a lot less traffic, less idiots on the road, at least that's how I remember it. Your mileage may vary. 

So I had them put the baby on the exam table while we waited for the Dr. and Nurse to appear. And as soon as they did, I bolted from the room. The one and only time I ever did. That tiny little nose had been severed and was only attached by a tiny flap, and it seemed unbearable to me that this vulnerable itty bitty human had to suffer like that. I couldn't take it. I had to leave.

I'm sure there were many people that came to that room in greater agony than that little soul, but for some reason, it just hit me harder than anything else had. Perhaps because most patients were adults. Ironically, 10 years later I would find myself, arms loaded with a laundry basket full of wet clothes to hang in the sunshine, swinging open the back door of my house, and knocking my own 18 month old baby boy off the porch, thus severing his nose. At the hospital in Denver, the Dr. who was stitching him up told my husband that he was way more concerned with me than the baby because I was so unhinged. Life is weird, no? So sorry, Adam.

After Life

The tiny ER, where I was sent to spend most of my time that year, was next to the tiny Morgue, which had a door with a window of frosted glass, so you couldn't see in clearly, no doubt a good idea. But you could see motion. Very quickly that summer I had become convinced that I was destined to be a Doctor who would save the world. So suddenly the ER and neighborly Morgue had great significance for me. 

One day I came in from outside through the Ambulance Entrance, and stopped in front of the Morgue door because I could tell there was activity within, and I was intrigued and fascinated. Until. The loud buzz of a saw and cracking sounds shot out from that now gruesome-to-me-room, and I bolted, crying out the Ambulance Entrance to escape the grim reality. Obviously they were doing a cranial autopsy at that point. And I was certain that even though I had been able to handle blood and guts and tears and screams, this was a bridge too far, never going to be something I could deal with. We all have our limits, right?

Ironically enough, I did end up going back into the Morgue itself several times that summer. Turned out that Felix, the Pathology Tech from Puerto Rico, took an interest in my MD aspirations, and encouraged me, or so I thought. He would take me upstairs into the Pathology Lab at times, and then downstairs into the Morgue, when no one else was around, to show me the ropes. I still vividly remember the first dead body I saw laying on the metal slab in the middle of the room, a young woman of 28, with very black hair and very yellow jaundiced skin. Just seeing her so young body, forever stilled, and thinking of what her family must be going through was a shock. There were other cadavers, of course, but isn't there always something about the first that you can't forget? I am so grateful to have never witnessed a young child there.

I don't know if those kind of places should be some kind of hallowed or not, but I do think the dead deserve respect. Apparently Felix felt otherwise, as I soon enough discovered. Come to find out, he was not actually interested in medical goals, or dead bodies, but in young girls and their live bodies. His wife was an aide I knew from the OB floor. I wonder if she knew what he was up to? I had no problem in bolting from that situation after what he tried with me, but soon enough I noticed the Morgue being used as a rendezvous spot for him and an older teenage girl who worked in the kitchen. Awkward! But my chilling time with the corpses was over.

Hospital Interlude

Candy Striper. What on earth? Could that be what you called someone who made fudge? Cotton candy? Random possibilities come to mind with that term, but actually it was the moniker for teenage girls who volunteered at hospitals in the USA back in the 60's. All because of the pink and white striped pinafore that was the ubiquitous uniform identifying such a strange creature. 

Well count me in!

I started out on a rather humble level at thirteen. Maybe I'd read a book where cute interns fell all over themselves drooling over starry eyed, fresh faced, teeny bopper volunteers in such beguiling outfits.  Must have been way into fiction back then. Anyway I signed up, and the matronly Supervisor of Volunteers soon had me sitting around a table with other girls, all of us sewing dolls of some kind for little patients. Did I mention I don't sew? And I didn't want to learn, seeing as a sewing circle in a back room didn't seem like a handy way to meet interns, after all.  

So call it an inconvenient reprieve. They signed me up as a "victim" for the emergency crisis practice drill. On a blistering hot summer day, we were on cots in the hostile sun out on the hospital lawn, waiting to be triaged by the (hopefully handsome) firefighters/paramedics. I was really into it, having passed junior high drama class and even making drama club, but by the time they got around to me, it had kind of gone to my head, and I couldn't even remember my own phone number by then, much less what bones were supposed to be broken, wounds festering, etc. Or I feigned it. Go figure, there were a few puzzled hospital personnel who were not at all impressed with my performance of a scatterbrained fake casualty. And surprisingly, no hot date with a first responder either (never mind that I'd never had a date of any kind at all yet).  

It must have been obvious that I wasn't just a one trick pony because the next thing I knew, I was assigned to sit at the front desk so I could greet and shepherd visitors to the right rooms. Even though I have absolutely no sense of direction, I could do this, as the elevator was right behind me, so I could look up a patient name, give a room number, and nod knowingly to the elevator over my shoulder. One Saturday a middle aged wiseguy came up to me and asked me what exactly I was doing there. "Oh," I smiled, "I tell people where to go." He started laughing and said, "You do? Well hey, that's everybody's dream job!"

I did all this with such utter finesse, that I was promoted to the medical floor pretty quickly! Soon I was running countless samples up to the Lab on the 4th floor and refilling ice water for patients at St. Joseph Hospital. Somehow I graduated quickly to feeding the helpless, emptying bedpans for the bed-bound, changing bed sheets, taking vitals, running to the rooms when the light when on to call the nurse, and giving back massages in the evenings to relax weary muscles and bones and souls into merciful, if constantly interrupted, sleep.  

I felt useful, needed, appreciated. I could make a difference, albeit small. Finally I had a purpose. So basically I decided to live there. Well almost. My Mom said the car automatically would just drive to the Hospital. And I received a pin for volunteering 1500 hours the first year.

But often these random functions were punctuated by the very grim reality of people in pain, people on the edge, people with needs far beyond what I had ever imagined. At the far end of the 3rd floor was the Ward, with beds for men who were indigent, or at least without sufficient insurance. On my first day making myself useful by going up and down the hall with a cart full of ice water, I finally found myself in The Ward, going from patient to patient, refilling their metal pitchers, helping some to get a drink, when suddenly a hand of bones shot up from a bed and grabbed mine. Startled, I looked down into the bed where a wisp of what once had been a man lay, and as his eyes penetrated mine, he almost loudly gasped, "Help me! Help me! They're taking my body away from me!" I was paralyzed by what this literal skeleton had just uttered. Or was it by the sheer inexplicable strength of the grip he momentarily held me in? But just as suddenly he turned away, releasing me as his strength and voice both faded into eternity. I never knew his name, but never will I forget his anguished face.