Not a Nurses Bootlace

(Australia)

Not a Nurses Bootlace

Mum despaired that I'd never be domesticated, and her kindly face fell as I shrieked when she suggested a nursing career for me.

The time came though, when to her delight, at 25 I left the office job and took up nursing.

To her dismay, at 26 I bought a round-the-world ticket and bolted. Enough of nursing, for now at least.

Predictably, two years a-roaming saw me return home broke.

In a small country town where office jobs are tightly held, I was left with little option.

So, reporting for duty, a colleague handed me a bowl of mashed food and casually instructed ?can you feed Tom?.

Nausea quickly overtook me.

Dinner that night for the residents of House One at the brand new 30-bed nursing home was roast beef and vegies. The bowl I held in my limp, unwilling hand, also contained roast beef and veges, but they had been vitalised beyond recognition into a smooth grayish glob.

Sitting by Tom's bed, I wondered how the Florence Nightingale thing totally escaped me, but not the other nurses. Some people loved this caring aspect of the job. I HATED it.

His thick tongue struggled to allow his mouth to accept the food, and the involuntary coughs and splutters sprayed me with the glob. I still gag as I relive it. Poor man. Poor me.

The only conversations were the ones in my head. "This is a bloody awful way to spend a Saturday night and ?Pleeeease send me back to Dementia Ward".

Lovely Dementia Ward, where everything was so relaxed and nothing much was ever a problem, except for old Sallie who thought she was still running the kitchen at St Vinnies, and was always trying to take control - digging the toast out of the electric toaster with a knife (intercepted with an athlete?s leap at the last minute), and sticking her head in to light the oven with a box of matches, to heat dinner. Her great skill however, was herding everybody together for meals.

Meals that they fed themselves, and never spat back.

Not all the nurses saw the funny side of Dementia Ward; where old Lucy would sometimes invite you to jump into bed with her.

It made me wonder about her exotic past, glimpses of which flickered in jumbled conversations from time to time.

Lucy's time came late one night. Walking to her room, she stopped and looked over her shoulder asking ?who?s that man following us? No man could be seen, but five minutes later she had a stroke and died.

Maybe she had seen her lover of 30 years, or the husband she met following his death.

Her glamorous Society life was far removed from the fright I got later that night when the undertaker, wheeling her semi-upright body wrapped in a bed sheet up the hallway on a bag trolley, almost bowled me over.

Lucy was always one for grand statements, "dismissing" staff with the sweep of a hand and a booming voice, "YOU think this is FUNNY don't you? This is the WORST cup of tea I've ever had. You're FIRED. Go on. Get Out !!!"

She had a strong presence that set her apart from others in this quiet farming community. Her commanding air appealed to me a lot, and her bag trolley departure was as shocking as it was unorthodox. I didn't sleep very well that night.

Nursing could also be very confronting outside of dementia ward.

Roger gave a groan as we walked to his chair, and I quipped lightheartedly, "ah c'mon Rodge, it's not that bad." He slowly replied, "It is. You don't know what it's like" and there followed a moment of mutual acknowledgement.

I then had two days off, and waking from my sleep on day three, I dreamed of a gentle whisper. "I'm going now." When I got to work, they told me he'd died that morning.

Mrs Smith, miserable and demanding all her life, hollered at me one night, "YOU'RE NOT A NURSE'S BOOTLACE", and it was all I could do not to scream back.

Mum counseled "just because people get old Kath, doesn't mean they become nice. They usually just become a more extreme version of what they were".

Eventually I felt I needed to move on - the bag trolley would come for me soon enough.


Finishing my pilot's license, the perfect foil for a single world-traveler who had run out of ideas, I applied to return to a past life which would again take me to live and work overseas.

In two and a half years at home, I'd caught my breath and it was time to go.

I did stop by on my way out of town for a cup of tea in Dementia Ward - but they didn't know who I was.