4 East Triumph and Tragedy, A Nurse Remembers

By S.J. Walker

The author remembers stories of triumph and tragedy as a nurse on 4 East, an acute care pediatric unit where children and their families faced the greatest challenges of their lives.  

Moments of happiness and heartache abound in these vignettes of children who live on in the author's memory. 

Their stories must be told

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.J. Walker
• Release date: Oct 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393049913

S.J. Walker

This is S.J.’s first foray as an author. Until 2018 she worked as a certified Rehabilitation Registered Nurse for persons with physical and mental disabilities. Her hobby has been genealogy since 1976 and she has uncovered many family stories as she researched, some of which are included as a fictionalized version in this work. S.J. has been an avid reader all her life; reading a variety of genres, but her favorite being historical non-fiction and fiction. She has wished to write a book of her own since childhood. S.J. Walker lives in the rural mountains of southwest Virginia with her husband of 47 years, 3 dogs, and a cat.

Book preview

4 East

Triumph and Tragedy,

A Nurse Remembers

By S.J. Walker

4 East

By S.J. Walker

The author remembers stories of triumph and tragedy

as a nurse on 4 East, an acute care pediatric unit

where children and their families

faced the greatest challenges of their lives.

Moments of happiness and heartache abound

in these vignettes of children who live on

in the author’s memory.

Their stories must be told.

Dedication

"Some people come into our lives

and quickly go.

Some stay for a while

and leave footprints on our hearts

and we are never, ever the same."  Flavia Weedn

To those who live in memory.

I still see you.

S.J. Walker

When I left the Pediatric Clinic, I donated a painting of hot air balloons that included the saying in the first dedication.

P.S. Dedication

To my friends and co-workers

at WWRC

who often heard these stories,

and encouraged me to write a book.

I finally did.

Published by S.J. Walker

Copyright © 2019 S.J. Walker All rights reserved.

Thank you for downloading this ebook.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or

by any electronic of mechanical means, including information

storage and retrieval systems, without written permission

from the author, except for use of

brief quotations in a book review.

The pictures in this book are courtesy of https://pixabay.com/.

They are not pictures of the children

whose true stories are told here.

Table of Contents

BEGINNINGS Chicago

"NO COMPASSION Talking Heads

TAKE ME DOWN TO THE HOSPITAL The Replacements

ANGEL OF MERCY Albert King

IT’S TOUGH TO BE A GOD Elton John

"STRANGE BREW Cream

HEAD GAMES Foreigner

OOPS Little Mix

BAD BLOOD Neil Sedaka

BIG MAN WITH A GUN Nine Inch Nails

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE The Police

LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER Bonjovi

SOMEONE’S FINAL SONG Elton John

NEEDLES and PINS Jack Nitzsche/Sonny Bono

I’M SO AFRAID Fleetwood Mac

"TIME IN A BOTTLE Jim Croce

SARAH SMILE Halls and Oates

BAD MEDICINE Bonjovi

LET IT BE The Beatles

ODDS and ENDS Bob Dylan

"DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC Lovin’ Spoonful

SOCIAL DISEASE Elton John

DON’T STOP BELIEVING Journey

Also by S.J. Walker

Coming Winter 2020! By S.J. Walker

About the Author

BEGINNINGS Chicago

Ididn’t always want to be a nurse.  When I was seven, I wanted to write fiction, but by the time I was sixteen, what I wanted most was to be a housewife, have a family, and a moneymaking career on the side, a career that didn’t take four or five years of college to attain.  I knew writing wasn’t an option.  I didn’t have the imagination or life experience to make any money at it.  So, I started at a two-year college majoring in Human Services, but quickly fell in love the first semester and dropped out to get married.

By age twenty-six with two children now out of diapers, a husband working two jobs, and a bank account hovering in the low hundreds, I decided it was time to get a job.  I transferred my one semester of credits and started the evening classes I needed get into the nursing program at a local college.  It was a great program for older students, self-study plus clinicals, and the history of 100% passing rates for the RN licensing exam.  I had decided I wanted to work with infants.

While in school I took a part-time job as a nursing attendant at a nursing home.  Not only was the cash welcome, but I wanted to make sure I was choosing the right career.  After eighteen months, I earned my license and became the evening charge nurse on a sixty-bed ward with two LPNs and six nursing attendants under me.  An auspicious beginning for someone with no real nursing experience, and a beginning that might quickly lose me my hard-earned license.

"NO COMPASSION Talking Heads

The nursing home was new and privately operated, offering better staffing than most.  But it was still a sad place for a life to end.  I worked the evening shift, and even with better staffing than most, there was never enough hands to do an optimal job.  No time for timed toileting, polishing nails, ironing clothes, or enjoying a game of cards or conversation.  Barely time for two baths or showers a week and to pass out the multitude of medications each night.  It was a slam-bam, thank you m’am rush to take vital signs, do the few necessary treatments required, feed, clean teeth, and dress for bed.  It was demeaning for the patients, and as a starry-eyed new graduate, a tremendous let-down and a scary start.

Although many of the staff were patient and kind, to most it was just a job, and there was little or no empathy for the patients.  Within a few months I had seen verbal and mild physical abuse.  There was a case of sexual abuse by a male nurse who worked night shift.  An LPN high on cocaine who was arrested running down a main street in her nightgown. Thefts.  An attendant caught a patient’s new dress on fire when attempting to burn through a plastic tag with her lighter to remove it (the patient suffered no burns thankfully).  Another attendant left a patient alone in a hoyer lift when she ran across the hall for a towel, resulting in a fall and a broken hip that the state came in to investigate.  Both were generally good attendants who just made mistakes, but because their mistakes occurred under my watch, it put my license in jeopardy.

AND THEN THERE WERE the physicians.  I was there less than two years from the time I started as a nursing attendant, and in that time saw the attending physician change four times.  None of them were good.  I had one ream me out for paging her instead of calling her cell phone because it caused her to spend a quarter to call me back.  Another who when called about a patient who was having trouble breathing and was not a DNR, said, What do you expect me to do, she’s eighty-four and has to die sometime.  The last physician I worked with there, a married father of six, would not speak to the nurses on the phone.  He wanted his messages taken and relayed through his secretary/girlfriend.  And on one occasion ran out of a patient’s room, his stool covered gloved hand in the air, to take a phone call from that same girlfriend.  It was too much to take.

I was sad to leave those poor patients to their fate.  I felt so sorry for them all. But I couldn’t jeopardize what I had worked for, and I really became a nurse to work with infants anyways.  I was outta there.

TAKE ME DOWN TO THE HOSPITAL The Replacements

Iapplied at the tertiary care state hospital in our area where there were several job openings, including one in the neonatal intensive care unit, and another in pediatrics.  The interview went well, but my lack of hospital experience qualified me only for positions on a medical-surgical unit where I could get the experience needed to work with infants or children, both highly specialized areas. 

It wasn’t good enough.  I didn’t want to work with adults.  I’d had enough of adults and their whiny, demanding, manipulative