Kit Wilson, RN: ReCreating Normal

By Beth E Heinzeroth White

The Kit Wilson, RN books are an engaging series about nursing through the eyes of a contemporary fictional nurse. Everyone knows a nurse, and many of us can thank a nurse for making the path to good health possible. Kit Wilson, RN, is written by a registered nurse with decades of experience and commitment to nursing. The auth

• Language: English
• Publisher: BHW Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Jul 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781735934754

Book preview

Prologue

Let each person tell the truth from his/her own experience.

Florence Nightingale

My Grandpa loved playing with words, The more obscure the word, the better he liked to use it. He was a successful real estate agent and deeply valued education. His name was Robert Wilson. He was known as Rob. Grandpa liked to say, When I was born, half the boys in my class were named Bobby. I called myself Robbie to be different.

When we got together, he would open his arms, hug us, and ask if we were having fun learning in school. Learning, especially new ways of describing things, was fun for Grandpa. He was a massive fan of the adjective. I loved being around Grandpa and learning new words. He was the only one who was allowed to call me Kitten.

Well, Andy, he would say to my dad, Did you drive the circuitous route from Thompson to get to San Davers?

After dinner, he would compliment Gram. Jen, my dear, he once said, That meal was ambrosial.

Grandpa got the biggest bang when my brothers and I didn’t know what these fancy words meant. Well, go get the dictionary. Let’s look it up, he’d say. Not on the computer thing. The real dictionary. The Unabridged one. Anyone who can tell me why it’s called Unabridged gets to go to Mr. Chilly’s after lunch for ice cream.

Of course, we raced to Grandpa’s home office for the dictionary. We reported that an unabridged dictionary was the most complete dictionary available. No shortcuts would be found in an unabridged dictionary. We also learned that Grandpa had asked Dad if he drove the longer scenic way to San Davers, and he wanted Gram to know he thought her dinner was delicious. We all got ice cream.

The summer before junior high school, Grandpa commented that going to a new school could be confounding. Sometimes kids felt muddled for a time.

I looked up the words in my unabridged dictionary and assured him I was not confused or puzzled. Going to 7th grade was going to prove to everyone that I was a bigger deal than I was given credit for.

I’m sure you’re right, my Kitten, he said. Some other kids might think they don’t like junior high and want to quit. They may not be as resilient as you are.

We looked up resilience, and I felt confident I could bounce back from whatever school threw at me. Grandpa didn’t realize that I was 12 years old. I had bounced back from many things in 6th grade: square roots, conjugating the past perfect verb tense and reading my own poem in front of the entire class. In my mind, I was the personification of resilience. If you look that up in an unabridged dictionary, you will find out that it means a person is tough and can recover quickly from difficulties.

Four and a half weeks after Grandpa Rob talked to me about going to a new school, I walked through the doors of Thompson Junior High School. My life was upended. Those first few months as a 7th grader kicked me in the pants.

There were new, more mature standards that came with being a junior high school student. It never occurred to me to think that schoolwork could be challenging. It was much harder, and the teachers didn’t accept any reasons for incomplete work.

No longer were sports just for fun or exercise. Everyone didn’t get a trophy at the end of the season. In junior high school, winning was the goal. Were we on the winning team? Did we put 110 percent into all practices and games? What did 110 percent even mean?

It turned out that seventh graders were the babies in junior high school. We were ignored, or worse, laughed at when we asked questions of 8th and 9th graders. It’s too complicated for you to understand, we were told.

Some of my junior high school teachers were intimidating. My history teacher told us our class consisted of a bunch of coddled children. We expected everything to be just given to us. We were selfish and unwilling to work hard. In defense of our class, many of us were hard-working, responsible, and caring. The way we acted was not our fault. It was the fault of the adults who raised us. They fooled us by giving us self-esteem.

I was raised in a supportive environment and knew I was loved. I had not yet experienced any tragedies or significant life disruptions. Adults usually didn’t understand me, but I wasn’t afraid to offer my opinion.

My mom, a third-grade teacher, and my dad, a pharmacist, worried about raising us to be the Best Human Beings We Could Possibly Be. They believed that we kids could be turned into potential fodder for the psychiatrist’s couch or, at minimum, merely psychologically impaired if the wrong words were used to describe our behavior. Communication with children was crucial. Discipline was supposed to be delivered kindly. We were told our actions were sometimes disappointing or resulted from poor choices. But. Very Importantly. We were never Bad.

I was shocked to learn that it was OK to be labeled with the B word in junior high school. We were told that some of us were bad at math, getting our homework turned in on time, doing layups…the Bad List seemed endless in those dark days. I was bad at class participation. I was very good at talking to my friends before class until the second warning from the teacher. Which, as it turns out, made me Bad.

Worse, I was sure my girlfriends didn’t like me anymore. The other girls in my class, even my Best Friend Forever Hannah, sometimes whispered when I was nearby. They had cuter clothes and were so much smarter than I was. They wore bras that had an actual cup size. They made the cheerleading team, understood pre-algebra, and acted sophisticated when boys talked to them in homeroom. They even had periods. I failed at all of these things.

Even when I did start (which was how we sophisticates described the onset of menses), it happened in church. Pastor Linda took me aside because she noticed blood on my khakis. In the back. Thank goodness Lutherans ordain women! That day, I missed a catechism lesson on Leviticus, a book of the Bible.

I was mortified by wearing sanitary products. (What a lame name.) I knew about tampons, but Hannah told me they would take away my virginity, and I knew enough about that business to recognize it was Bad.

Without warning, the rules changed. Nothing was going my way. I felt completely out of control.

So, I did what any reasonable 7th grader would do. I sought answers from experts who could tell me what the future held.

I took online quizzes on BuzzFeed. I answered questions like Do you like zombies? and What kind of animal are you: Dog, Cat, Horse, or Monkey? Somehow, people whom I supposed were smarter told me my answers meant I was a normal 12-year-old and that I was a nice person. Not helpful.

I used Ouija Board at somebody’s sleepover birthday party. It told me I would marry someone named Kennedy. Was that a boy or a girl? Ouija was unclear about my future happiness. I decided Ouija Boards were worthless.

I dug out my brother’s Magic 8 Ball. I asked it questions about my future life and tried to believe I was being given cosmic answers. Even more divine, I discovered Answer Me Jesus. This was Magic 8 Ball with a Christian twist. A pastel statue of Jesus offered 20 answers to help choose the right path. Ask a question and turn over the statue. The answer magically appeared. There was also an Answer Me Buddha for those looking for enlightening answers. I told one of my Roman Catholic friends about Answer Me Jesus, and her priest told her to stay away from me.

I read my horoscope, which alternately told me good news or warnings to watch for unplanned situations. According to Wikipedia, my Zodiac sign was among the top five best astrology signs. The horoscope said I had a calm spirit. That was a laugh. Goodbye horoscopes.

I knocked on wood and threw salt over my left shoulder for good luck. I read fortune cookies and believed Destiny sent each baked-in message specifically to me.

Without warning (again!), all my future-telling helpers took a fatal hit. Remember the catechism class about Leviticus I missed because Aunt Red visited me? Apparently, Leviticus 19:26 warned about seeking answers from fortune tellers and horoscopes. Magic 8 balls and Answer Me statues weren’t invented then, but they certainly fell into that category. According to my catechism class, these are the work of the devil and would defile me if I kept using them. I didn’t want to be defiled, especially when I looked up the word in the unabridged dictionary and learned I would be dishonored, spoiled, and polluted.

Grandpa was right. As it turned out, I didn’t know anything about resilience. I had never been confronted with anything this confounding before. I was muddled.

I talked to my parents and Gram and Grandpa about my bleak future.

Dad assured me that I was feeling the way almost every 7th grader felt. The trick is to keep going. Persevere, he said.

Mom reminded me that on the day of the Khaki Catastrophe, Pastor Linda told the catechism class that I had a touch of stomach trouble and had to go home. Nonspecific stomach trouble was infinitely more acceptable than the full truth.

Mom also said that all kids my age thought they were special and self-centered and felt insecure about themselves. I should have been insulted by this insight into my insecure stage of growth and development, but I already knew I was special. The comment went right over my self-centered head.

Gram told me that tampons would not take away my virginity and that she would help me learn to use them. Gram is a nurse, so she knew such things.

Except for the virginity part, the best thing I remember about that day is a story my Grandpa told me.

It’s about doing what you can to keep moving through tough times. Remember the word ‘resilience?’ It’s not just bouncing back, he explained. "It means you keep trying to improve things when everything seems impossible. It’s not easy at all. Here’s a great story about Chicken Little.

"An acorn fell on Chicken Little’s head. He believed this meant that the sky was falling down. He went running around the chicken yard, squawking, ‘Help! Help! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!’ At the back of the yard, Chicken Little came upon another chick lying with her feet up in the air. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he clucked. ‘Don’t you know the sky is falling?’ The other chicken looked at Chicken Little and said serenely, ‘One does what one can.’"

Grandpa finished the story and took my hands in his. You’re smart, Kitten. Do what you can. Try some new things at school. Give new things a good test. Not everything will work out, and you can stop doing things that aren’t right. I believe you can make things feel normal again. I promise you’ll come out stronger for it. That’s resilience.

So, I did what I could. I kept reading fortune cookies but put away the Magic 8 Ball. I reread Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. I found Little Women by Louisa May Alcott in my bookcase and finished it in three days. I went to football games and had fun with my friends. We laughed about the 8th graders and how we all felt like dorks in the new school. I began to feel cautiously normal again.

The 7th grade was the first time my determination was tested. There have been two more times when I felt my future was jeopardized.

If we haven’t met, let me introduce myself. My name is Catherine Wilson, but most people call me Kit. I was born and raised in Thompson, a small community in the Midwest of the United States. I attended Trail State University. TSU is in the state capital and about two hours by car from Thompson. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, or BSN, I moved back to my hometown. I’ve been a registered nurse for five years and work in an adult medical-surgical unit at Thompson Memorial Hospital (TMH). My unit is called 3 North and is where intensive care unit patients are cared for when they no longer need the most intense level of nursing and medical care. At TMH, it’s called the Step Down ICU unit.

My first year as an R.N. was hard. I felt stupid and was convinced I’d made the wrong career choice. My friends, parents, colleagues, and Gram got me through that time. I joined a group of nurses who met monthly to work on personal craft projects and discuss life’s ups and downs. It was called Sip and Stitch. Through them, I learned about the difference between empathy and compassion. I could show compassion without over-identifying. Very importantly, I learned to organize my time, multi-task at work, and offer comfort without thinking I was the only one who could make a difference. Perseverance helped me keep an intact ego and balance work and personal life.

Most recently, I struggled to achieve resilience in 2021, the second full year the COVID-19 pandemic became part of everyday life. I had been an RN for almost three years and honestly was frightened. Frightened by my work environment. Frightened by the death rate. In retrospect, I should have been most alarmed about how I began to think about nursing and how I acted toward other people. That realization took time, however. I thought I was just fine. It was world events and the people around me that were crazy. I only knew my life was no longer normal.

During those months, I realized that something had to be fixed, or I would become a bitter, mean-spirited nurse and probably alienate some of my friends. I might even leave nursing… hospital bedside nursing anyway. I’d seen it happen with more nurses than I could count. My grasp of resilience was pathetically inadequate.

I want to tell you some stories about building resilience during an enormously unpredictable era in human history. Most people who lived through the COVID-19 pandemic heard about hospital-based nurses being especially hard hit. Every day we saw examples of courage, tragedy, and self-centeredness.

I was a nurse who was supposed to help and heal other people. But there was a time when I didn’t think it was possible to slog through the pandemic muck for another day.

Some of the stories are flat-out inspirational. What saved us was that we saw people who showed intelligence and kindness toward others, no matter how bleak the situations seemed. Creativity in so many forms moved my team of colleagues from overwhelming fatigue and hopelessness toward resilience. It took practice and more than a bit of bravery for nurses to hang on in 2021.

The lessons I learned when I was younger held me too. The encouragement and love that nurtured my spirit in the 7th grade helped rescue my sanity as an adult.

Grandpa died when I was almost 14 years old. He wasn’t there to help me through the first year out of nursing school or the COVID-19 pandemic. I still miss him and am grateful to remember his words. You’re smart, Kitten. Do what you can. Keep trying to make sense of all this. I believe in you. You can make it work. One does what one can. Here’s looking for you, Grandpa Robbie.

Chapter One

There is no part of my life upon which I can look back without pain.

Florence Nightingale

I’m a nurse. It’s my job to state the obvious.

A fact: COVID-19 affected every part of life in 2020 and 2021. Not admitting this obvious fact nearly took my life completely off the rails in 2021. It started with the third spike in COVID-19 cases in early December 2020. More patients, sicker patients. Again.

I volunteered to work every winter holiday in 2020: Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day. It was not the noble and unselfish professional sacrifice it might sound like. The hospital had instituted a mandatory overtime policy for RNs. We were required to work 84 hours every pay period rather than 72. Overtime pay didn’t begin until I worked over 80 hours every two weeks. You don’t have to be a math teacher like my brother Teddy to conclude that overtime pay for whole shifts was a smarter choice than a measly extra four hours every two weeks. For bedside nurses who work TMH-designated holidays, there is time-and-one-half pay plus another day off. The way I figured it, I was outsmarting the system.

Nursing short staffing at Thompson Memorial Hospital (TMH) continued into 2021. In fact, short staffing progressed from we really need another nurse to you’ve got to be friggin’ kidding me levels. Every work night was a surprise and not a good kind of surprise like from getting those Ugg boots for your birthday. Work surprises were whether enough nurses would show up to make staffing a band-aid-able problem or flat-out unsafe.

Two 3 North nurses developed COVID-19 in September and had not returned to work by January 1, 2021. Both nurses were hospitalized, but neither one needed a ventilator. They are still recovering. Although they’re both back in their own houses, one nurse has some memory problems, and the other nurses needs to use oxygen to sleep at night. Traveling nurses were cut out of the budget in December so that the hospital could end the year with a positive bottom line. Two more nurses quit a week before Christmas.

Those are the reasons why Emily Smith, my manager, agreed immediately to pay me whatever it took to staff the unit during the holidays.

Besides, I didn’t have plans for the holidays. I was essentially in exile from my family.

I was an infection-spreading risk since I took care of COVID-19 patients every week. Then, my Gram got COVID-19. My parents scooped her up from San Davers where she lived and moved her to their house for an extended recovery visit. My pharmacist dad and germophobic mom placed the house in quarantine for most of December.

A not-so-well-kept secret is that Gram was part of the Phase 3 trials for the COVID-19 vaccine. We think she got the real vaccine, not the saltwater placebo. Her COVID-19 symptoms resembled a bad cold, not the ICU-at-death’s-doorstep cases I’d been caring for since Spring 2020. That didn’t matter. My family loved me, they said, but I wasn’t to show up inside their house until things settled down.

That left me with a very small group of people who considered me safe to hang out with. My dear friend Tala Denton continued to work with me on the night shift. She was as potentially virus laden as I was. Her boyfriend was the health enthusiast and general odd duck Mark Ackerman who lived with his Nana across the hall from me. Mark was also in the Phase 3 Trials. The way he boasts about it, you’d think he was the foundation of COVID-19 vaccine research.

I was also lucky enough to