Confessions of a Male Nurse

Katie was the nurse in charge for the shift, and she was great. Katie was always there to lend me a hand. Whenever I needed help with a wash, a lift, a wound dressing, advice of any kind, she was the person I turned to. Katie had already asked me several times if I was going to be okay looking after Mr Simpson on my own, and after reassuring her that I felt I could cope, she made it clear that I could come to her for help or advice, no matter how trivial. Knowing I had some support gave me a rare feeling of confidence.

Everything went smoothly and Mr Simpson was wheeled to the operating theatre at 7.30 in the morning. I didn’t see him again until one o’clock that afternoon.

‘How was it?’ he asked me for the third time in the last hour. With leftover anaesthetic in his system and a pump infusing him with intermittent morphine, that sort of thing was to be expected. I reassured him all went well.

The next day Mr Simpson was a bit livelier, and asking about when he would be able to play golf, but I still would not give him a definite answer.

By the second day post-surgery, Mr Simpson was in fine spirits, mainly because there was live golf on the television. I left him in peace and reminded him to call if he needed anything.

Thirty minutes later Mr Simpson’s bell went off.

‘My leg feels worse; it’s more painful than normal.’

Up until now his pain had been well controlled, so it was a bit of a surprise that it should start being a problem now.

I began to examine his leg, worried at what this could mean. I checked the pulses in his foot, to make sure the blood was still getting through. I examined his calf and his thigh. Thankfully there was no swelling. As a precaution I went to search for Katie and get her opinion.

I never got a chance to chat with Katie as I was distracted by the call bell of another of my patients.

Mr Dexter was one of my medical patients. He had pain in his chest, caused by angina. Simply put, the arteries supplying the heart were not letting enough blood through, resulting in poor oxygenation of the heart muscle. It’s the lack of oxygen that causes the pain.

Mr Dexter had a small bottle of spray which he was supposed to squirt under his tongue whenever he had chest pain. The medicine dilated his blood vessels, including the ones that supply the heart. Hopefully this would allow more blood and, therefore, more oxygen to the heart muscle.

He explained that he had given himself a dose five minutes ago. I instructed him to give himself some more spray. It works very quickly, within moments of taking it. I waited the recommended five minutes to reassess.

‘How bad is the pain now?’

I didn’t get a chance to hear how the pain was, because the call bell in Mr Simpson’s room went off, and continued to go off. It wasn’t stopping. I ran to his room.

‘Oh shit, it’s agony,’ Mr Simpson said as soon as he saw me.

I looked at his thigh and knee and placed my hands on them. I could feel something hard in his thigh. It wasn’t swollen to the naked eye, but I could definitely feel a lump that wasn’t there before. It was also hot. By the time I went to feel for a pulse in his foot, the other nurses on duty that shift were in the room.

Katie took charge, and within minutes had the doctor at the bedside. Katie told a terrified Mr Simpson that his graft wasn’t working, and that he needed to go back to theatre.

The head surgeon was urgently called back into hospital. During the next hour, myself, the junior doctor and the registrar made what preparations we could to get him to theatre. That hour was probably the most terrifying in Mr Simpson’s life. There was a chance that he would not only never play golf again, but possibly lose the leg altogether.

When he finally left for the operating room, the last of the adrenaline left my body and I felt physically and emotionally drained. It was also at that moment that I remembered Mr Dexter and his chest pain, as well as my other four patients that I hadn’t seen in all that time. I ran to Mr Dexter’s room, expecting to find him either clutching his chest in agony or dead.

He was sitting up reading his book. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ he replied.

I briefly felt relieved, but I rushed to check on my other four patients. Their medications were late . . .

. . . but they’d all had their meds. They were comfortable. All their needs had been taken care of.

Katie and the other nurses had seen to every one of my other patients.

This kind of generosity was not to be unique. Over the next two years I learnt that, in this ward at least, it was normal; the nurses worked as a team, and always watched out for each other.

Big man, big heart

Part 1: Who is Mr Groom?

Feeling part of a team was what made nursing truly enjoyable for me. I no longer dreaded going to work each day. I didn’t have that nauseous feeling in my stomach whenever I had to approach a senior member of staff. The biggest improvement was in the confidence I felt about looking after more challenging types of patients, which was fortunate because I was about to encounter one of my biggest challenges yet.

‘Are you okay having Mr Groom again?’ asked Carol, the nurse in charge.

What could I say? No, I’m worn out, he’s too heavy, too much work?

I had been looking after Mr Groom for what felt like forever and was hoping for a bit of a break, but whenever it came time to allocate his nurse there was always a silence in the office.

My adventures with Mr Groom had begun four days ago. I had just returned from my days off. The problem with coming back from time off is that you are at the bottom of the priority list when it comes to picking and choosing patients. To be fair, everyone is generally pretty reasonable when allocating patients, everyone takes their share of the demanding ones, but every now and then there comes along one patient whom no one really wants to be responsible for.

The first time I had met Mr Groom, I couldn’t believe my eyes; before me lay a sweating, rippling, heaving mass of flesh, covered almost head to toe in traditional Maori tattoos. He was one of the most obese men that I have ever had to look after. He must have been at least 180 kilograms.

Carol tried to be encouraging. ‘He needs someone strong and you’ve done so much for him; you’re good for him.’

I didn’t see exactly how I was good for him. We were too different. I come from an average white family, from an average white part of town. Mr Groom is an ex-member of Black Power, a gang with offices throughout New Zealand. Not a group to cross – even an ex-member – they eat boys like me for lunch.

‘Good morning, how are you?’ I asked Mr Groom.

At the sound of my voice he rolled over towards me, the bed springs protesting beneath him, and greeted me with a huge, gap-toothed grin.

‘Morning,’ he replied, then, after pausing to catch his breath, ‘Could be better, bro.’

Poor Mr Groom, he was only 35 years old, but he looked ten years older and had all the problems you would expect in someone twice his age. I could tell just from looking at his swollen legs, that it wasn’t all fat – there was fluid in them, a sure sign of a failing heart. Just to prove myself right, I poked my index finger into his ankle and left an indentation that faded away very slowly. Mr Groom’s joints also looked swollen and I wondered how much longer they would put up with being abused, before giving out completely.

Mr Groom had never been in hospital before, but he’d developed a bad case of pneumonia. In most 35-year-old men, a case of pneumonia would probably not need hospitalisation, but because of his weight he needed to be with us, especially now, because it looked like his condition was deteriorating.

With someone as big as Mr Groom, it’s never really just a simple case of pneumonia. He already had a diagnosis of heart failure. His joints always ached, and it was an effort to walk, even when well.

Mr Groom was drenched in a cold sweat, his hands were shaking, and as I clasped his wrist, I could feel his pulse racing. His eyes had a glazed look about them, as if he was in a world of his own. But it was his laboured breathing that caused me most concern.

‘How long has your breathing been this bad?’ I asked him.

Surely he hadn’t been struggling for breath all night? I knew the night staff would have done something.

‘It just got bad in the last hour’ – he paused to get his breath – ‘started about six this morning’ – pause – ‘came on really quick.’

He smiled again at me.

‘Why didn’t you call the nurse sooner?’

A rather pointless question, it wasn’t going to help, but I just had to know.

‘They had a busy night’ – pause – ‘didn’t want to bother them.’

Not the answer I was expecting.

There was no time to waste; I grabbed Carol who took one look at Mr Groom and immediately came to the same conclusion as I did. We went into the corridor to discuss our plan of action.

‘We need to get Dr Grey down here right away,’ Carol said.

‘Are you sure?’ I replied. ‘Why don’t we get the registrar instead?’

Dr Grey was the new junior doctor and had only qualified in the last few months. It’s an unfortunate truth that some junior doctors don’t listen to the nursing staff, and it looked like Dr Grey was turning into one of them. Just the other day we’d pointed out to him that one of his patients normally took his blood pressure medications in the evening before bed, because the patient said if he took them in the morning, he fainted. Dr Grey had disagreed and prescribed them for the morning, and sure enough the patient collapsed because of low blood pressure. The nurses were there to catch him. They also suggested perhaps reducing his dose, but this never happened either.

Carol thought over my suggestion for a moment or two.

‘You may be right, but we’ve got to give Dr Grey a chance.’

Fortunately, today Dr Grey surprised us all. He too took one look at our patient and did the wisest thing I had seen him do in three months. He called his registrar. Registrars usually have a minimum of four or five years of experience, and can usually be relied upon when complications arise.

The registrar took Mr Groom’s pulse. It was weak, but pumping along at 110 beats per minute. His breathing was rapid and shallow; he also had a high fever. Mr Groom had developed a sepsis – meaning the infection had got into his bloodstream – and a sudden worsening of his heart failure on top of his pneumonia.

With these added complications, Mr Groom was in a very serious condition. The doctors contemplated transferring him to the intensive care unit, but due to a shortage of beds he stayed with us. He was so weak that he was unable to stand, or even sit himself up in bed; the most he could do was roll from side to side.

‘It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?’ Mr Groom asked me.

It was. He could potentially die, but all he did was smile at me. It seemed I was more worried than he was.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I know you’ll be able to fix me up.’

Was he trying to put me at ease, by putting on a brave front? If I were in his position I would be terrified. But his cool calm didn’t seem to be an act. Did he, by some chance, have that much faith in us, a complete belief that the doctors and nurses will be able to do just that? I wish I had that much faith in myself.

Let the battle commence.

Part 2: Mission impossible

To give his medicines, Mr Groom had a tube stuck into the side of his neck and threaded towards the heart, because all the veins in his arms kept on collapsing.

He also had a tube put up his penis to accurately measure the fluids passing through his kidneys – especially important since his blood tests had shown that his kidneys were struggling. It was quite the balancing act, because too much fluid and his heart would struggle even more, while too little and his kidneys might deteriorate further.

Mr Groom had the girls from the physiotherapy department visiting twice a day, pounding on his chest, trying to help move the build-up of mucus in his lungs.

He had multiple blood tests alongside multiple antibiotics.

But for all the poking, prodding and discomfort that Mr Groom endured, he only had one small wish.

‘I tell ya something, doc’ – he’d developed the habit of calling me doc because I was male – ‘get me in the shower and I will feel a new man. I can’t take another bed sponge, mate.’

Imagine spending 24 hours in bed; I guarantee by the end of it you will be desperate for a shower. Mr Groom spent a total of 170 hours in bed.

The job of washing Mr Groom was a team event, with nearly all the staff involved. It took five people in total: three to roll him, one person to hold the bed still, because the brakes were not strong enough, and a fifth nurse to actually do the washing. But for all the sponge baths and changing of bed linen, I could never clean him as well as I wanted, or he wanted. It was understandable that Mr Groom’s greatest wish was to have a shower, but he wasn’t ready for a shower yet, he just wasn’t well enough.

Thankfully, life slowly crept back into Mr Groom and it looked like we were going to win the fight. As his breathing settled down, his legs began to shrink, and he started asking when he would be able to get out of bed and joking about feeling like a beached whale. I laughed along with him, though it didn’t feel quite right, because it was the response he was hoping for.

‘Not long now, maybe tomorrow,’ I always replied – never giving him an exact answer, but we were certainly beginning to make progress. I watched as Mr Groom went from bed to bedside, from there to reclining chair, from that to standing with a frame, then unassisted. It was at this stage that I decided he was well enough to have a shower.

‘Um, I think it’s a bit small,’ said Mr Groom, looking down at the chair.

He was right, too. Even if we could have fitted him in the shower chair, I doubt it would have held his weight. I should have thought of this, and felt a touch stupid. I tried a normal wheelchair, but this was too small as well. I eventually managed to get hold of a chair used by the porters, which was half-again the size of an average wheelchair. These chairs are so big because they’re used to take patients between various departments around the hospital, and the extra space is often used for things like oxygen bottles, notes and IV poles.

‘Oh, that’s pure fucking heaven,’ were Mr Groom’s first words as I turned the shower head on to him.

The water streaming off him was a dirty looking grey colour from the build-up of the sweat and dirt that I had never been able to completely get rid of.

‘Harder. It won’t hurt,’ he told me as I scrubbed his back. ‘I want it red and raw . . . Oh fuck that’s good. I don’t want another fucking bed sponge again, no offence intended, doc.’

I wasn’t offended, just pleased to see him happy. Mr Groom seemed to like having me around and I was discovering that I also enjoyed working with him, even though he was heavy work. I didn’t see before me an intimidating ex-gang member, but a man in need of our help, a man who tried not to be a burden, a man now fighting for his life.

Any preconceptions I had had about Mr Groom had by now been turned on their head.

‘Here, let me stand up and you can give my bum a good rub.’

He grabbed hold of the rail while I prepared to pull the chair away.

‘On the count of three,’ I said. ‘Ready? One, two, three, heave.’

Something unexpected happened.

‘Let’s try again . . . and heave.’

I couldn’t remove the chair.

He turned his head towards me; his face had an almost apologetic look.

‘Guess I need to lose a few pounds.’

‘What do you think?’ I asked the nurses assembled in Mr Groom’s room. ‘All suggestions are welcome.’

I was greeted with silence and shrugged shoulders. Obviously, no one else had had this problem before, and as no one was coming up with a clever solution, I took the lead and tried the direct approach.

I positioned two nurses so they were holding Mr Groom’s arms; another nurse and I held the chair steady, and the last nurse grabbed hold of the bed.

On the count of three everyone began heaving – biceps flexed; thighs braced.

‘It’s not going to work,’ Carol grunted, as she pulled.

‘It has to work,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Pull harder.’

Suddenly the chair released its victim and Mr Groom was catapulted on to his bed. The poor nurse whose job it had been to brace the bed was squashed as the bed crashed against the wall. The towels that were being used to cover Mr Groom’s nakedness landed on the floor, and there was a moment of shocked silence as everyone stared at the bare, quivering backside of Mr Groom as he lay straddled across the bed. I grabbed a towel off the floor and tried to cover him.

He began making a strange sound, his whole body convulsing. What had we done?

But I soon recognised the noise, and realised the convulsing wasn’t a seizure, it was laughter. And not just a polite laugh to try to hide embarrassment, but a true, full-bodied, incapacitating, belly laugh; the contagious type.

Part 3: Missing parts

Mr Groom’s sense of humour saved us all from feeling like absolute crap. In my short time as a nurse, I felt that nothing could top it.

Enter Dr Grey.

Dr Grey decided that as Mr Groom was getting better, it was time to have his urinary catheter removed.

‘Surely not yet, doc, he’s only just managed to stand on his own. Shouldn’t we leave it at least another couple of days?’ I asked.

‘Absolutely not, it’s been in there far longer than necessary, he’s at risk of infection.’

The catheter is the plastic tube I mentioned earlier; it goes up the penis and straight into the bladder. It is an infection risk, as bugs can creep up it, but sometimes you have to weigh up the benefits against the risks. In Mr Groom’s case, the risk was of him being incontinent in bed as he might not get a urine bottle in place in time. Urine is very good at breaking down skin, and Mr Groom did not need sores around his inner thighs, buttocks or scrotum. I tried to make this case.

I wasn’t alone in thinking that it should be left in; all the nursing staff agreed. But the doctor didn’t even budge when the charge nurse stepped in, and so the catheter was taken out.

The next day Mr Groom began to have some problems.

As predicted, he was not managing with a urine bottle.

Even after the previous day’s shower, the smell coming from Mr Groom’s lower regions was getting bad again.

Michelle was the nurse assigned to Mr Groom this shift, so it was up to her to deal with Dr Grey, but I was by her side when she confronted him.

‘Can we put another catheter in?’ Michelle asked. The doctor hesitated a moment, then looked at me, almost for confirmation. I nodded my head, and Dr Grey consented.

Of course, Dr Grey was not going to replace the catheter, because that was the nurse’s job, and so that fell upon my friend Michelle.

I have known Michelle from my training days; she is a pretty blonde with a ready smile, a quick wit and a habit of over-dramatising things. Off she went with catheter in hand and the faithful rubber gloves. She came back from Mr Groom’s room 15 minutes later.

‘Can you lend a hand?’ she asked me, a blush touching her cheeks. ‘I’m having a bit of trouble.’

Trouble? There shouldn’t be any trouble; he’d already had a catheter so there shouldn’t be any obstruction.

‘Sure, but what sort of trouble are you having?’ I replied.

‘I can’t find it,’ she told me.

‘Find what exactly? The right equipment or the right size catheter?’

Michelle’s face went red.

‘No . . . I can’t find his penis.’

With this statement, Michelle began to giggle. I walked back with her to Mr Groom’s room to see if I could sort things out.

‘What’s the matter, doc?’ Mr Groom asked me as I walked in the room.

Mr Groom couldn’t see what was going on because he was lying almost flat and his stomach was in the way.

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell him that Michelle was unable to find his penis.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I lied. ‘Michelle just needs an extra pair of hands.’

I quickly put on some gloves and got down to business.

The penis wasn’t there – there was absolutely no sign of it. Mr Groom was so overweight his penis seemed to have been sucked up into his belly. There wasn’t even any sign of a scrotum. I glanced at Michelle who was redder than a beetroot and refusing to make eye contact with either me or the patient.

‘Can you try pushing a bit over here?’ I instructed Michelle, as we tried to coerce the thing out, by pushing on his bladder while I dug my fingers into the crevice where his penis should be.

‘Hold this bit for me,’ I instructed Michelle, as she used one hand to hold back his stomach.

No matter how hard we tried we couldn’t find the penis.

‘What’s the problem, doc?’ Mr Groom asked me again.

He didn’t sound worried, just curious. It’s just as well he couldn’t see past the roundness of his belly because he couldn’t see either my or Michelle’s face. Michelle looked like she was having a spasm – her shoulders were shaking from trying to repress a dose of the giggles. I felt like slapping her, not just because it was so inappropriate, but because it was infectious. Nothing in my training had prepared me for this. But I was not going to let Michelle contaminate me.

I had to answer Mr Groom, but my mind struggled to come up with an answer that would not take away any last remaining shreds of dignity that we had not already stripped. I finally settled on a reply.

‘How do you usually pee?’ I asked as casually as I could.

‘I just feel around for it a bit,’ Mr Groom said, ‘but I can’t find it lying down, and when I need to pee, I can’t stand up quickly enough.’

It all sounded very reasonable but his answer made me think.

‘When you say you feel around for it, does that mean that you don’t actually see your penis?’

There, I’ve just humiliated the man completely, but it might make our job easier if I know what we’re up against.

‘Haven’t seen it in a few years,’ he admitted, then fell silent.

Not wanting to admit defeat I went in again, while Michelle pushed down on his bladder with one hand while holding up his stomach with the other.

The conversation and situation were too much for Michelle and she began to cough, a cough which sounded suspiciously like a chuckle to me. She raced from the room, saying she had to go to the bathroom urgently. I told Mr Groom I was going to get the doctor and walked into the office to find Michelle red faced and worried. ‘Do you think he noticed?’ Michelle asked me. I could see Michelle was feeling guilty for not being able to keep away the giggles, so I reassured her she’d done the right thing by leaving the room, and that I was sure he hadn’t noticed.

Eventually, we called the doctor and between the three of us we managed to find his penis and insert the catheter. The doctor was subdued and to his credit looked guilty while Michelle and I were just relieved we could keep a straight face.

Mr Groom was eventually discharged home; he weighed 30 kilograms less and felt like a new man.

‘You’ve done good for me, doc, and don’t be too hard on yourself, it was pretty fucking funny.’

Beware of toilet

One of the challenges of nursing is that you are constantly encountering new things. As a young nurse in my first year of work, everything was new. But there is one particular first experience that I will never forget.

Mr Smith was 82 years old. If he could have had it his way, he’d still have been living independently in his three-bedroom house with his quarter acre of land. His children and grandchildren, however, had convinced him that the best and safest option was for him to move into a small apartment that was part of a rest home – a nice balance between independence and supervision. But, after forgetting to turn off his stove several times in two weeks, Mr Smith’s meals were now cooked for him, and after a fall getting out of the shower, he had an aide who helped him with his bathing. Still, other than that, Mr Smith looked after himself, which is pretty independent for an 82-year-old man.