I saw today that the Gainesville Sun is running an essay
contest to choose a nurse of the year for Nurse’s Week beginning May 6. I
clicked on the link to the page containing the full rules for the contest and
was disappointed to find that the contest was limited to nurses who were
currently working in the nursing profession and the essays were limited to 300
words. That presented two problems. The person I had in mind for nomination is
now retired, and 300 words is not enough to describe what an excellent nurse
she was and still is.
She set her sights on becoming a nurse at an early age and
never wavered from pursuing that goal. In high school she worked nights as a
telephone operator to save money for college, and continued to work through two
years at Lake City Junior College and Forest Ranger School, now Florida Gateway
College. There was an Associate Degree nursing program at LCJC, but she wanted
a bachelor’s degree. Upon graduating LCJC she enrolled in the University of
Florida and entered the nursing program. Before she graduated from UF she had married,
and as soon as she graduated she went took a job at the VA Hospital in Lake
City and began working on her P.H.T. (Putting Husband Through) degree from the
University of Florida Law School.
Rotating shifts and the strenuous physical labor of being a
hospital nurse did not mix well with rearing a young child, and when the second
came her husband talked her into leaving her profession for full-time motherhood.
I don’t recall how long that lasted, but it wasn’t long. She and her husband
disagreed about her going back to work, but they reached a compromise with the
agreement that she would try to find a job with reasonable hours and weekends
off.
She found that job at LCJC on the faculty of the Associate
Degree Nursing Department, where she served for the bulk of her career.
Beginning as the most junior and least experienced member of the nursing
faculty, when she left the college she was the Director of the Associate Degree
Nursing Department.
During the time she taught at the college, her husband had
the opportunity to get a P.W.T. degree as she earned a Master’s Degree in
Allied Health. I tried to talk her into going ahead and studying to become a
Nurse Practitioner, but she was satisfied with what she was doing at the
college.
One of her accomplishments while at the college was to put
together an A.D.N. to B.S.N. (Associate Degree Nursing to Bachelor of Sciences
in Nursing) program at what had by that time become Lake City Community
College. I recall how tirelessly she worked putting the program together, and
how many obstacles she had to overcome, but she finally got the program in
place and began the process of turning A.D.N.’s into B.S.N.’s. More than a few
B.S.N.’s today obtained their degree through that program. My only complaint is
that she worked the program in conjunction with F.S.U. (Just kidding).
One incident from the early days of that program exemplifies
her dedication to duty, compassion, level-headed good judgment, and coolness
under fire. She was leading a caravan of students over to Tallahassee for a
class on the F.S.U. campus when they drove up on a horrific wreck on I-10. A
prison bus loaded with chained female inmates had overturned. Almost all of the
prisoners had been seriously injured, and the injuries had been magnified by
the fact that they had been manacled. The wreck had occurred so recently that
no emergency vehicles had arrived on the scene. The caravan of nursing students
stopped and went into action as first responders rendering whatever aid they
could.
With no equipment of any kind, and nothing but their
knowledge and their bare hands, she and her students began rendering what aid
they could. When E.M.S. personnel arrived they continued to assist until the
situation had been completely handled. When it was all over, she called F.S.U.
and advised that they would not be coming to the Crisis Management Class that
night, they had held their class on the side of I-10. She later wrote a letter to the Secretary of
the Department of Corrections about how the use of manacles in transporting the
prisoners had compounded their injuries and cost some of the prisoners their
lives. Her plea to unshackle prisoners once they had been locked into a transport
bus fell on deaf ears.
She taught hundreds of students over the course of her
career, and not a week goes by that we don’t encounter one of her former
students. Seeing so many of her former students who have done so well in the
nursing profession gives me a sense of great pride that she has made a
significant contribution to the betterment of society.
Sometimes seeing former students can be amusing. The lead-in
to this story is a little long, but bear with me: Lane (yes, I’ve been talking
about my wife) used to have bad migraine headaches. They had come out with a
shot for migraines that was very painful to administer, and they had given Lane
some syringes to take home. She got a migraine so bad that she couldn’t
administer the shot to herself, so she told me I would have to do it. I’d given
shots to cows back in my days as a farm boy, but never a shot to a human being.
I didn’t want to do it. I also didn’t want her to suffer, so I screwed up my
courage and gave her the shot. She screamed. I nearly fainted. I told her the
next [expletive deleted] time she needed a migraine shot we’d just have to go to the
emergency room.
Sure enough, not long after that she got another bad
migraine. I packed her up and took her to the emergency room, and the doctor
prescribed a shot. (So far I’ve neglected to mention that this shot did not go
into the arm). The job of giving the shot devolved onto the E.R. nurse, a man
whom Lane had taught in nursing school. My reluctance to give my wife a shot
was nothing compared to his reluctance to give his former professor a shot that
wasn’t going into the arm. His hand was actually shaking a little bit as he
approached to give it. He somehow accomplished the task of giving her the shot.
Lane didn’t scream. And I bit my tongue to keep from laughing because I knew neither
he nor Lane would see any humor in the situation.
After she left the college, Lane worked as the Associate
Director of Nursing at Northeast Florida State Hospital for a few years before
finally retiring completely. In retirement she’s nursed our parents and our
children, our grandchildren, and a multitude of other friends and relatives.
And when I say nursed, I don’t mean just giving them a Band-Aid and an aspirin—I’m
talking about roll-up-your-sleeves, carry-the-bedpan, etc., etc. nursing. More
than once I’ve been a bachelor for weeks at a time while she has gone to a
distant city to nurse a sick friend or relative. She has accused me of enjoying
my occasional stints of bachelorhood, but I’m always glad to meet her at the
airport and take her home.
I’ve tripled the Gainesville Sun’s word limit
already, and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of all the good things
Lane has done as a nurse. Suffice it to say that she has my vote for Nurse of
the Year, Nurse of the Decade, and Nurse of the Century. But then I may be just
a little bit prejudiced.
