I Chickened Out at Nursing

I Chickened Out at Nursing

Back in 1940, I flunked myself out of nursing school at St. Lukes Hospital in NYC because I gave Milk of Magnesia instead of mineral oil to a patient. I decided that I was too much of a scatterbrain to risk being around sick people.

I was in training in a public ward of 30 beds lined up around the four walls of a huge room with beds divided by curtains. There were also four rooms off the hall with four patients each in them. Somehow, I was left alone except for a male nurse, whose whereabouts was a mystery to me. I was supposed to attend all these people for over an hour right after the business of lunch was over. The trained nurses had a meeting, and the other student nurses had classes or were sick or something. There were meds to give out at a certain time. Maybe it was a test. Well, I failed. I switched laxatives. It could have been something more serious, except I wasn’t issuing stronger meds. In fact, they were locked up and I didn’t have the key. Thank God! When the head nurse came back and found out what I had done, I was reamed out and it scared me to death! I lost all confidence in myself. I also had other problems that I didn’t want to face.

 I hadn’t done badly scholastically. We carried seven subjects and put in quite a few hours in actual nursing care doing enemas, shampoos, making beds, standing by to help in dressing injuries, and serving all the patient’s meals. Cleaning up feces, vomit, and knocked over blood transfusions didn’t bother me too much. What did bother me was cleaning the drains in the ward bathroom. I still shudder when I think of that! Emptying bedpans I could take or leave. I was quite indifferent to the smells. I had grown up cleaning up runny cat’s messes under my bed when I smuggled them into the house at home.

In nurses training, one day, I was flying around at full speed to get all my assignments done before I had to go to class. I had three bedpans piled on top of each other as I came around a corner and met ----- the  Director of Nurses! I stopped short, and to this day, I can’t believe I didn’t lose control of those bedpans. And she knew me! By name! She said, “Well! Miss Stevenson, you should not carry more than one bedpan at a time”. She smiled when she said it. I took a deep breath and walked on, carefully!

Actually, I had been the first nurse in my class of 17 girls to be capped for advancement from probationer to regular student nurse. My ward head nurse took me aside and did a private ceremony. She was impressed that I had stayed two hours after I had to with a lovely old schoolteacher to whom I had been ordered to give seven enemas with no return, earlier that day. I think she was beyond pain, but her mind was wandering and she didn’t have any family to stay with her. Just thinking of her after 60 years brings tears to my eyes. She thought I was someone else and wanted  me stay and hold her hand. The head nurse sent me back to my quarters at 11 p.m.m and the lady died before I came on duty next morning.

Soon after that I was sent to the men’s medical ward, and here I was lost. I was a fairly pretty blonde 18 years old, and awfully inexperienced for my age. I was still in love with horses and any other animal right up until I started nurses training. I can’t remember that I had a single date before I left home, except for a prom where my mother and her friend arranged for the friend’s son to take me to the

 dance. It was a disaster!

 I had an alcoholic father and my home situation was awful. I kept any friends I had away from our house that was almost three miles from town. Not many boys had cars in those days. I think my classmates thought I was a snob, but I was just very much afraid of making friends who might find out about all the unpleasantness at my home. I couldn’t imagine that such things could happen to anyone else.

When I was transferred to a men’s ward at St. Luke’s Hospital, I felt the same sympathy I had for the patients as I did in the women’s ward. But a certain rather young Greyhound bus driver with colon cancer took my sympathy personally, and decided to leave his wife for me. I should have known how to joke my way out of that situation, but I was afraid of hurting his feelings. I knew he hadn’t long to live and I didn’t set him straight. About the time I called my parents to come and get me out of there, he had been sent to the country to a facility that would be called a hospice today where he died. 

The damage was done. The hard-boiled head nurse took me into a room and accused me of flirting with the patients. I was crushed! I had never in my life been a flirt! I didn’t even like boys! When my parents arrived the Director of Nurses called us into her office, and they tried to make me change my mind about giving up nursing.  I sat there crying and shaking my head until they gave up. I think I might have been a good nurse in time, but I knew I was an awful daydreamer and scatterbrain and I was convinced I should not risk killing sick people.

So I went home where the farm was about to be sold, and my parents were about to be divorced. I went to live with my sister and went to work in an explosive powder plant. I’ll tell you about that another time.