Becoming Nursely (Nurse Lee)

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a nurse. I thought there was no higher calling than to help sick people. Plus, nurses are so in demand that they make bank and get to work whenever they want. There’s also the option of being a “traveling nurses”, which conjured up (for me) images of fancy ladies in skirts taking blood pressure and giving life saving antibiotics. It all sounded very exotic and fulfilling. Granted, my only real observation of nurses was in the “documentary” Nighttime Nurses II, but I was convinced it was the thing to do.

Now that I’ve brought my “special-needs” cat home, I realize that nursing is hard work and not at all a field in which I would thrive. I don’t have the stomach for (and am in fact scared of) needles, blood and fluids. I’m also much too emotional. Nurses aren’t supposed to cry when someone else’s child (or dog) is sick! If anything you want your nurse to be optimistic and cheery. They bring you smashed peas and explain medical concepts in layman’s terms!

The past two weeks of visiting my sick pet in the hospital and speaking in medical terms (with words such as creatinine and BUN values) has aged me. I’m sure I still look 21, being blessed with a youthful aura and all, but boy do I feel 50! Perhaps this is a good crash course in caring for sick people. I suppose it is just part of life to eventually give your time and patience over to the act of caring for others. Whatever its merits, my new life is quite surreal. Here’s a little introduction to the brain of Nurse Lee, August 2005:

Pumpkin has kidney damage and often, because the kidney is hard to assess even with a biopsy, the extent of the damage isn’t known for several weeks or months after the initial kidney failure. In order to test for damage, the animals (and people) get inundated with fluids in order to see how many toxins the body can expel on its own. The patient then gets weaned off the fluids slowly to find the minimum amount that the body needs to function (semi-) normally and sustain itself (sort of like the angle of repose for the kidney).

On Friday, I brought the cat home after she spent 9 days hooked up to an IV and getting blood drawn. She’s now in the first stage of kidney assessment, which involves me administering 450 mL (almost half a liter!) of subcutaneous (under the skin) fluids to her over the course of each day. I have 1 liter IV bags, which I attach to hooks in my ceiling and then connect to a fluid line that has an 18 gauge needle (very big!) on the end.

Then I do a little cat wrangling, after which I grab her back skin and stick her with the large needle to begin the fluids. While the fluids are pumping into her body, her back starts to look like a camel’s with a big hump of water (that eventually gets absorbed). Then, I pinch the skin around the inserted needle to pull out the needle and close the gaping hole in her back. Sometimes, when she manages to jump down before this happens, fluids come gushing out of her back as if she were a leaky water balloon. If too many fluids leak out, then I have to try to give her more later. It’s very frustrating for both of us, but like a good nurse, I made a special “pumpkin-fluids” chart to make sure I remember to do it twice a day.

Here’s a picture of pumpkin’s daily routine (after almost dying, mind you):