When I showed up to work (at the youth treatment center) the other day everyone was rushing around, and one nurse was hurrying down the hall with the vital sign machine. (I knew something was up, and that it was no good.)
One of our 15 year old patients, (I'll call him "Joe") had somehow eluded his staff members long enough to pull off 6 of his toenails! When his staff found him bleeding they called the nurse to come down to bandage his toes. Luckily for EVERYONE he is a good nurse that is very intuitive. He went down to the unit to take care of Joe but he couldn't find him. He asked the staff members where Joe was, and they told him that Joe was in the shower. At this point, the nurse could have easily walked back to the nurses station, to wait for Joe to get out of the shower but instead he was prompted to walk over to Joe's room. He did not hear the shower going, so he called to Joe, but Joe did not answer. He pushed the bathroom door open and found Joe hanging from the shower rod with his shoelaces! The nurse lifted Joe up and he immediately took a deep breath. He had not been hanging for very long, and so he is going to be just fine. If the nurse had not paid attention to the promptings he received, I do believe that Joe would have passed away!
5 comments:
Sheesh...don't know how you have stayed there so long, you're one brave lady. The kids are lucky to have you, though!
As I have said before, "run the other direction!" Just kidding, what a blessing for Joe to have someone save him! Maybe this experience will help him.
You must see a lot of sad, hard things at your job. Poor kids!
That story is pretty disturbing and VERY VERY VERY sad. I'm glad that guy was paying attention. (PS - do you have nightmares about the stuff that happens at your work?) I WOULD!
You certainly get your fair share of experiences there! It's a good thing some of them are good to make for the more traumatic bad ones! I'm glad it wasn't you that actually found him hanging. That would be hard to get over!
Mom
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