A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

I think I last wrote when I had just taken charge of C. Ward for two months.

I had a most interesting time there, and was quite sorry to give it up, but it was hard work. Unlike the other wards, that "take in" new cases for a week and then have a rest, C. is always "taking in," as the men in charge see every new case that comes up to the hospital (except accidents), and they can take them in if they like, as long as there are any beds empty in the ward; and if they don't think it is a particularly interesting case, it is passed on to the house surgeons or house physicians for the other wards; but, of course, they try their best to get all the most interesting cases for themselves; consequently the sister is never free to go out with any confidence that no new cases can be landed in while she is away; and when you do go out you generally find on your return that something has happened that makes you wish you had never gone!

Still I learnt a great deal in my time in that ward, and I enjoyed it. The physicians' talks with the students over these "selected cases" were most instructive.

Soon after I took charge we had a run of tracheotomies; the first was a dear, fat baby of thirteen months, but it had diphtheria very badly, and was not a hopeful case from the first; not many hours after it was operated upon another came in—a sweet little boy of three called "Alex." He was much relieved by the operation, and got on so well; but the poor baby ran a temperature of 106° all through the second day, and died late that evening with a temperature of 108°, in spite of all we could do for it. I believe we were much more cut up about losing it than the mother was; she did not seem to mind a bit, and apparently had made all her plans for the funeral beforehand—and it was such a pretty baby too!

The special nurses I had for these tracheotomies had never nursed one before, so you can imagine I could not leave them alone much, and was thankful I had had a good many to nurse when I was a lady pupil.

We had one very curious case. A young man was brought in unconscious one afternoon about 2 P.M.; a little after five he got worse, and his respiration suddenly stopped, the pulse went on steadily, so they did artificial respiration; this went on till 9.30 P.M., and then they decided to trephine, thinking it must be a cerebral tumour pressing on the brain; of course no anæsthetic was necessary, as the poor man showed no sign of life except that the pulse was beating; they could not find any tumour, so he was put back to bed, and the men went on doing artificial respiration all through the night in turns, until the pulse suddenly stopped at 9.15 A.M., sixteen hours after the respiration had ceased—a very strange case.

We often had rushing days, when it seemed impossible to make time for meals, and scarcely time to breathe. I remember one day especially, when we took in seven new cases, two of them, curiously enough, men from quite different districts, who had both taken oxalic acid with a view to suicide; one was an old man who was very bad for a day or two, and then seemed to be getting better, but died suddenly one night from heart failure; and the other was a poor young fellow of thirty, who had been waiter in one shop for eight years, and was then turned off by a new manager and replaced by a German lad. He had a wretched wife who drank, and she took away his clothes and then disappeared; so we had to rig him up in a suit when he went off; one of the other patients gave me five shillings for him, and he asked me to keep it till he had been before the magistrates, as he thought he would be sent to prison, but he came back after his appearance in the police courts to tell me he had been let off with a caution, and he thought his old master would take him back; such a nice, quiet-mannered man, and most anxious to do anything to help the nurses in their work, or to wait on the other patients, and they all liked him.

The same day one of the house surgeons was admitted with a badly poisoned arm, and a friend of one of the students with typhoid fever; he had it very badly and caused us much anxiety, but pulled through all right in the end.

After this spell in C. Ward I expected to return to my front surgery, but instead I was offered in March (and gladly accepted) the post of Night Sister, and that is what I have been doing ever since, except for an interval for my summer holiday, and also for a few weeks when I took charge of a large male medical ward while the sister had her holiday.

Being Night Sister here means plenty of running about, and plenty of responsibility, but it also means better pay than Ward Sister, so that suited me all right.