EARTHQUAKE - Chapter 5

Mary woke up on Monday morning feeling pain in her right leg even though she knew that some of the leg was gone. The pain in her mind was just as bad as the physical pain. Overhead was a trapeze hand bar probably so she could pull herself up. She felt groggy – pain medicine no doubt. The end of the bed was cranked up and her stump was on display. She clenched her eyes closed and tried to cry, but she was too weak. She felt nauseous. What would she do if she had to vomit? There was an IV line going into her arm. There was a catheter line going down toward the floor.

A nurse approached her bed. She was slightly tall and had broad shoulders. She was middle-aged, neat in appearance, but rough around the edges. As Mary got to know her, she understood that she was someone who had taken some hard punches from life.

“Mrs. Cusak, my name is Wanda Sylvester. You may call me Wanda. Is it all right if I call you Mary?”

Mary nodded her head.

“I’ll be your nurse for the next twelve hours and probably a lot more twelve hours in the weeks ahead. I’m going to give it to you straight, because that is the way I would want it. If you work with us and do what we tell you to do, your stump should be healed in two weeks. Right now it will be draining blood. We will be checking on it pretty often as long as it’s draining. We’ll have to change the dressing three or four times a day.

“Your injury was a crush fracture. That kind of fracture sends toxins into your blood stream that could cause kidney failure. That is why they applied a tourniquet when you were rescued. They will be giving you dialysis treatment every day until your blood tests show there is no more toxin present in your blood stream.

“When the bleeding of your stump subsides, we will begin wrapping the stump with elastic bandage. That is for the purpose of shaping the stump so that you can be fitted with an artificial leg – a prosthetic leg.

“You will be receiving antibiotics until there is no infection in your stump. Here is the worst part. We have to turn you every two hours. You will lie on your back two hours, lie on the left side - the good leg - two hours, lie on the stump side two hours, and lie on your stomach two hours. You will find out that turning onto your stomach and lying that way two hours is painful. For that reason we will time your pain medicine to be a half hour before you have to lie on your stomach. Be sure that the nurse or aide who helps you turn onto your stomach places a pillow under your stomach and that the toes of your left leg are down over the edge of the mattress.”

“That is all I have. Do you have any questions?”

“Before you came in, I was feeling nauseous. What do I do if I have to throw up?”

“I’ll put this spitting dish in your hand. That way it will be handy. On this television remote hanging on the side of your bed there is a button to call the nurse. It is red and it says “Call.” It is also a speaker and a microphone. When you press it, a nurse will answer and ask you what you need. You just tell them what you need.”

When Wanda left, a young, bouncy, and cheerful blonde came in wearing scrubs that were decorated with the cartoon characters Wiley Coyote, Yosemite Sam, Roadrunner, and the Tasmanian Devil.

“Hi, Mrs. Cusak, my name is Ilene. I brought you some breakfast. The coffee is decaf. The toast is dark and it isn’t buttered. That’s supposed to settle your stomach. There is orange juice that has been watered down to pamper your stomach. There is also a dish of tapioca. These are foods that we have found that people who have just had surgery can usually tolerate.”

Mary nibbled at the toast and found that it did help calm her stomach. The same was true for the tapioca and the weakened orange juice.

Two hours later, Wanda and Ilene returned. Wanda looked intently at the stump dressing and even smelled it. Mary almost laughed.

“Hey, I’ll do that twice an hour if it will make you smile. You know, for the first time I saw what a beautiful woman you are.”

Then the two nurses proceeded to turn Mary onto the side of her good leg, her left side. Wanda kept demanding that Mary grab the overhead trapeze handle and help with the turning. She did so reluctantly. All the time they were turning her, she was in pain. Ilene was helping with the turning when she could. She also had to keep the IV line and the catheter line from being tangled.

Mary lay on her side and began to feel really blue. She was in a hospital hundreds of miles from her home, or what had been her home. It might be destroyed now. She didn’t know if Karl was injured or dead or even where he is. She didn’t know how her daughter Dana was or where she might be. What about her father? Here she was lying in a hospital bed in the land of strangers. It is bad enough to lose a leg and maybe lose her home, but what if she had lost her family?

Mary was in the intensive care unit because she needed frequent attention by the nurses and also because they wanted to isolate her to minimize the chance of an infection. She was in a room by herself. There was nothing to see. She could watch television. There was no one to talk to, no one to watch.

Mary turned on the television. It came on to a news channel. The announcer showed some film footage of Blytheville, Arkansas. The reporter said that it looked like scenes from a war. She wondered how anyone could live through such a devastating earthquake.

Mary dozed until the next time for turning. About the time that they had her lying on her right side where the stump was located, an aide came in the roomette with her lunch. There were baked fish, peas, carrots, a bread roll, ice tea and jello on the tray. Mary picked at the food. She had no appetite.

As soon as the lunch tray was gone, Wanda came in to change her dressing. It was very painful even to touch that leg. Wanda had to wash it before she applied a new dressing. All the time she was working, she was scolding Mary for not eating her lunch.

After lunch another nurse came in with the equipment for dialysis. As if she didn’t have enough pain and discomfort, here came some more. The dialysis nurse was putting away her equipment when Wanda came in with Dr. Kubicki. Wanda removed the dressing from the stump and the surgeon examined it closely.

“We will be watching your stump closely for the next couple weeks. We want to see it healing. There is bleeding now and drainage. That is normal, but we want to see the bleeding gradually subside and then stop in the next several days. There may be some swelling the first couple days. The drainage is normal, but we don’t want to see infection setting up. That is why the nurse will wash it thoroughly each time the dressing is changed. If infection does set up or if the bleeding doesn’t subside, we will have to operate again, maybe even amputate more of the leg. I don’t want that and neither do you. So cooperate with the nurses, do what that tell you. The stump is looking good so far.”

With that he walked away. Wanda washed the stump and applied a new dressing.

“In two days, after we are sure the swelling is gone, we will wrap the dressing and on up to your knee with elastic bandage. That will cause your stump to heal into a sloping cone shape that will fit into a leg prosthesis.”

When she was finished, she gave Mary a pain shot. She knew that meant that in a half hour or less Wanda and Ilene would be coming to turn her onto her stomach. She had been warned that both the turning and the lying on her stomach would be painful.

The turning was excruciating and lying on her stomach was painful on her stump. Maybe it was the pain medicine, but Mary fell asleep and slept soundly until they returned to turn her onto her back.

After they had turned Mary onto her back, Wanda said,

“I’m going to crank up the head of the bed so that you can sit up for a while. One very important thing to remember is this: If you start sliding down and want to pull yourself back up, USE THE TRAPEZE HANDLE! Do not try to push yourself up with your one good foot. You will injure yourself if you do. Try to sit up as long as you can. It will encourage you to cough, which will clear the anathesia out of your lungs.”

Mary enjoyed sitting up. She experimented with pulling herself up using the trapeze handle.

When they brought her supper, she felt more like eating while she could be sitting up and had the food on a sort of table surface. The supper was good for hospital food. Of course the last time that she was in a hospital was twelve years ago when Dana was born.    

After her supper was cleared away, a nurse brought her a Kindle.

“Mrs. Cusak, while you are in ICU we can’t allow books, magazines, newspapers, and other such items. We have these Kindles preloaded with books, magazines, games, and music. They are a special model that we can disinfect after each patient uses it. Do you know how to use a Kindle?”

“Thank you. Yes, we have one at home.”

“Good. This is yours to use during your stay at St. Francis Medical Center.”

“Thank you.”

Mary found a book loaded onto the Kindle that she had started to read at home. Soon she was lost in reading the book and didn’t realize that two hours had passed until Wanda and Ilene appeared at her bedside.

“Well, you sat up the entire two hours. I see they brought you a Kindle to use. Good. I am going to roll this bedside table away and lower the head of the bed so that we can turn you onto your left side. We will be going off work after we turn you. I’ll see you again tomorrow morning. Ilene won’t be back until Thursday morning. By the way, if you lose track of the days, it always shows up on your Kindle. We used to put calendars in each patient’s room. Now they are unnecessary.”

Wanda and Ilene turned Mary onto her left side. When they left, she returned to reading.

In about a half hour a jolly, rotund African-American nurse came into the room.

“Mrs. Cusak, my name is Merrybelle Houston. My mother said that she named me Merrybelle to remind me to always be happy. It worked. I am going to remove your dressing and take a picture of your stump. Then I will wash it and put on a fresh dressing. I know it will hurt, but I’ll be as gentle as I can, Honey.”

Merrybelle was as good as her word. Mary marveled at how gentle and efficient she was. When it was times for turning, Merrybelle didn’t bring a nurse to help her. She turned Mary like she was moving a baby in its crib. Once or twice Mary only half woke and went right back to sleep.

When Merrybelle came in to tell Mary that she was going off shift, Mary said,

“Thank you so much. God sent you, I know, and I pray that He will bless you!”