At this point I can’t really tell you everything that happened. I can’t even tell you a little bit. The reason is that I can’t formulate what I experienced into words right now. I’m sure I would be able to eventually but not now. All I have in my mind are images, small video clips that play over and over again if I sit and allow them to play, and it’s funny the things you remember most vividly. Such small movements, the slightest glance, can stick in ones mind forever.
I’ve started a collection of these. Every time I go to the burn unit I gain several more. All permanently archived, stashed away in my mental photo album.
The particular clip that replays over and over is of a female patient that was in a flare factory explosion. She was in the hydrostation for wound care and a bath and they needed my help. I felt so bad for her. Her arms and face had been burned, but they were healing nicely since she has been in the unit for about a month. Her hair was starting to grow back and I was instructed to wash it.
I wasn’t sure how I was to proceed. Her head was bleeding and I couldn’t see where it was coming from, or I just don’t remember. There was so much blood. I grabbed the shampoo bottle and squirted some into my gloved hand. Carefully, I began to massage the shampoo into her hair.
Her eyes were open, or rather just one. The other was swollen shut still. Her eye did not look in any particular direction, it just stared straight ahead. She was conscious, unspeaking, but conscious and she seemed so helpless. Limp, fully surrendered to let us do whatever. She was completely trusting in our abilities as caregivers.
I had massaged every part of her hair except underneath her head. I couldn't reach it because it was rested against the hydro-bed. I didn’t know what to do. Should I ask? Should I just lift her head and do it myself. My hesitation of what to do continued. I was filled with such uncertainty.
And then the patient did something that I can’t get out of my mind. She herself lifted up her head, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. Did she see me standing there? Was she watching me? Or, I think to myself, that she lifted her head because if there was one thing that she was going to get out of the torment of wound care and the worst bath anyone could ever have, it would be a proper shampoo.
So, she lifted her head up with, as it appeared to me, everything she had in her. I put my other hand under her head so she could rest, and continued to wash her hair. It broke my heart to see someone in such a position of despair, to be completely dependent on others.
When I was finished, I told the nurse who was spraying off her body that she could rinse her hair. She did so and then it was time to turn her on her side so we could put a special type of bedding underneath her to promote healing.
She was lying there, completely depleted of energy, interpreted by the nurse as being uncooperative. However, she had missed the tiny moment when she lifted her head up for me to wash, something I alone had seen. Thus, she began to try and roll her over.
The hydro-bed was slippery. It was wet and covered in plastic. It was the closest thing to a slip and slide that someone can find in a hospital. Therefore, trying to roll her wasn’t easy and the greatest care was needed...
The nurse made an attempt but ended up sliding the patient against the side wall of the hydro-bed. On her second attempt, the unimaginable happened. It was purely accidental but so careless that I will never forget it. When the nurse went to roll her, she ended up slamming her head into the side wall, which is made of metal. I can still hear the thud it made, feel my heart stop, and my breathing come to a halt.
The patient lay their expressionless, as if it didn’t even happen, but I know that inside she was screaming, possibly crying, and as in shock as I was at what had just occurred. However she couldn’t express any of these feelings because she was trapped in her body which wouldn’t let her do a single thing about it. She didn’t even make a sound.
There was a blood spatter where her head hit the side, and there was blood flowing into her hair which she had used the last of her energy to allow me to clean.
The nurse told her briefly that she was so very sorry and then continued about her way to try and roll her. An EMT intern and I made sure she did it more carefully this time by insisting that she dry the bed first and then place towels at her side to create some resistance which would aid in a much easier roll.
When all was finished, the wound care and the bath, I grabbed her a gown and we put it on her. The agony would be over. She would be returned to her room to rest and heal, until the time came for her to be bathed again.
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