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Ladies In Room 378 Teach Life Lessons

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By NANCY PLATE, Special to the Tribune

Published: January 8, 2008

VALRICO - My introduction to nursing began during the summer following my junior year in high school in 1955. I needed a job to earn money for school clothes and extras my parents couldn't afford to provide.

We lived in Lima, Ohio, and my father was an electrician working at Lima Memorial Hospital during the installation of a new surgery suite.

Dad was very personable and made friends with everyone at the hospital, including the director of nursing. He told her that I was looking for a summer job, and she suggested I make an appointment to interview for an aide's position.

I'm not sure whether it was my personality or my father's good looks that got me hired. He was quite handsome and had a way with the ladies.

After a short training period of basic nursing skills and a list of "do's and don'ts," such as do not wear nail polish or makeup or fraternize with the orderlies, I was assigned to the hospital wing called Third East.

My uniform was a soft blue nylon dress, white hose and heavy white nursing shoes. The only individuality permitted was being allowed to wear a handkerchief in our uniform's top left pocket. The handkerchief was anchored into place with a name tag.

Third East held an assortment of medical, surgical and geriatric patients. My duties consisted mainly of bathing and feeding patients, changing beds and emptying bedpans.

I liked caring for patients of all ages, who had a variety of health conditions, and this is what heightened my interest in the medical field.

One of my frequent assignments was Room 378, which once had been a solarium before it was converted into a small hospital ward for geriatric patients. This was Lima Memorial's version of a nursing home. At that time, elderly patients could be in the hospital for months at a time, and nursing homes weren't as common as they are today.

The room was circular and its eight beds looked like spokes. The patients were elderly women who had been forgotten by their families or who didn't have families or friends except for one another.

Precious possessions and clutter occupied the surfaces of their bedside tables. There might be a photograph of a husband, long dead, and children, along with denture cups, hospital lotion and assorted personal items.

The room's smell was a combination of rubbing alcohol, talcum powder, cheap toilet water and the result of weak bladders and loose bowels. No matter how often you changed the sheets, emptied the bedpans or misted the room with deodorant spray, that smell never completely went away.

At the hospital, funeral sprays of flowers came often from good-intentioned families in Lima who wanted to give the bouquets to patients instead of taking the flowers home after a memorial service. These flowers often ended up in Room 378.

The ladies loved the huge arrangements filled with irises and carnations. I often was asked about who sent the flowers: "Did my daughter send them?"

Of course, my answer was always, "Yes, she sent them just for you."

Caring for these women became my lesson in patience. Each had her own routine. And each knew the routines of the others.

That meant if you neglected to put on Mary's extra blanket, one of her roommates would let you know about it, even if Mary didn't.

When I was finished with their morning care, leaving would be next to impossible. As I headed for the door, Mary would need a bedpan. Again I would bolt for the door, and Blanche would want another blanket, and then Evelyn would need a drink of water. I often had to make my escape by saying I had to go to the bathroom.

Exasperating as it could be, caring for these elderly women taught me some important lessons about life and myself. Among them was how to be responsible for the welfare of others. I learned about the resiliency of the human spirit and gained an appreciation for the elderly. Despite their circumstances, the women had a sense of humor and cared about one another.

I decided to pursue a nursing career because of that summer job and the old women in Room 378. Thanks, ladies!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nancy Plate, 69, graduated in 1959 from Lima Memorial Hospital's Nursing School in Ohio. She was a nurse in the U.S. Navy for two years and worked in recovery rooms, intensive care units and other nursing jobs until retiring 15 years ago. Plate lives with her husband, Gary, in Valrico. They have two children and three grandchildren.

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