My girlfriend and I were really bored one night.
A patient had been brought in. She was a surgical patient. The ward opposite ours was "manned" by the nurses and orderlies we had. At night there were two nurses and two orderlies, one for each ward. A surgical patient would need prepping for an operation in the morning.
That night was a bad one because when they checked her out she was hemorrhaging and they were using both nurses.
Usually the nurse would come around and take our blood pressure, temp and pulse. This night the orderly came in and said it would be late and maybe not at all. My friend spoke up, "You know we could do that." He went back and told the nurse that. She sent a message back that we could if we wanted to but we weren't to go into the room next to us at all. It seemed strange at the time.
We did all the vitals. She had to show me how to do it but I caught on easily and we got it done. After that they let us do it often.
I asked one day about the patient we weren't allowed to visit. I was told she had meningitis and it could easily be caught. After that I worried all the time when someone would go in that room and then come to ours.
I can't remember the name of that friend but somewhere if I can find it I have a photo of her. She had been in the Navy and was married to a Navy guy. She had diabetes also but she'd had it most of her life. I think that was the main reason they put us together.
We had to go two or three times a week to a room where they put us on monitors to do a reading of our heart beat and the babies. One afternoon we got there and the room was empty. She said, "OK, you lie down and I'll set you up." I did it and she pressed the button and did the reading. Then I did her. The doc came in right afterward and laughed at us for doing his job. He let us keep the papers and he re-did them anyway.
He told us we had done it perfectly. We had taken each others photos when we did it, just so we could prove to our husbands who wouldn't believe us.
Tom took that one day at home before I went in. I got this wrong. I looked at it again and that's a hospital tray of food there so it was while I was in the hospital.
I had forgotten something else. It was one of those things I remembered in the night but forgot in the morning. I had filled out the meal orders for the week and put that I wanted a poached egg for breakfast. I never ate all the food they wanted me to eat. Some of it was just not something I liked.
This morning I got my egg but when I lifted the cover off of it, it was raw. It looked like they had just cracked it in the dish and left it there. Well, I certainly couldn't eat that and I told the nurse that. She said she had orders I was to eat everything.
I took off the cover so she could see why. She said she wouldn't eat that either. She called down for a new egg but the cooks said it would be awhile. An hour passed with no new egg.
The nurse came in and took the raw one to the nurses lounge and popped it in the microwave. It still looked icky. When she was out of the room, I wrapped it in a paper towel and later stuffed it in the garbage in the public rest room.
They would try to make me eat a sandwich in the evening. It was usually something icky. One day they asked me what I would like for a sandwich. I told them tuna fish. I got that every single night after that.
Thats my room mate on the machine.
Me on the same machine.
This was our main doctor. We both agreed he was one good looking doc.
One of the quilts I made. I put this purple floral on the back of it. The back was prettier than the front but you never knew what you were getting in those bags. I lucked out in getting this piece. I think it was two pieces and each was at least six feet long.
That's two more. I laid them down over each other to save time and film.
The top one here had linen squares that I hand embroidered images on. The brown and yellow stripes are actually the sheet on the bed.
One day I had stuff I had to do at home and Tom was going to be there. They wrote me out a pass so I could go home for the day but I had a check in time to be back.
I think that's when Tom took those two at the top. It was also when we took the quilt shots, boxed them up and took them to the post office.