97 Vignettes from the Life of an Orderly

Working as an orderly can be a negative experience but humor is not far from the most tragic of moments if you watch for it. I remember being called down to the emergency room, while working the swing shift one weekend. It seems that an older East Indian man Mo Singh needed to be catheterized, the poor fellow who was in desperate straights, it seems he was unable to urinate. I wondered why the emergency room doctor, Dr Jackson did not perform the procedure himself, and I concluded he was either incompetent or felt it was beneath his station to do so. For that matter why not the nurse, nurses do everything else when necessary, but no, they wanted the orderly from third floor to do it.

On arriving in the emergency room I was handed the catheter pack while both the nurse and the doctor stood by waiting for me to attempt the procedure. Maybe they knew something that I didn’t because the minute the tip of the catheter started to slide in, poor old Mo freaked out, I mean freaked out. He started screaming at the top of his lungs like he was in mortal pain, and stiffened out until he just about slid off the gurney. I could hear Dr. Jackson swearing under his breath as he threw himself across the gurney to keep Mo from leaping off onto the emergency room floor.

The procedure is supposed to be sterile, but the numerous attempts to complete the procedure made it anything but. I gave a sight of relief when I finally saw the urine begin to flow into Mo’s urine bag.

Tragedy and comedy can at times be hard to separate and that is mostly determined by the part you play in the drama. After the stress of the moment subsides is when you can sit back and laugh at the situation.

When being stretched it is impossible to see the humor but when one looks back on a near tragedy there is usually something to laugh about. People that fail to see the humor in the vignettes of life usually become bent and twisted, or at least uninteresting and dull.

I will never forget one morning when a nurse, Ann and I were asked to move a bed from the basement to the second floor. This in it’s self was a non-event. The elevator however was vintage or today we might use the term retro as it had a scissor door that allowed you to see who was waiting at each floor to get aboard. After Ann and I had squeezed into the elevator, off we went to what we thought was second floor. It seems someone had pushed the third floor button ahead of us so off we went to third, waving as we went by the guy waiting on second. Once on third we quickly pushed for second and down we went back to the basement, again waving to the guy on second as we headed down to whomever had beaten us to the button. Ann and I are now laughing our heads off as the poor guy on second is scratching his head with an incredulous look on his face wondering what kind of insane help the hospital is now hiring.

We finally made it to second but for a brief moment I thought Ann and I were doomed to ride the elevator forever, however I can think of worse things then riding in an elevator with a pretty nurse and a bed.