This is the third episode of my new podcast series – Stories for Grace Rene.
This story is from Grace’s Great Grandmother – her MeMaw. She is reflecting on her dream of being a nurse and our 38 year career at St Jude Hospital.
“And that is the job that I think the good Lord gave me because there is no way in the world, with the education I ended up wid that I could have kept a job that long. And if you’ve seen some doctor’s orders, a prescription a doctor can write, and you got to write what that prescription is and can’t hardly spell it and I stayed at that desk that long, without getting wrote up for doing anything wrong..”
Below is the transcript:
I always wanted to a be a nurse. And that lead up to my job that I ended up with for 38 years. I always um would admire the ladies in their white dresses and white shoes cause we didn’t have tvs to watch so if you didn’t see a few people in the neighborhood that was all you saw. And they would be so helpful to peoples and I said that’s what I want to be when I get big.
I was around 8 or 9 cause my mother hadn’t passed and I would go play with my little brother as a nurse. We didn’t have bandaids I just put a towel rag on his leg like it was a bandage.
Yes cause we were the last two and we was closer in age together and we played with each other. You know, I played his game, shooting marbles and he’d let me, he’d be my patient. So that’s what we grew up together, until mama passed and then one of my daddy’s sisters took him to Texas with her and the other sister moved in with us and took care the other four kids.
I was 9 cause I was still in middle school and I remember the aunt that moved in with us was named ‘Temp’ and Temp would tell me I was the baby now that Lan was living with, he moved with the one that was named Daisy. Until he became a teenager and got too grown, he came back home when he was about, I guess he was about 16.
Uh huh, yup he went to Texas.
4 because there were 5 of us in all.
After I got married and had to get me a job I start working at a hospital called St Joseph in Dietary. And I worked there and they was next door to St Jude, so I went to St Jude in Dietary cause I was just part time at St Joseph and St Jude was full time. My kids were in high school and I needed more money at that time.
Working in the kitchen and helping with the patients food. And I worked back there. I started helping with the salads and then, um what do you call it, pastries, things like that. And then um the girl that fixed the patient food one of them quit and so they had to have a helper. So he moved me over to that section, to help with the children’s food. Because it was set up where St Jude fed the parents, they fed, you know, the parents their meals so that’s what the um, back in the cafeteria was, the parents and the employees. And then they had a separate cook. And then the kids had a separate part of the kitchen for the kid food because they was on so many special kind of diets. So I worked there, oh I guess I worked over in the kids section about 5 years. And this young lady in housekeeping, she had went to night school and became a nurse’s aid. And when I’d take my break I would sit with her. And she told me, she said you know you’d like um being a nurse’s aid you ought to go to school and take that course, It don’t take but 9 months, and it was from 6-9 at night, and it wasn’t far from where I was work. So I come to Pat and them and told them they would have to be on their own while I go to night school I said you all gonna have to help me with my homework just like that.
And that’s what I did, I went to night school and became a nurse’s aid. That was as close to being a nurse as I got but I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot. I used to help the doctors when they would doing different procedures. I would volunteer and I helped a doctor once ….
I used to watch em do um liver biopsies and my sister had to have a liver biopsy once and she was afraid to have it, she said have you ever seen them do a liver biopsy? I said no I haven’t, cause she wouldn’t have did it if I’d have told her what they were gonna do.
Uh huh, I told her no I never seen them do that, because you know she needed the biopsy because she had turned jaundice and they wanted to know what was going on with her. But I watched them do that. And see what else, one thing was as a nurse’s aid when a kid passed we was responsible for the kid, if it was your patient, you had to clean the patient up and clean the bed up before the parents come back in the room for the last time. And then after they stayed with them for a while, we was the ones had to take them down to the morgue. It was hard on the heart, you know what I mean, cause if you got kids and your thinking that that same thing could happen to your kids. Yeh. That was one of the … and they tell you try not to get attached to the kids and of course I had um. I got a attached to a 16 year old black boy, he used to play in the band with um Al Green and he come in and I was assigned to him. And every day I come in the day shift would be saying I ‘m so glad you’re here cause I can’t do anything right for your son he’d tell me Miss Daisy don’t do it like that, And I’d say oh lord ha mercy and my supervisor would say its kind of bad when one attached to you and you get attached to him too. So the day I come in and everybody was looking funny I thought oh I know what done happened, to myself, and it was true. I was glad I wasn’t there but he …. it it really… it um made me. I think watching those kids suffer it made me be closer to my kids because you don’t know how blessed you are when you got a healthy child until you be around somebody, some person that their child is, they don’t know if they gonna to be with them another day. But they have come along ways from 67. Cause I started there in 1967 and worked to 2005.
Well see I moved from dietary to ward clerk well I worked as a nurse’s assistant first and then I moved from that to a ward clerk, that’s what I was working when I retired. I don’t think I could have worked with the kids that long.
Well that depends cause some of them could, depend on what they were coming in for. They took them if a doctor recommended. They took sycle cell because saitn jude being a research hospital, you had to be recommended there, you couldn’t just bring them over there and um some of them stayed there months and finally they’d get where they could um go to the hotel. Cause they had hotels for the parents while they was, the patient was there. They’d get well enough to go to the hotel and come to outpatient if they had to come back for some fluids. And if they get in remission they be able to go home then.
Yeh, some of them would, when they would go home and be in remisson and they’d come back for a visit, they come back to the floor where we was at, just to say hello to inpatient help. And that’s the treat, when you done seen one so sick and they walk back in there and hug you. Yep that’s a good feeling. And they used to have, back when they was really researching all of them, some of them would come in and they don’t know if they are gonna make it to Christmas, they start having Christmas in July. And we would be, the hospital would set up just like at Christmas time, in July, for the kids. And they would be getting gifts but they would, you know some of them couldn’t even hold a gift, but they were giving them a Christmas in July. But I don’t think that even happen now, they have improved so much.
Honey, the little young nurses couldn’t take it. They couldn’t take it. Like I said it work on your heart too. You got to be a person that, you know, you got to be strong to work. Especially some of them older nurses, that done work there so long. We’d be talking at break time, and we’d be talking about how long we spendin at the hospital, we start calling it our second home. But that was my trip to St Jude. And I really retired, 1995. I had been there 28 years, and um, oh I had it made I thought, I was so glad to be off from work. I got so bored I’m tellin yeh, cause the peoples that I dealt with was still at work during the day time, and you can only go to the mall so many times!
Uh huh, so I said shoot, something gotta give. So I went to this place called um, it kind of helped the elders find work and she told me, it was a store called HQ – similar to Home Depot. They went out of business but uh they were set up like Home Depot, you know sell all them kind of stuff. And she said, they want a greeter out there, I believe you would be good for that. All you’d have to do is greet the people as they come in. I went out there and um they interview for the job and they asked me how long I had been on and when I told them I had, and they said oh well this is your job then, if you stayed at one job for 28 years! So they hired me and I took that little job boy. I said, ain’t no, I had gotten so good, cause you had to be, when you was orientated you had to learn where stuff was at in the store. And peoples would come in there to shop in a hurry, and they’d be saying ‘I don’t have much time and I got, I need to get so and so, so and so, can you tell me where I can find that?’ And I say yeh it’s right over here and I’d walk over there and show it to them and. They had some cards at the cash register, if you um fill em out, and um if you wanted to um, you know, make a comment on how your shopping was and put the person’s name down that had helped you. And so many peoples I would help turned those cards in, I got extra money in my paycheck every pay day. And so I said, looky here, I am a greeter and making extra money. And so when I got the job I told the lady I always go to my daughter’s during the holidays and I said, now if I get that job I’m gonna have to take that time off. And she said ‘well we can work around that.’ She said ‘we’ll work around that.’ So I didn’t have no problem turning in my vacation for the Christmas holiday to go to Pat.
One year I went to Pat’s and when I came back, this other little greeter that worked there she said
‘ Girl I’m so glad that you’re back!’
She said ‘I tried to get your phone number I was gonna call you.’
I said ‘Well you wouldn’t have got me because I was out of town.’
She said ‘There’s been some changes since you been gone.’
I said ‘What happened?’
She said ‘Oh we got a meeting, you’ll find out!’
Went to the meeting, their talking about laying off, they trying to keep from laying off people but they gonna have to make, do some arranging. And you know how you see these boys at these stores going out on the lot retrieving they cart? Well they had boys for that, but when I got back they had put those boys to do something else and said greeters were gonna have to go out and retrieve the carts. And when that man said that I said ‘Will you repeat that?’ He said ‘ Yes the greeters will be responsible for getting all the carts of the lot. I looked at that man I said well I have had trouble with this shoulder since that acceindet and they said I would never be able to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds. So when I got to fill ut the application I told them that. Well I think Im goona have a problem, I said because I would be out there all today pushing one cart. I couldn’t line hem up like those boys do. Because I have a bad shoulder, and if you want to pull me records you will see what’s on my record. He said, well maybe you can just bring 2 at a time in. I got to thinking, I said, them boys be out there in the snow trying to get those cards. I said no, they don’t need me arguing with this man, Im talking to myself, I said I tell you what. I’m gonna just let you give my job to someone else, today I’m gonna give you 2 weeks notice.
So that’s, I quit that little job, I said here I am gonna be out here, and old woman pushing carts, cause I was 64. SO THIS girl that I used to take home she called me, she said ‘YOU still at HQ?’ I said ‘ no I had to leave that job alone’ she said well how do you feel about working here every weekend, every Saturday Sunday.
I said’ doning what?
She said ‘they’re gonna hire weekend ward clerks, what we have been trying to get for years, Monday through Friday, and they’re gonna hire some to work just weekends.
I said well I could work every weekend. I said ‘I wonder could I get the same shift?’ Cause I always liked that 3-11 shift. She said ‘Yeh you could ask for the shift you want’
So I went over there and they gave me that shift, 3-11, every weekend. And I turned 65 that year, CAUSE I first retired when I was63. I turned 65 when I went back to work, and Eric was laughing, I never heard anyone going back to work at 65. And I worked that job for 10 years, till 2005. And I really hated to leave then, because it wasn’t hard and they was doing something that we didn’t have to do, they was getting rid of that and I said shoot this job is getting easier and easier. But I said my back is giving me trouble, I guess I better start thinking about leaving here cause I don’t want them pushing me out of here in a wheelchair, I wanna be able to, when I do retire, walk out. So that’s what I did.
Nurse’s Aid you to care of the patient, you bathed them you know and changed their bed. A Ward Clerk you work at the desk where you met um and discharged them. You know you would graph their vital signs and take off the doctors order. And if they needed X-rays or anything like that, when the doctor ordered the request you had to call the, you know the department and get a time set up for that patient to go. And that is the job that I think the good Lord gave me because there is no way in the world, with the education I ended up wi that I could have kept a job that long. And if you’ve seen some doctor’s orders, a prescription a doctor can write, and you got to write what that prescription is and can’t hardly spell it and I stayed at that desk that long, without getting wrote up for doing anything wrong. I would even catch some of the doctors’ mistakes, because of, they figure how much medicine a kid should get by figuring up how much they weight and their height, they figure up how many milligrams to give em. And we have some kids on daily weight and we have to figure up that surface area for him to figure up the medicine. And some of them wouldn’t even look at the child’s weight done change, and he’d go ahead and be using the weight of um yesterday and the kid would be done lost weight and I would, its its its…. You know there is always one in a bunch done be the one that makes your job hard. Some of the doctors I would ask them if they checked the new surface area, and they say
‘oh I am glad you brought that to my attention, have you faxed that to the pharmacy yet?’
And I’d say ‘ No.’
And they’d say ‘Good let me change that.’
But there’s one little old doctor, me and him would have it, me and him would have it, he hated me …. And that man he was so rude to folks. If you would be coming, you and him would get to the door at the same time, and he walked through the door, he would let that door hit you in the face rather than you know ….
You know that kind of, I mean, he just. And we’d be sitting at the desk taking and order, and they had, the doctors would, we had a rack on one side for new orders, had a big sign up for new orders. And right after we’d take the orders off that’s when the nurse got it and she took, you know she had to sign the order and then it could go back on the rack. But instead of him putting his order up there in the new rack he would bring that chart over there and just throw it on the desk at you. He wouldn’t lay it down, he’d just flop it over there. And the little nurses, they wouldn’t say a word. And me and the other ward clerk that worked together, she said ‘ Daisy Doctor X when I see him go write an order I just get up and go stand up because I’m tired of him throwing that chart at me.’
I said ‘I am too and I’m gonna tell him one day.’
And she said ‘Daisy, you gonna do it’
And I said ‘One of these days I’m gonna be thinking about I ain’t got that child support cheque from Joe’ I said ‘and I’m gonna be mad at every man. And we he throw that chart at me he gonna be the one to get it.’
And one day he came over and throw that chart, now I’m writing, it hit my hand and knocked the pen out of my hand and when he did that I pushed the chair back and jumped up. I said Dr X and he turned around, he said ‘Yes?’
I said ‘I know your momma didn’t raise you that way.’
He said ‘Yes?’
I said ‘ I know your momma didn’t raise you that way.’ I said ‘ That chart up there says new order and you threw that chart down here so hard you knocked the pen out of my hand and I don’t appreciate it.’
He didn’t never say I’m sorry, he just came over there and picked the chart up and put it in the rack and walked off the floor. Couple of nurses were standing there, they said ‘Ohhh Miss Daisy. Ohhh he probably gonna write you up!’
I said ‘ Excuse me, I don’t care if he write me up.’ I said ‘ I didn’t say nothing to him that you wouldn’t have said if you wasn’t sacred of him.’ I said ‘But just like I got this job I can get a job somewhere else.’
I heard nothing from HR or nobody, no other doctors or nothing. But from then on Dr X would write his order and put that chart in its rack where its supposed to be. Helen said ‘What did you say to Dr X, he ain’t thrown a chart me since your incident!’
I said, I said ‘I told him his momma didn’t raise him that way.’ I said ‘A little bit more and I probably would have said something else.’ But that was the last thing I did that. And I am so thankful that I made it away from that job without every having to go to HR or if they got anything in my record they didn’t tell me about it. And they gave me 2 retirement parties. But that was the, you know, that’s the first time, because the other doctors didn’t treat us like that, he was the only one that did that. And the supervisor said ‘I haven’t heard anything. So I, should have done did that to Dr X myself.’
And I said ‘Well…’
I want her to follow her dream when she get to be a big girl. And do what she want to be because it is possible. I’d like to see here become one of those people going to space, help designing these new things. I don’t want her to be an attorney (lots of laughter).
I want her to help design something, which I know they will cause she probably be help designing that car that can fly, cause they got em where they don’t have to have a driver so by her time they’ll be flying them. Yup I just want her to be a happy woman.
Yes because I loved that job, I think that’s the reason I keep dreaming about it. There is 2 places I keep dreaming about and they say when you keep dreaming about something like that, it’s the happiest time of your life. And that’s, I keep dreaming about that job and the neighborhood that we moved in when we moved in the projects. And I keep dreaming about my neighbors and where we lived over there and working at St Jude and those were the happiest places of my life, I really think that’s what it were. My Happy day.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More