Yesterday, the cable technician came to check out our Internet signal which has been dropping out at times. This is the second time in two weeks that the same technician has come to work on it. He is a very personable, friendly young man and likes to talk and listen to stories. Since he knew that I had retired from Healthcare, he asked me what I thought about his girlfriend's desire to become a nurse and what it was like in Healthcare today. I shared a couple of my stories with him from my memories. He told me I should write my stories and share them so that it would help someone else especially a young person learn from them. First, I told him about how emotional it can be but also so rewarding too. One of my earliest memories in Healthcare was when I was in school and working part-time in the OR of a Level 1 Trauma Center. I generally worked the evening or night shift which is the time that most trauma comes into the hospital. Late one evening, we get a call from the ER that they had a gunshot wound to the head and the neurosurgeon was on his way in to take the patient to the OR. With that call, the team in the OR consisting of the Circulating Nurse, the Trauma Surgical Technician(me) and the Surgical Nursing Assistant, scrambled to 'open' for the neurosurgery case to do a craniotomy. We got everything ready and then waited for the call from the neurosurgeon that they were coming. Well, that call did not come so I called around to the ER to ask how much longer. The Charge Nurse then said, "I am sorry we didn't call but the young girl is 'brain-dead' and she didn't make it." With that, the OR team began 'breaking down the case' i. e. putting the instruments and material back up in its place for the next case. When we finished that job, I, still feeling the effects of the adrenaline from getting that initial call, decided to walk around to the ER to see if I could help them with anything. As I rounded the hallway into the rear of the ER, I saw that something was going on in one of the back rooms. They were 'bagging' someone on the stretcher so I stopped for a moment to watch from outside the room. About that time, the neurosurgeon came around the corner so I asked what was going on. He said, "No head case tonight. My job is done. See you in the morning." Then he stopped and said, "But... you still have a case. An organ procurement, if they can get permission. Good luck and have a great night." He left me standing there in the hallway alone to ponder what he had just said. "An organ procurement?" I said to myself, trying to remember what that meant. I realized that meant that we were going to be obtaining organs for transplant. In my short time(about 3-4 years) of working in the OR, I had never been involved in an organ procurement. I quickly found the Charge Nurse and she told me that the Trauma Surgeon was in the Family Room with the young girl's Grandparents. He was explaining and asking for permission from them for consent to remove her kidneys for transplant. I was kind of stunned as the Charge Nurse told me the story. I can remember this story and my experiences of that night almost like they just happened. They were burned into my memory. She told me that the young girl, who name was Brenda Brady, was 14 years old. She and her younger brother lived with the Grandparents because their parents had been tragically killed in a car accident. The Grandmother had told her that Brenda was very traumatized by losing their parents the way they did. She had had trouble with her "acting out at times". When Brenda came home that evening, she had asked if she could go out with friends to go skating. The Grandmother told her, No, but Brenda got upset and they had a fight over it. She ended up going to her room and locked herself in. Then they heard a gunshot and Brenda had shot herself in the head.
What a tragic story! I know. All I could think of was, "Why? That is not the way to get back at your Grandmother even if she was still very upset over her parents' loss." Well, they got permission, by explaining how someone else would benefit from her kidneys and that possibly two lives would be saved from the tragic loss of Brenda. So, I rushed around to the OR and told the Circulating Nurse the story and that we needed to get 'set-up' quickly for a kidney procurement. Neither of us had any experience with this but we threw the "case' together and 'opened it up'. That night, we did our very first organ procurement thinking about how one tragic ending of a young life may save the lives of two others. I always pray for my patients and the surgical team before going into the OR even Brenda that night. After that, I scrubbed on several organ procurement cases from kidneys, hearts, lungs, pancreases, eyes, and even bone. At one time, I even interviewed with the Alabama Organ Bank to become Procurement Coordinator of the new Bone Bank that they were setting up. I did not take the job. I decided that I could not continue seeing so much tragedy even though it could lead to helping others. I have carried that experience from that night with me through these almost 40 years. I have seen many patients helped through surgery and know I have in some small way been a part of that. That was just one night in the OR.
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