Hold Everything Lightly #12 {Not A Bad Start Really}

This is a re-write, of sorts, from a memorable prison episode I wrote about here in February of 2010. It has strong adult content. Click off if you cannot handle that. It is about my first day as a mental health nurse in a state prison.

 A nurse needs to choose her attitude.
 Whether to cry, laugh, or fall into the depths of despair. When I transferred to work at a different state prison it was never mentioned that I would be the mental health nurse on the weekend. I would be the only one in charge of all the psychiatric inmates. Also, I was in charge of staffing just to keep it interesting.
 The prison had four crisis stabilization beds. Which means inmates who are suicidal, unstable, or terribly mentally ill are placed there. Some of them are cutters and have been stitched up and they rip out the sutures routinely. Sometimes they are naked and tied with leather restraints to a mattress. Sometimes they are naked because they want to be (they have paper gowns). An officer checks them every fifteen minutes. The nursing and medical staff checks them frequently as well. Needless to say it is full on electrified chaos. There are an additional twelve step-down crisis beds in another building the mental health staff supervises. The mental health inmate population in this prison averaged around six hundred inmates. The weekend RN can be called to see any of them at any time.
The first weekend I had to work I did have the wisdom to insist that another RN orient me. I had never had mental health training outside of college. Any RN with as many years of experience as I had does have some mental health experience. But still......

My first day, a Saturday, a frequent flyer was there. Let's call him Derrick. He was twenty years old. White, deathly so, as he had not seen the sun in many many months. His favorite distraction was self stimulation. Most inmates do this but Derrick had achieved a special status as a master at this among the staff. Dr. Tice, seventy years old, said one day that he almost envied Derrick this ability. We laughed ourselves silly at our sweet Dr. Tice saying that. I was being oriented by Linda, a RN, a character herself. We walked back to that CSU first thing. I said hello to Derrick through the thick prison glass. He said " Shut the Hell Up You White Motherfiiing Bitch" and threw urine under the three inch space in the door onto my white shoes. I don't recall what I said to him at that moment. I did back out and clean my shoes. Linda was howling with laughter. She said that was typical and not a bad start really. Really? That was when I had to decide on my attitude. I laughed and laughed.
Then I called Joe and he laughed with me, at me, and for me.

The remainder of that day was uneventful. I learned that everything done for the mental health patients had to be written in triplicate. That right there was worse than Derrick by far. Linda and I walked out those six locked gates with satisfaction because we finished on time after that massive stack of nursing documentation and our patients did not hurt themselves, us, or anybody else. Unexpectedly Joe was sitting in the parking lot on his big motorcycle, he took off his helmet, smiled handsomely and said
"I'm here for my Bitch."

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983


joy and peace
Olive