Phx Adventures of a civilian nurse in the Justice System...*graphic medical descriptions enclosed*

I love you guys.

Princess: Sure why not...everyone else does! Hmmm...a shirt...that could be possible! There are new ieterations of the nick name popping up all over the jail...I'm sure you can guess what they are.

Apparently I'm fodder for nicknames because I've earned another one from a pod not privy to the Sugar-Nipples incident. One of my favorite pods is a high security pod where the inmates are locked down 23 hours of every day. They call me "Big Belly Nelly". I like it though 'cuz they treat me well and they're absolutely right.

Waddling around the jail is getting more difficult by the day and luckily I have some very nice coworkers who are trying to help me out, especially during med pass times. See, in our jail the nurses wheel out a huge cart full of meds during med pass. These carts are like trying to push around a giant box on wheels that are crafted precisely like those wobbly wheels on shopping carts. (You know the ones we're all doomed to use...the wheels that shake and flip around and make the shopping cart hard to steer. Yeah, those wheels.) Anyway, three times a day we make the journey throughout the jail to dispense harmony in pill form.

Now the other nurses don't have it so bad. They don't have to wheel the cart around at arm's length or content with a huge belly and a center of gravity that continuously changes. I imagine that watching me on the security cameras trying to wheel that ungodly cart around the jail turns out to be more like watching a little kid trying to push around a giant shopping cart. I'm sure I ellict snickers of amusement and cringes as I alternate between bouncing from wall to wall, trying to shove back in drawers that seem to spring out of their own accord, and running into the cart belly-first when the wheels lock up. I don't mind the bumper-car bouncing so much, but when those damned wheels lock up and I crash into the cart belly first...MAN does that hurt! I'm sure though that watching the aftermath is quite hilarious...just imagine a girl, nine months pregnant, spouting profanity, scolding an inanimate object for its obvious lack of intelligence, and trying to hop around to keep from crying...that would be me.

I must have provided them some great amusement because now they are watching me closely on the security cameras and opening doors remotely for me so that I don't have to stop the cart, get out my giant door keys, open the huge steel door, hold it open with a foot and try to get me and the cart through before it shuts automatically. Bless their pointed little heads for doing so, it sure makes it a lot easier on the belly.

 

I love being a nurse...especially when you can make a 6-foot-7 officer oooh and ahhh at your nursely prowess.

As I think I've told you before, we don't just take care of inmates, we often find ourselves taking care of the officers. Everything from a listening ear to tending to wounds have been part of my experiences with officers thus far. One thing we do is vaccinate them and test them for TB.

So this 6-foot-7 officer comes down to medical tonight and asks me to give him a TB test. He's sitting down, I'm getting the syringe ready...I wipe his forearm with alcohol, and stick him. The needle I'm using is one of the "Vanish Point" syringes. It is a syringe that retracts the needle into the syringe when the plunger is depressed past the empty point so that there is little to no risk of getting stuck after a vaccination or shot. Well, it was so cute! I depressed the plunger past the point of empty and the needle retracted out of his arm and into the syringe barrel concealing the needle...he jumps about a foot in the air and squeals:

"WHOA! Where'd it go? How'd you do that? One second it was there and then POOF! it was gone!!!"

When I showed him how it worked on an unused syringe he thought it was so cool...I felt like a magician doing a magic show for the tallest kid in the class.

 

I'm thinking that you let him off lightly...

"oh fooey... another one broke off... I'm gonna have to cut it out of your arm... Now hold still for me, this won't take but a minute... I said hold still..."

<watches guard flee down the hallway clutching arm, screaming 'NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO'>

 

Choad, you forgot to add...

dammit! Now where are my tweezers. I used them on an ingrown toenail earlier and forgot to setrilize them. That's okay with you ...right? Really, stop whimpering, it's just like removing a Bee sting...oooops, better at least wash the blood and pus off of this. Kinda icky when they get all gooey, don't you think? Hey...HEY and just where do you think YOU'RE going mister? Come back here this instant.

**as she chases him with gooey tweezers in one hand and GREAT BIG BELLY supported by the other**

You know it's not right to make Big Belly Nelly chase after you, you big baby!

 

You guys ROCK!

The other nurse and I were laughing about his reaction last night and we've decided to purchase the biggest syringe and needle we can find and whip it out to do the officer's vaccinations as a joke...I wanna see one run away SO bad!

 

and eww on the toe nail part.

 

Wenchy, I suggest you consult with your friendly neighborhood veterinarian for a large syringe and needle

 

Ohhh...good idea there Mick!

Well, I guess you can say that boys will be boys, even in jail.

At our jail we house a few juvy kids being tried as adults. One of these boys had an accident last night. We got called down to his cell by an officer who said the kid had fallen and his mouth was bleeding. So we gather some supplies and run down there. When we first get there, no one looks hurt, they all look at us placidly and we have to ask which kid it is. They pull him out and he doesn't say a word. So we take him downstairs to have a look. When we get down there he finally starts to show some signs of pain and injury...he'd been trying not to in front of the other guys...and we discover that he had been climbing on a table when he fell and hit his jaw on the way down.

This kid not only hit his jaw, he either dislocated it or fractured it and knocked a bunch of his teeth loose. His gums were bleeding around the loose teeth, he could only open his jaw about an inch, and the right side of his jaw was about an inch lower than the left. So for his little stint as "Lord of the Dance" on the table he got a nice trip to the emergency room complete with cuffs, shackles, and an armed escort of deputies.

Just goes to show you that you can put a boy in jail and say he's an adult because of what he did, but that doesn't really make him an adult.

 

My favorite inmate from last night:

I'm waddling down the hall last night when over my radio they announce a Code 3. In our jail that means that all available officers and the nurses need to race to the pod for an emergency. In this case it was a brawl. SO I pick up the pace...waddling twice as fast as usual...and get to the pod to start checking people for injury. Apparently some guys ganged up on a kid and jumped him, four to one. Another guy in the pod, finding those odds unfair, decided to back up the kid being attacked so there were six injured in all. Most of the wounds were facial or in the scalp so there was an amazing amount of blood, but most of the injuries were superficial.

The guys who jumped the kid used cups as weapons and his face and scalp were littered with half-moon shaped lacerations, most of which didn't need much more than a little cleaning. The first blow was the worst though, and they left a full thickness laceration on the back of his head...you could see his skull...owie. Anyway, despite the fact that this kid got jumped and banged up a bit, he came out of the fight pretty well considering the odds, and left his mark on his four attackers. Not only did he manage to fend them off after he regained his senses from the first blow, he bloodied them up pretty good before they overwhelmed him and the other guy jumped in. They said after he recovered himself from the first blow that he came out tooth and nail and fought like a lion. He has been appropriately nick-named Mowgli...you know the kid from The Jungle Book...and I was impressed that he'd come out so well considering the fact that not only was he outnumbered but he was about half the size of each of his attackers. After we stitched up his scalp he thanked us and went back to his cell and every guy in that cell block had a new respect for him. I doubt I'll see that kid get jumped again.

As for the four whimps who attacked him four to one, from behind...they got no sympathy from me. Bloodied as they were, all the cuts they had would heal on their own (not prettily but they would heal) and I was none to gentle in my appraisal of their wounds. One guy had a lot of blood on his chin and I couldn't see if the cut was deep or not so I grabbed some paper towels and scrubbed his chin as hard as I could to get the blood off as he squirmed like a kid. When he asked if he needed stitches I said no. Then he asked if I was going to clean him and his companions up. I looked at them sweetly, smiled and said:

"Take a shower. I'm not your mother and if you're gonna fight like that, you can clean yourselves up."

Then he had the gaul to ask for a pain killer. I just walked away. What an idiot!

 

Go Wenchy!!! :-D

 

Worse than jumping you from behind, they required Big Belly Nelly to waddle faster than her usual pace. There is a reconing coming, karma gets 'em every time. Did you ever figure out why those guys decided to attack the kid? Gosh, your life is so interesting!

 

Well, unfortunately in this case I believe the attack was racially motivated. The four attackers were Hispanic and the guy who got jumped was Navajo. The kid who came to the rescue was African American. The jail population is often full of racists of all kinds...we have everything from Whites who hate everyone else to Navajos who hate Hopis to African Americans who don't mind Whites but hate Hispanics to Hispanics who don't mind Whites and African Americans but hate Navajos as in this case. You name a mix of hatred and it exists in our jail to some degree.

When people are housed the officers try to take this into consideration and keep volatile groups away from each other, but it's hard to weed them out and figure out where to put people to avoid these kinds of confrontations.

To make it worse, right now we are almost at capacity with approximately 550 inmates and 600 beds. To run a jail efficiently and at the highest safety possible a jail should only be at 85% capacity so we are well above that and this week alone we've had another guy get jumped in addition to Mowgli.

I expect to see more fights in the future if our census doesn't go down. I just hope they stick to blunt objects and that we don't start seeing homemade shanks and stuff turning up.

Last night was pretty peaceful though so that was a good thing.

 

Wenchy, please be careful. I know that the officers and stuff are doing things to make you safe but even that can lapse. We definately need our Wenchy around for a long long time. Who else will give me blind medical advice? Who else will teach Mckay the ways of the force? Please, please be careful. LOVES YOU!!!!

 

Don't worry Princess, I am well protected by the officers and I try to be ever wary about my surroundings and the people I encounter.

So remember that paranoid schizophrenic guy who thinks we're poisoning the water? Well, it's beginning to catch up with him. Since he won't drink the water, his blood pressure is low. Last night he was laying down and stood up real fast to change the channel on the tv. Well he dropped his blood pressure so fast between laying and standing that he fainted on the spot and hit his head on the way down.

I got the code 3 call over my radio and speed-waddled all the way down to his cell to check him out. He cut his eyebrow pretty well...lots of blood and the other inmates were near panicking. I spent the better part of an hour cleaning him up, steri-stripping his laceration, and talking to him about what had happened, why, and teaching him how not to get up and that he needed to drink more fluids. Then I had to calm down his cell-mates and reassure them that he hadn't had a seizure and that he would be ok.

Anyway trying to convince a paranoid schizophrenic who honestly believes the water is poisoned to drink more fluids is a joke. Nothing I said could convince him that the water was ok. It didn't matter that his cellies were drinking it and were fine or that I drink it and I'm ok...he is utterly convinced that someone is poisoning the water. They give milk and juice with their food trays, but he went through a period when he thought the food was poisoned as well so I don't even know if he'll drink the milk or OJ. If this keeps up he's gonna faint more and more and eventually wind up in the hospital for dehydration.

I've got to get him to drink something...