Making Good on Private Duty | Page 7

affords,
if you take it to the instrument maker and have it tested once in a while,
you need not fear, when you find an unusual temperature, and report it
to the doctor, and he quietly proceeds to test your thermometer by his,
which of course is always correct. Be sure that your hypodermic
syringe will work; if the piston slips loosely after much using of brandy,
aromatic ammonia, etc., take it to be repaired, and see that the needles
are sharp, they become dulled very quickly; keep also the tiny wires
pushed through them. It is just as well to keep this syringe in the room,
its little case is very small and unobtrusive, and if you keep it near your
thermometer in some safe, handy place, you will have it when some
unforeseen emergency arises, and you do not want to lose time going to
your room for it.

III
THE NURSE HERSELF
It is just as necessary for the nurse to be careful of herself as of the
patient, though her care must be manifested in a far different way.
Always remember that to do really good work you must have really
good tools. No man owning, and intelligently working a valuable
machine, would keep it going at its highest speed all the time. He takes
care of it, keeps it clean, renews defective parts, oils it; and then he
expects it to run for so many hours, and to run well,--to do its work
thoroughly. But with all his keeping it in order he does not make it
work night and day for weeks or months. Such folly is never heard of
in an engineer; but with us human beings, who own and manage a far
more wonderful machine than any steam engine, we hear of it often,
and always, always the tale winds up with the inevitable catastrophe.
The business man develops paresis, the clergyman loses his voice or his
eyes, the nurse contracts some disease that incapacitates her for work,
in every case mother Nature makes the careless or ignorant owner of
the wonderful machine pay the penalty of the misuse. It does not matter
to Nature what the reason is for our breaking the great laws; we can kill

ourselves with philanthropic work just as surely as with over
indulgence. One trouble is, that it does not always kill. A paralytic may
live for years, so does a man with paresis. When the wonderful
God-given machine works badly, or stops entirely, we look on, and
sometimes wonder why it is that those who are so helpful, such fine
examples of courage, of skill, of virtue, so hardly to be spared, are the
ones to be taken away. Do we wonder, we who are nurses? Do we not
know what did it? Ah! yes--we know, we know, that such and such a
nurse was tired out when she went to still another case-- and when we
heard she herself was ill we were not slow to say, "Foolish girl! Did she
suppose she was made of wrought iron and sole leather?" But will we
take heed, and not do likewise, or will we wonder, with the unthinking
ones, why it is that the good, useful people are always taken away? Do
not deceive yourselves; they are not "taken away," they take themselves
away, for God will not reverse His wise laws because we (no matter
how good we are) act in defiance of them.
Please remember I am only speaking now to the good nurses--the
enthusiastic ones,--poor nurses, lazy nurses have no temptation to
overwork themselves. They may die of indigestion, but they will not
die of exhaustion.
It seems to you so natural for others to be sick. You have seen the sick
by scores in the hospital, and have waited on them, felt sorry for them,
sympathized with them; but have you thought that it was within the
bounds of possibility that you could ever come into such a pitiable
condition? You go from house to house in your private nursing, always
you find the sick, and it seems natural, quite the proper thing. You care
for them, they get well, or die--and on you go to the next--but reflect on
what made them sick, and though you know you are made of like flesh
and blood, do not conduct yourself as if you were not. "Oh, yes" (how
often have I heard it said), "I know she worked too hard, but I am so
strong, you never heard me complain; I can nurse a fever case for two
weeks and never go out of doors for air or exercise." Is it not foolish? Is
it not wrong for any sensible woman to talk thus?
Now listen to some few practical hints