Being Always Tired and Sleepy

Such excitement!!! It was time to return to DUKE and my first love.  HERMAN BUNCH had already returned to campus and to August football practice at UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA.  I was anxious and could not wait to leave Greensboro and return to my newfound life.  I do not think that I gave a thought to the fact that I was really leaving my home for the last time.  I would come back for very short periods but never to be part of the life of my grandparents in the same way.  We said our goodbyes in a typical stoic way that we had lived life.  I knew of their deep love and I am hopeful that they knew of mine.  I knew they were very proud of me and would do anything in their power for me.  They had no real understanding of my life.  They did not understand why I did not spend time with my friends from Greensboro.  Two girls, TRICIA BOOTH (FISH) and ANN HUNTER (MCLAUGHLIN) were on East Campus.  I had been friends with them from the first grade through high school.  Although early in my freshman year, I had attempted to continue our friendship, it was rejected soundly. I had ridden to school every day with them, gone to many birthday parties, done pajama parties, and in high school we had gone out to lunch in Tricia’s blue Plymouth every day, and had shared all the growing up stories we all have. I think the reason for this in relation to NURSING is because of the reputation of what NURSING WAS.  Somehow we were a class lower.  It was hard for us at one of the best universities in the country to understand.  How could be that a teacher was in a loftier profession? That rejection that I felt was shared by many girls in my dormitory.  The feelings were soon lessened when we heard the words of THELMA INGALLS and the history of those who went before us.  The boys at DUKE seemed to prefer the more direct, more real, and less husband seeking girls of HANES HOUSE. That was not our primary reason for being at the university. There was no time that dates were not abundant. One of the very anger producing reasons that came from the boys was that we understood human needs, knowing all about people.  That would be their last date.  There were significantly more dates available than time to date, and besides for me I had found my lifelong love and was not interested.  My satisfaction and pride in my profession has only grown over the years and my respect for those who practice it.  It was the ignorance of youth that caused the pain.

Dr. Edens, President of Duke

It was sadness and shock when we began this second year.  I may not be totally accurate but of the 49 of us who had arrived in the fall of 1953, there were only 34 who returned.  Some had just decided that it was not for them, some did not make it and others transferred to East Campus.  We were however joined by an equal number of transfers in.  One of the most “famous” was MARY ANN EDENS (WINGFIELD).  Her father was PRESIDENT of DUKE UNIVERSITY.  This certainly added some prestige to our school.  I can remember thinking about my high school friends when I was spending the night or going to a tea at the home of the president. We did have other wonderful classmates that joined us.  I personally had several lifelong friends from the group that joined us. More about the class later.

AND the fun began….. I wish that I could find my class schedule for that second year. We continued our classes on WEST CAMPUS. We had required courses of Sociology and Psychology. The first semester challenged us in Anatomy with DR. J.E.MARKEE, organic chemistry with DR. TAYLOR, Sociology, Physical Education and Nursing Arts with LOIS KNOWLES.  The classes in anatomy and chemistry were taken with medical students and we were required to take the same tests and meet the same schedule.  Chemistry was very difficult for me, as I look back; I think it was because in high school all the sciences were easy for me. Zoology was another of our courses that were designed to flunk our folks and I did very well in that.  This was different. It was also a course used to flunk out medical students and the same held true for us. It was painful.  We were quite diverted by the guys, as well.  Anatomy was taught in the cadaver lab. The medical students would do the dissection, to prepare them to be surgeons, as we watched.  Then we would spend hours both in class and extra hours identifying the stringy vessels, hunks of organs, and muscle mass.  On one occasion after dinner we returned to work on our male cadaver.  When we entered the lab, the old guy was covered, as was the habit, with a white sheet.  As we entered the room and turned on the light, his male member came erect.  Oh yes, our boys had set up a string above the appropriate place, were waiting for us to return to jerk the string and scare us to death.

 

Nursing Arts was very exciting.  This class was taught to us in the lab and lecture hall in HANES HOUSE.  We received our uniforms.  After the first few weeks of just class we were to start our work in the hospital and needed to be in proper attire.  We received six aprons, three blue uniforms, six collars, and two caps. We supplied the white hose (please, my spell checker tells me that hose is now not a word!) and CLINIC shoes, and underwear. No jewelry at all was worn.  We were very disappointed in one aspect.  In the past, nurses had received their caps in a ceremony.  It had been determined that that ceremony was unnecessary in a professional school.  The caps were in a chair outside the lab for us to pick up.  To my knowledge, it was the last time a class did not have a capping until much later.  We made sure that our younger “sisters” had this ritual.  The uniforms were sent to the hospital laundry and returned to the dormitory starched and ready for us to wear with pride.  The nursing arts textbook was entitled, THE ART AND SCIENCE OF NURSING. The book was blue.  I cannot find in my research the book and am hopeful one will show up for me to read again.

After the first weeks of study we were ready to go to the hospital.  We were all excited and scared at the same time.  We were alphabetically divided into groups and assigned a hospital floor that would be our home for that first semester.  I was assigned to OSLER which was white, female, and public.  At DUKE the floors were named for famous doctors, were both public and private areas, were male or female areas or whole units, and were either black or white.  The public floors were located on the back of the hospital and contained four four-bedded open areas, a sunroom of six beds, two rooms with four beds, and four private rooms for very sick patients.  There were no INTENSIVE CARE UNITS; we would wait until the sixties for these units to be common practice. The very sick patients were put into the private rooms that were clustered around the nursing station.  As you walked onto the hall of these public wards, you first came to the dietary kitchen.  The food was delivered from the main kitchen on carts, served by nursing staff or later kitchen staff, onto trays and delivered to the patient.  There were rooms on either side of the hall, a nursing station with the charts and telephones, a treatment room where patients were brought to have special things done, a utility room for cleaning things and disposing of excreta, and at the end of the hall the large room with the four four-bedded cubicles all in a large open room with very high windows and ceilings.

Our first days were spent delivering water, delivering trays, making unoccupied beds, having conferences with our instructor, cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. Every single detail had to be in order. We would help the upperclassmen and doctors doing exactly what they asked.  We would arrive on the unit at 6:45 AM after a hearty breakfast in the cafeteria on the first floor and finish around 11 AM. Then we would rush, in uniform, to our classes on West Campus and were lucky to get a lunch.  We would get back to the dorm in the afternoon for Nursing Arts lab or lecture and back to the hospital for dinner in the cafeteria.  On two days a week we would leave dinner and go to physical education next to CAMERON STADIUM in the swimming pool.  The physical activity was exhausting by today’s standards and it was hard to work in study time without falling asleep.  Dates were rare except on weekends.

Off to Work we Go

This semester was filled with learning, being constantly sleepy, and looking forward to the next date with HERMAN BUNCH.  It was wonderful that I had not yet begun to work weekends and could go to football games and enjoy the beauty of a NORTH CAROLINA fall.