FINISHING UP MY FIRST SEMESTER AT DUKE

The first semester at Duke went very fast.  There was a short visit to GREENSBORO at Thanksgiving, but the first big break was at Christmas.  It would be the last time I would spend Christmas at home.  I didn’t know it at the time, but we would be required to work two of the three remaining Christmas holidays while we were in school.  The students in the MEDICAL SCHOOL AND NURSING SCHOOLS were required to cover in the hospital, and each had to rotate being off on holidays.  The first year at DUKE for our class, the first GENERIC BSN program, was just like the other students but after that year we were clearly very different in our schedules.

The three weeks I was to spend at home had been committed to working in my old job as a Nursing Assistant at WESLEY LONG HOSPITAL.  I needed the money.  My grandparents sent me $20 a month for my needs. That was a real stretch for them. I know my GRANDFATHER never made over $300 a month, but our needs were always met.  Now I did have more needs than before.  Even in the fifties, I needed to be careful in how I spent the money.  I needed personal items such as toothpaste 29 CENTS a tube, COKES in a bottle from the vending machine 5 CENTS, JERGENS lotion 39 CENTS, REVALON LIPSTICK used sparingly was 50 CENTS a tube and it had to be bright red. These were just some of the items that came out of that TWENTY DOLLARS a month.  There was money to be saved for a movie….but remember in those days, the guys paid and movies were the place to go. We as a group had cramps every month.  We soon learned that we could go to the student health nurse and get our “drugs” for free, but we still had to buy MIDOL when the office was closed.  I had to have things like paper for my typewriter and ribbon replacements (we used one ribbon until it was frayed), carbon paper to make copies, pencils and ink for our Shaffer fountain pens.  Later we would need both black and red pens for charting.

Going home for the holidays meant stocking up.  There would be some new clothes, snacks, and perfume to bring back.  That year I got my first bottle of WOODHUE and I thought it was so wonderful. It was woody and smelled of the place I had to leave behind in GREENSBORO. 

Needing more money meant working over the holidays.  I was excited to get back to see my friends at WESLEY LONG HOSPITAL.  Of course, I had not learned anything of a practical nature so far, but I seemed to have a bit more respect and was included in conversations in a different way.  I worked almost nonstop and was able to return to campus with a little bit of cash. 

I was assigned to the CENTRAL SUPPLY.  The nurse that had this job for years was unable to stand up and do it because of a health reason.  She was there to tell me exactly what to do.  EVERYTHING was reusable.  We would receive items from all the areas and clean them.  They were covered in blood, mucus, feces, sputum….and anything else that came out of the human body.  We would take them and dump them into a bath of GREEN SOAP.  Each item was washed carefully, rinsed and gotten ready for reassembly.  If it was a syringe, you matched the number on the plunger to the number on the outside and made sure that they stayed together.  After rinsing the syringe carefully both pieces were placed on a clean towel on a tray. These syringes were done in batches if they were small, and one by one if larger.  This tray would be covered with a double cotton cover, folded according to procedure, taped together with AUTOCLAVE TAPE, labeled, dated and put into the autoclave.  The needles were done separately from the syringes.  This was quite a procedure. After the initial washing of the needles, they were flushed with ether.  Imagine flushing a hundred or so needles and smelling the fumes while you worked.  Ignorance was bliss.  Following the rinsing, we would test each needle for spurs by dragging them across a cotton sponge.  If it caught and you had a snag, you would smooth the imperfection in the metal with a small whetstone.

 The AUTOCLAVE sterilization method is steam under pressure.  It turned out that I was considered really brilliant on one occasion during my junior year at DUKE.  The discussion was regarding what really killed the spores and bacteria.  Was it the pressure or was it the steam.  I knew the answer and not one single other student had a clue.  It was a bit scary when the steam went into the autoclave.  I was told that it would not explode, but I was always a bit skeptical.  The nurse who oversaw the activity taught me more than I ever realized during those three weeks.

The job of getting the rubber gloves ready was one that today would be considered unbelievable.  The gloves would come to us, usually on a used tray, covered with body stuff.  They were washed off, both inside and outside, laid out on towels, patted dry on the outside.  They were then turned inside out and patted dry again.  You would flip in the air to fill it with air and pop out all the fingers. The gloves would then go into a big drum to be thoroughly dried and powered.  We would then pull them out of the dryer and match them by size.  There was a glove holder and you would flatten the glove in proper position right glove on the right and left on the left.  These were packaged in an outer cover, autoclaved, dried and ready for use.  The operating room used 100 pairs a day.  I do not know why I remember that number, funny about memory. 

 One of the most rewarding things was to have the room clean and everything sterilized, on the shelves and ready to go back out to the floors. I felt very grown up and respected that I had been given this very important assignment with a very skilled nurse to teach me. I was to return here the when summer came.

I left to return to school with a lot of sadness but with much anticipation.  As soon as I returned there would be exams and it was my first experience with blue books. Much of the examination was in essay form and required a number of books and brought with you the number of books suggested by the professor.  They were examined by the teaching assistnant, passed out, and you did not get your own.  There were many exams that were multiple choice, but in most of the liberal arts courses it was write it all down!!!  It is amazing to me today that grammar doesn’t count.  I think it is because professors are lazy.  They have to know and grade gramatical error, and they just do not have the drive or the knowledge to make it important.  The day we arrived back on campus, we started studying and getting more and more scared.  In a month or so we were all ready for the psychiatric ward.  Despite all the drama, we made it through to exam time.  We had our grades posted outside each professor’s office and it was with heavy feet that we went to find out our grades.  Never mind privacy.  They were listed in order with the highest grade first, BY NAME.  My grades were excellent, thanks to GREENSBORO SENIOR HIGH and LOUISE SMITH.