DailySusan Humor Blog

NURSE ON CALL

But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children.
-- 1 Thessalonians 2:7

I’m so accident-prone, our insurance company wants to chain me to a nurse.

My husband calls my car ‘’Battlestar Galactica.’’ While cooking, I’ve sliced into my hands with knives so much they look like crick balls. Last week, I nearly killed some baseball fans when I thought I could return a foul ball over a 35-foot backstop despite my old-lady weenie arm.

No wonder I like nurses. We’re on a ‘’need-to-know basis.’’

I’m always amazed at the things nurses know how to do, and how calmly they do them. I’ve heard three stories lately that show the nurse’s knack for gentle, quiet, miraculously-timed caring.

First, a few weeks ago, a family was camping in Truman State Park in the Ozarks of central Missouri. A thunderstorm blew a tree onto the camper, injuring daughters, ages 3 and 6.

The ambulance picked up the family and negotiated through downed trees and power lines to the local hospital. The girls were airlifted into Kansas City. The parents were left behind.

Imagine how they felt.

Suddenly, a nurse stepped forward. ‘’I’ve got a full tank of gas,’’ she said. ‘’Here’s my keys, here’s my credit card and here’s my PIN number. You go get your girls. Follow them up there.’’

The girls are fine . . . and the nurse’s caring was unforgettable.

Second, there’s an Internet story circulating about the July 19, 1989, airplane crash near Sioux City, Iowa, which killed 111 of the 296 people on board. Two brothers and a sister, ages 15, 12 and 9, were traveling without their parents.

Their part of the plane landed upside down in a cornfield. A passenger helped them outside, and they ran through the corn to a clearing. Someone got them inside a tent, so they never saw the gruesome crash site or the bodies.

Then a nurse from the hospital, who must’ve been exhausted herself, took them home for the night, ‘til their parents could get there. The passenger who’d helped them off the plane came, too. They played Nintendo, ate ice cream, and rode bikes, banned from watching TV, protected from more trauma.

They’ve kept in touch with that nurse ever since, thankful for how she and others preserved their childhoods that day.

‘Course, blessings are always equally shared between blesser and blessee. It happened again in Springfield, Mo., last week, with another nurse heroine.

A teenager, Justin, went into surgery after fracturing his neck vertebrae in a car accident. His parents and a youth minister, my friend’s son, were in the waiting room.

In walked a stranger. She said: ‘’I have not been able to sleep for two nights. I need to know how he is.’’

Turns out she’s a nurse, and she was the first person to happen onto the scene of the accident.

She saw Justin pinned in the car, his tall body curled up into a ball, his neck cocked so far to the right that his ear was on his shoulder. He could not breathe . . . so she moved his head just enough so he could.

Then she sat there holding his head stable with her hands, talking and soothing him so he would not move. Paramedics arrived. They wanted to pull Justin out and throw him on a gurney.

The nurse refused to let them touch him, convinced she was literally holding his brains together. There was blood and so much matter, she thought his skull had been fractured.

She held her ground until the life-flight helicopter came, and they stabilized his neck and removed him safely.

Turns out, if he had been moved at all wrong, the damage would likely have paralyzed him. Thanks to that nurse and the skilled surgeon, though, Justin is fine.

I mean, what are the chances a NURSE would be the first one there?

It wasn’t UP to chance, of course.

Justin knows now: He’s got the whole world in His hands. And sometimes, He uses the hands of a nurse to keep everything, and everybody, all together . . . so they can live happily ever after.

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Prayer request: Father, we bow in grief for the family, friends and fiancee of Jesse Greise, 21, a star wrestler and all-around wonderful young man killed in a kayaking excursion in Omaha. His funeral is at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Ironically, a friend of mine knew Jesse, and bought vegetables from him at a roadside stand last week. She has been crying nonstop, because that day, when she got back into her car ready to drive away, she had a fleeting urge to talk with him about Jesus. She didn’t; she put it off ‘til next time. Now there won’t be a next time. Help us all to learn to speak boldly, in Your timing, Lord. And comfort my friend with the certain knowledge that she has helped many, many others strengthen their faith, has inspired all of us to act on those urges as they come . . . and most of all, reassure her that she’ll see Jesse again some day. (Acts 14:3)