Dear Reader,
There are only a few weeks to enter this year's Write a DearReader Contest. To read last year's winning entries, deadlines, cash prizes and how to enter, click here.
Today it's my pleasure to share a column, written by Kathy Cochrane. She was an Honorable Mention winner from last year's Write a DearReader Contest.
It was my first clinical day in a hospital as a student nurse. Until now, all of my learning had been in a lecture hall or small learning lab groups, practicing techniques on mannequins.
The time for a quick coffee break rolled around, and I popped into a room where a fellow student was finishing up giving her first bed bath to an elderly male patient in the B bed. While I waited for her, I struck up a conversation with the patient in the A bed, a young attorney.
We had been chatting for a minute or two, when suddenly a loud, metallic CLANK, rattle, rattle, rattle was heard from down the hall.
"What was that...!", the young man exclaimed.
Peering into the hall I couldn't see what the cause of the crash was, so as I stepped back into the room I replied, "I don't know...I think someone just kicked the bucket!"
It's a good thing the guy wasn't a recent post-surgical patient, because we both nearly busted a gut laughing!
Fortunately my somewhat irreverent sense of humor has served me well during my years as an RN, and from the reaction of that patient on my first day in the hospital, I know that it was therapeutic for my patients!
-- Kathy Cochrane
Honorable Mention, 2020 Write a DearReader Contest
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
This month's Penguin Classics book is THE TALE OF PRINCESS FATIMA, WARRIOR WOMAN: The Arabic Epic of Dhat al-Himma, translated and edited by Melanie Magidow. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading and enter for your chance to win.
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