It was a bright, sunny and very hot late summer afternoon and I was the nurse on-call for our Home Health agency. I got the call around 4pm and knew I was going to have to drive over an hour away to see a Hospice patient and start a Morphine infusion because his pain had steadily gotten worse during the day and he needed some relief. I wasn't feeling the best and it was so hot. I had a rumbling in my stomach and just didn't feel like going....but there's not a lot of choice when it's your turn to take call and someone needs you; You just have to buck it up and GO. It was very hot that day...in the upper 90's. This was back when nurses were still required to wear white. It worked out okay for us younger home-care nurses in the summer time, because we'd wear our white dresses with white bobby socks and white nursing shoes and no one seemed to mind that we weren't wearing hose. Wearing a dress with socks was much cooler than wearing stockings or wearing white pants.
So since I was on-call, I loaded up my on-call box with the necessary supplies, piled it all into my truck and headed out to see my patient. He lived on the other side of the Chickamauga Battlefield National Park. If you're not from around my home-town of Fort Oglethorpe, GA....you have to understand that the battlefield (back then) only had a two lane highway, the speed-limit was either 30 or 40 miles per hour the entire way and there was NOWHERE to stop. No gas stations, no restaurants, no convenience stores. Nothing but trees, monuments, Civil War cannons, forests, open fields and miles of hiking trails through the woods.
I left the city and headed south and entered the park. About 5 miles into the battlefield, my stomach started hurting in earnest. It started churning and cramping and rolling and the pain was as bad as either time I was ever in labor during childbirth. The pain became unrelenting and seemed to worsen every second. I broke out in a cold sweat. I got goose-bumps. I needed a bathroom and I needed a bathroom RIGHT THEN. I tried lamaze breathing, but that turned out to help just about as much as it did when I was in labor (which was not at all). I tried singing. I tried praying. I started crying. I have never had to go to the bathroom so badly in my entire life. And I was a good 15 minutes away from civilization by this point. I was in the middle of the woods in a National park with no hope of a bathroom for at least 10-15 miles and I just knew I wasn't going to make it.
Sure enough. Worse came to worse and it just happened a little bit. I pulled off the side of the road and ran back into the woods to complete what had started without my consent. Since I was wearing a dress....I just pulled off my soiled panties and threw them....they caught on a branch and ended up dangling from a tree-branch like some kind of disturbing flag of surrender. I knew that they weren't salvageable any longer anyway....and there was NO WAY they were going back in MY car like they were. So there I was. Squatting in the woods. When the cramping and worse of the pain subsided and I was able to stand upright again. I was a mess! How on earth was I going to clean up enough to get back in the car?? I gingerly walked back out to my truck and raided my emergency supply car-stock. I found a liter bottle of Normal Saline and some packages of 4 X 4 gauze...and a box of gloves! It was the best I could do. I toted the supplies back into the woods and proceeded to give myself a very through sponge bath with my saline and bandages.....all the while praying that I didn't encounter a Park Ranger, a hiker, a Civil War soldier ghost or any wild animals.
Once my bathing was complete....I had two choices. 1. I could turn around, drive back home and get some underwear or 2. I could go ahead and see my patient while not wearing panties. I figured that he was in pain and needed the morphine more than I needed peace of mind about my lack of underwear....so off I went and made the visit. The patient and his family were none the wiser. I had to go back to work the next day and explain the missing supplies.....and boy did they get a hoot out of my story. I actually got several pairs of underwear for Christmas that year to keep in my glove-box in my car. Which, if you think about it, isn't that bad an idea! haha!!!!
I just hope that no unsuspecting Park Ranger ever found those soiled panties hanging from that tree branch.
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