My mom worked in the emergency room as a registered nurse for several years. One particular hospital she worked at was in a very poor, remote part of the state. She would tell me about all the interesting things she dealt with as an emergency room nurse. Oftentimes she’d help me doctor a sick roping calf, dog or goat. She always explained dosages of medicines and how important it was to give the proper amount. I think this story is why she spent so much time educating me……
One time she worked a night shift on the weekend. She always hated weekend night shifts because of all the drunks. She said it never failed someone would have an accident that in some way or another was caused by pulling the cork. One particular busy weekend night she hadn’t been able to put every person in a room and take care of them.
She said about daylight she realized a small older man had been sitting quietly in the waiting room most of the night. She went over to him and asked if he was with someone or if he needed to see a doctor. He simply said his stomach hurt. She asked if he was vomiting or if he had diarrhea. It was then that he pulled up his shirt and said I was stabbed in my belly last night. He had a wash cloth plugging the hole. Needless to say they whisked him into surgery in a hurry.
A day or two later the little man was being sent home. The doctor prescribed some powered medicine for him to take home with him. The doctor told him he needed to take two teaspoon full twice a day. The little man asked what’s a teaspoon? Puzzled the doctor thought for a minute and said a teaspoon is about twice the amount of what you could scoop up with quarter. The little man said ok, so four quarter scoops twice a day. The doctor said yes sir!!
A few days went by and the little man came back to the hospital. Mom and the doctor seen him in the waiting room and asked why he was there. He said I’m not feeling well at all. The doctor asked if he’d been taking the medicine like they discussed. Yes I took it all, let me show you. He proceeded to pull a nickel out of his pocket and he scooped ten scoops of the medicine into a cup. He said, “I don’t have a quarter, so I used a nickel five times for each of those quarter worths of medicine.”
Mom said the doctor almost fainted. She said the doctor went to the phone and called the pharmacy and said you guys aren’t going to believe this. It didn’t take long and the doctor, the pharmacist, and the hospital administrator all gave the little man a thorough schooling of the proper amount of medicine he was supposed to be taking. He was sick because he had taken about ten times the recommended dose, all because he didn’t know what a teaspoon was.
My son has been helping me doctor calves here lately, the heat and dust are sure causing some of the weaker calves to cough. As we were drawing up medicine the other day I couldn’t help but teach him about the proper amount to give. I wish my mom would come over and coach on him for me.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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