Frootloops...
one of my nurse colleagues was eating them today, and I jokingly said " I remember when they were actually invented."
As it turns out... yup, I was right. 1963. I was 9 years old.
I also remember lots of things that we did as nurses in 1983 when I was 29 years old.
We were just beginning to switch out from written (in pencil) Kardexes to very rudimentary computer systems . There was no information trail. When orders changed, we simply erased them, rewrote the Kardex.
We didn't have IV pumps so we had to calculate how fast an IV was running by counting drops...and it depended upon the tubing.
Moving to critical care was way cool. ..we had huge clunky IV pumps that regulated how fast fluids and drugs were infused. We still had to calculate the ultimate rate (and we do to this day) but it was no longer necessary to stand by the bedside and manipulate the clamp on the tubing.
I remember when chest tube set ups were made of series of glass bottles... one to modulate the suction, one to prevent back flow, one to measure output.
Actually, all our IV fluids came in glass bottles, and so did antibiotic "parfills"...such a mess when we dropped one accidentally!
I remember mixing my own chemotherapy in the med room.
I remember when we packed wounds with Dakins solution, a dilute chlorine solution that was certainly antimicrobial, but also incredibly painful. We used whole tubes of Vaseline around the wounds to hopefully keep the good flesh from being damaged.
I remember when PALS was invented....it was a huge deal to have specific emergency care for kids codified and taught. It was incredibly empowering.
I remember being part of the first clinical trials for drugs for primary pulmonary hypertension ,and having to double and triple check the dosages of nanograms per kilogram per minute both with the study coordinator and the intensivist. I also clearly remember Lacey, the teen we enrolled in our trials. She ultimately died after a heart transplant, and I believe so did her sister...they both had familial pulmonary hypertension.
I remember things like the Circolectric bed and the Clintron bed (it looked like a huge kitty litter pan, full of ceramic beads, with a tray at the bottom to collect drainage.)
I remember helping to develop scales to assess things like pain and sedation, often in response to using totally new drugs.
I remember not only carrying my own calipers to measure intervals on an ECG, but also carrying a set of screw drivers to adjust our monitors.
I actually remember when PA catheters and measuring pressures both actual and calculated of heart chambers and the pulmonary bed were very, very new concepts. I actually had a job for several years teaching both nurses and doctors exactly how to interpret all those numbers.
I remember assisting at bedside to put in cranial bolts and then later on, ventriculostomies to help manage brain swelling and prevent brain death in accident victims.
I remember actually crying the first time I saw the results of an MRI...it was so beautifully detailed.
What is very cool about all these memories is how my practice as a nurse has changed, yet remained the same. We use different, improved technology to care for our patients, but the bottom line is that we use the tools we have at bedside to do the best we can. Protocols may change as we learn more, but they also have the same goals.
