Christmas of our first year in Tennessee faded into a new year and February eased along into nearly-a-year-since-leaving-Virginia. The March 1993 super-storm really was a super storm. It was a southern-tier-of-New-York-snow-belt-sort-of-blizzard that devastated our area and temporarily crippled us with lack of electricity, water, and heat. We were isolated, unable to get out, and yet we fared far better than many others.

Our dear landlady invited, urged, us to come stay with them since they had the fireplace for warmth. And just thirty-six hours into the ten-day stint, our landlord was able to repair a kerosene heater that he gave us to use. On the battery radio we heard over and over of a particular person needing a particular thing if anyone could get there to help. The subsequent set of announcements would indicate that someone or other, by heroic effort of some sort, had gotten there to help. That’s how folks are around here. Actually there are at least some folks like that everywhere, for in addition to all the kindnesses lavished upon us by my family and Mother’s brother and sister and their families, there were lots of other folks whom we’d never met, or hadn’t seen in decades, who sent us money and clothes and shoes and the things we needed to live.

Our sweet memory, "Luck-O-the-Irish", a.k.a. "Lucky" (RIP), was born during that storm. He and his many siblings came of a "chance meeting" of our landlady’s Doberman Hildegard and a jaunty Don-Juan-of-a-Walker-Hound. Actually, if you think about it, this "chance meeting" stuff is just a lie we humans tell ourselves. Said meeting was hardly just by chance as far as the honest and amorous Walker-Hound-with-a-good-nose was concerned. Nor was the meeting simply chance in the amorously agreeable Hildegard’s opinion. Furthermore, as to the conception of all of those puppies being just by chance: One of God’s main departments has always been conception and conception has not ever been just chance in God’s way of doing!

Had we asked the three little grandsons whether this squirming bundle of hungrily nursing newborn puppies had been a mistake (which is what, usually, we really mean when we say "by chance"...), wouldn’t they have giggled that we could make such a mistake about this wiggling miracle of a treasure at which they gazed with sparkling child eyes?

The boys had been told that each could pick a puppy to name, until it went to its new home. One of the boys best loved the runt and named him "Lucky". We were subsequently blessed with Lucky as a member of our monastic family for a number of years before he went to God. A valiant-spirited dog he was, right from the start, when just around five weeks old, Lucky needed a front leg amputated because of a tumor.

From just a few days post-surgery, self confident little Lucky would gamely follow Trusty out the door, across the porch, down the long steeply-inclined doggie ramp into their run, which was on a very steep hillside. Competing to keep up with his German Shepherd adoptive mom, on their frequent trips up and down the hillside and ramp, was natural physical therapy and rehab for Lucky.

From that natural therapy, he developed the extra strong chest and neck muscles that made his missing front leg a non-issue in Lucky’s life. It didn’t slow him down or hamper him in any way. To change direction, Lucky simply gave a bit of a lurch that catapulted him, generally quite ahead of the competition, to wherever he wanted to go.

One time, when we had to travel, we left Busta-cat and Effie-cat home, but had the dogs with us. We were far from home. The much-anticipated day of visiting Mother’s brother and sister-in-law had dawned, and the dogs needed to be walked as we were leaving. Mother had Lucky on a longer-than-usual leash so that he could get some exercise after he tinkled. i was not too far away, with Trusty, when Mother’s nonchalant, almost sing-songy, "An–ge–laaa...?" drifted to me. i went to her immediately but unhurriedly, letting Trusty "pause" us a time or two en route

"Yes, Mother?" i asked, concentrating on keeping Trust and Lucky from tangling in each other’s leashes as they joyfully greeted each other after this separation of two minutes and twenty feet.

"I think Lucky broke my thumb," Mother replied, in much the same tone she’d use for "I think there’s a full moon next Tuesday." (People who remain inappropriately calm drive me crazy; it seems to me that if God had not meant for us to worry and even "freak out" on occasion, he’d not have given us adrenaline.)

"Excuse me, Mother?" i asked, looking at her face to see if it matched her words. She smiled. No pain there...

"He didn’t mean to. He lunged left as I turned right and the rope got tangled around my thumb," she explained still with that smile. (People who remain inappropriately good-natured drive me crazy too. It seems that if God had not meant for us to yell and even scream on occasion, he’d not have created our vocal cords to have such range.)

"See?" she added, holding up her left hand, from which her left thumb jutted at a bizarre angle that it was never designed to do. "It looks a little funny," she told me, adding in that indomitably undefeatable and joyfully uplifting way of hers, "but I’m not losing too much blood from it." She looked proud of that fact.

Finally the nurse in me kicked into gear: "Blood’s probably from the rope scraping across the skin," i reassured her calmly, adding, "that’s called an abrasion," because good nurses are always teaching as they’re nursing. ‘That’s all it could be...’ i thought to myself. "Sit down here, Mother, in case you get light-headed," i instructed in my i-will-make-it-all-okay-nurse-voice, "while i get the dogs into the truck."

"I have to get into the truck too," she pointed out, "so I’ll just come along now. "My other hand can hold Lucky’s leash," she indicated, reaching for it. "It’s time we got going," she added in her gee-I-hate-to-get-behind-schedule voice. "They’re expecting us in just a few hours."

"Well, Mother, i really think we should stop in at an ER on the way," i hinted. (i really hate being the one to make us late somewhere and i really hate being the bad-news-bearer.) "You do have a broken finger."

"But it’s not bleeding much," she reminded me proudly. "And you always hear how they just put on one of those little silver and blue splints and tell you to take it off in a few weeks," she added. "I don’t think we’ll have to alter our plans." i saw her jaw set and my knees trembled a bit.

"But Mother, it’s sticking out funny. It’s not pointing in the right direction, and in fact, it’s pointing backwards!" i screamed. (In my me-voice, not my nurse-voice.)

"Well I really can’t help that part, Angela. I try to make it point right, but it just won’t." Her voice indicated that i was having unreasonable expectations of her.

Finally at wits’ end, i resorted to outright manipulative begging to get her to give me permission to drive to an emergency room. "Puh–leassse, Mother, can’t we just stop by the ER? They probably have a cafeteria there...." (One uses what one must.)

She nodded. i floored it.

As we pulled into the emergency room circle, she murmured, "I do smell coffee..."

"It should be killing you, Mother," i advised her, cringing in empathy, because i knew from my decades of nursing experience just how much it would hurt.

"No, it doesn’t hurt," she whispered and smiled reassuringly at me as we walked into the ER.

"Ooowww," cringed the emergency room triage nurse (the one who chooses who sees the doctor next), as she saw the thumb’s perverse and perverted angle. "Let me go get you some Demerol quick," she said turning to go for the pain shot.

"No, it doesn’t hurt," Mother smiled reassuringly at her.

"It’s got to, the fractured bone is sticking through the skin, Ma’am!" exclaimed the triage nurse.

My scream of "The bone is doing what?" did not drown out Mother’s, "Well, Miss, I can’t help it about the bone sticking out, but at least I’m not losing much blood. And it really doesn’t hurt," she added, "so I’ll decline your offer of the pain medicine. Maybe that gentleman over there would like it..."

"i’ll take it," i muttered under my breath. How did i not "notice" a compound fracture? How did i not suspect it when Mother mentioned the blood she wasn’t losing much of? How did i fail to "notice" the bone protruding from the web of skin between her index finger and backwards-pointing thumb when i gently examined the injury and, more-gently yet, packed it with ice? What kind of nurse was i ?

"Excuse me, Ma’am?" asked the nurse turning to me.

"Oh, nothing, just saying a little prayer," i lied with barely a pang of guilt, as we were ushered into an examination cubicle, just shortly before 9:00 a.m.

The ER doc came, looked, said he’d have to call the orthopedic hand doc. The orthopedic hand doc came, looked, ordered x-rays and IV antibiotics, and said this was a high energy compound fracture of the left thumb at the proximal phalanx, nonarticular. And would need surgical repair.

i knew that.

Three and a half hours later, shortly after noon, Mother was on her back in one of those infamous hospital gowns in the O.R. anteroom, awaiting the anesthesiologist. He came in, made sure Sister knew he was a "good Catholic boy", which parish he belonged to, and then started to describe general anesthesia. "Oh, I don’t think we have to be that drastic over just one little thumb," Mother suggested smiling at him, "there must be some way you can just make that part of my hand go numb. You know, rather like the dentist does." She smiled her glowing maternal-Irish smile at him.

"Well, we could do a Bier block," he murmured uncertainly. Mother nodded encouragingly; she knew this good young man could figure out a way. "Yes, a Bier block with a sedative and narcotic to snow you a bit," he said, proud of himself for living up to Sister’s expectations.

"I knew you could do it," Mother beamed at him, "but now this ‘snowing’ thing, what is that?"

"Oh, Sister, that is just some sleeping medicine into your IV. To make you a little groggy. And a little pain medicine, also into your IV, to take care of the pain. Into your IV, do not worry that you will get a lot of shots," he reassured her.

"Oh, I don’t mind the shots," she reassured him. "But we can skip those two parts. I don’t have any pain, so we don’t need the pain medicine part. And I surely want to be wide awake so I can watch, so we certainly don’t want the sedative-groggy part." Again that charming Irish smile. He nodded dumbly (mutely, not stupidly).

Her eyes glittered a little dangerously. And she’d not had the Demerol... "Now, since I won’t be going to sleep, might I be given a little bit of late breakfast or early lunch while I wait....." her voice trailed off as the young man sort of scurried out. "That probably means no..." she murmured glancing sideways at me for confirmation of what she really already knew. i shook my head sorrowfully. "Do you think," she asked, "he might have that post-traumatic-stress syndrome or something? He looked a little harried as he left..."

An hour later, according to the post-operative report, they had done a seven minute prep (washed the outside of the area to be operated), obtained a good Bier block (hit the nerve with bull’s-eye aim, with the medicine to numb the area), double tourniqueted (wrapped two very tight tourniquets around her arm to prevent bleeding), irrigated (cleaned inside the injury), debrided (trimmed off the roughly torn edges of the skin where the bone had ripped through), and performed a percutaneous pinning (inserted metal pins through the skin to hold the bone pieces still so that they could grow back together), through the fracture laceration site (through the hole in the skin made by the broken bone), and all without making that tear/cut any larger, to do this amazing procedure! In just an hour’s time!

So that shortly after two in the afternoon, she was taken to the nursing unit to await a six p.m. IV antibiotic. This was a compromise between the surgeon and the nun. The orthopedic hand surgeon wanted her to remain in the hospital, "at least two days, Sister, so that we can be sure there is no infection setting in."

The nun wanted herself to leave immediately. "There is no good reason why I should take up a perfectly clean room just to get some antibiotic. You can give me some pills and you can trust me to take them at the right times. Sister here is an RN you know," she repeated for the umpteenth time. By now perfect strangers were walking up to me and writing "RN" in the air with their fingers. I won’t mention which ones (fingers or people).

"Well, Sister, would you at least stay for just one more dose of IV antibiotic and then the rest can be oral?" the young surgeon begged the nun. Who graciously agreed, "just so you won’t worry yourself, Doctor." She smiled up at him. "Oh, and wouldn’t I then need to have a bit of something to eat while I’m here? I haven’t eaten all day you know..."

When we returned to Tennessee a few days later, we kept an appointment with the Tennessee doctor to whom the operating surgeon had referred Mother for follow up care. This particular day we were due to return to him so that he could finally remove the two metal pins sticking slightly through the skin. As i emerged from the bathroom, hurrying so that i wouldn’t make us late for the appointment, Mother said, "Angela, I think we should call the doctor before we set off to keep my appointment for today."

"Mother, those pins have to come out. They shouldn’t be left in longer than the doctor says." i was quite surprised at her, because Mother is an extremely compliant patient. She not only follows the doctor’s instructions to the letter of the law, but she does so in the right spirit thereof. "You don’t want the bone to grow so firmly around the pins that they won’t come out, Mother," i added for emphasis. i held in reserve the admonition that we must not let the bone grow big thick callouses where the pins enter the bone. But i didn’t need it.

"I don’t think we need to worry about that," she reassured me with a smile. "This one just caught on my habit and came out on it’s own!", she explained holding out her uninjured hand, palm up, where lay one shiny pin. "There’s no bleeding at all," she pointed out proudly. "There’s probably no need to take up the good doctor’s valuable time. If we just call first, he might agree to let me pull out this other one myself!" She grinned in anticipation.

We did. He did. She did.

Sr. Angela

Copyright 1995