Of course in some parts of the world, the white get up and the starchy, oh-so-hard-to-stiffen head piece had been dished out, replaced by a funky, bright and much happier ensemble. Nonetheless, the white get up and the head piece had been the stereotype of nurses for many years now.
In my not so distant past, 13 years to be exact, I had been privileged to be called one of the “daughters of Florence Nightingale” otherwise known as nurses. Florence Nightingale also coined as the “Lady with the Lamp” is one of the unsung heroes who have devoted her life in the care of the sick and dying. Famous for her work in the military hospitals of the Crimea, Florence Nightingale established nursing as a respectable profession for women. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/nightingale_florence.shtml)
What I want to write today however, is the little innocuous incidents that happened many years back while I was still a nursing student involving the gray stockings.
You see, my alma mater, has a rather unique, according to one teacher, very European nursing student hospital uniform. This involves a set of a pink tops, white apron, dark gray stockings, black shoes and the little headpiece that we have to laboriously starch until it stands and iron on high setting. All except the stockings are dispensed at our school pantry at the beginning of our hospital work.
At that time, with few malls to choose from, we are at a mercy of a very few selections of stockings. We really had a hard time finding the right shade of gray, much more finding the panty hose version. Most often, we’d ended up getting the extra long sock type stockings with a garter on top to hold it in place whose life span is comparable to that of a disposable coffee filter. With its rarity and our limited budget to boot, we’d ended up using the stockings over and over again despite the sagging garter line. Quite frankly, nobody suggested garter belts, but I reckon, it must have been hard to find at our malls at that time too.
They say that necessity is the mother of all inventions. I don’t know who ingeniously started it all, but one suggested we put a one peso coin to the garter line and fold it twice and voila! your little secret is safe and you have a stationary garter in place ----or so we thought.
Indeed, this little one peso secret was put to test one uneventful day.
There was nothing out of the ordinary that morning. I was doing my usual hospital routine, one of which was to give NGT ( Naso gastric tube) feeding to a patient. I was holding the feeding bottle over head waiting for the liquefied food to flow through the tubing when to the surprise of my patient’s family members; they heard a clanking and rolling of a coin followed by a slow yet sure descent of the infamous gray stockings.
At that moment, I feel the earth just swallowed me whole. I remembered wanting to run away and cry of embarrassment, but the task at hand (remember the NGT feeding), made me stay put.
Of course, like any incident, it did pass and in no time I had gotten over it. The gray stocking remained one of our favorite topics though whenever our batch mates in college meet up fondly adding their own tribute story to it.
I also recalled one former classmate saying that her very own gray stocking, very untimely choose to take center stage during the doctor’s round. The doctor she was accompanying couldn’t hide his wide-eyed surprise with the gray stocking, with all its glory, cramped up at my classmate’s ankles. Up until now, I couldn’t quite manage to conjure the image of it without getting laughing fits.
What I remembered most about my years as a nursing student though was what our Dean of College of Nursing, Dr. Ofelia Sisno, asked us during one of the subjects she handled.
She said “If you encounter a patient you’ve met for the first time, do you know that person? And do you know how to care for that person?” Most of my classmates, perhaps thinking of possible lawsuits and that nurses should not play doctors, said “No”. However, in a class of about 30 students, one answered “Yes”. “Please elaborate” Dr. Sisno said. And the student answered “ I know enough that I am dealing with a human life and that the person is created by GOD, and therefore I should care for him in the best way I can, in the best way I know as I assess his condition”. Very poignantly spoken and indeed, a true reflection of CDCN’s motto “Primum Homo Esto” or “ Let him first be a man”.
As what Doctor Ofelia Sisno, would tirelessly say to us day after day…” Dare to Care”…now, there’s nothing unfashionable about that at all.
And the gray stocking….well thankfully, with the advent of new technologies, it has gotten its own make over, over the years.
If you have your own story to tell about this adorable gray stocking or of a memorable experience being a nurse, please, write me at fashionscapes@gmail.com. I don’t have budget to pay but who knows we’d be able to make a good compilation of stories.
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beautiful
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