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A FEW FACTS ABOUT...
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My best nurse story A by Daniel Pearson
few years ago I temporarily got into a tradition of massive annual sinus infections. Thankfully that phase of my life has come and gone, but while it was going I was in abject misery for a few weeks every year. The first episode was especially bad because I thought it was just a cold and would eventually go away on its own. Why go to a doctor? That all changed when, during the height of one annual ordeal, we took a trip to Nashville. During the interstate climb over Tennessee’s Monteagle Mountain, I was 100% convinced my head was going to explode. I do not mean metaphorically. I mean literally. My wife had been forced to take the wheel miles back, and I was begging her to find a hospital. Run people off the road if you have to, I groaned. Before we saw a blue H sign, we had descended from the heights and my head no longer felt in imminent danger of detonation. Back home in Augusta, I finally realized medical intervention Please see MY BEST STORY page 6
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ow much do you know about the woman who is popularly known as the founder of modern nursing? Here are a few facts and figures for you in case you wind up on Jeopardy! someday and one of the categories is “Florence Nightingale.” • She was born May 12, 1820 into a rich, upper-class, wellconnected British family at the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana at Bellosguardo in Florence, Italy, and was named after the city of her birth. Florence’s older sister Frances Parthenope had similarly been named after her place of birth, Parthenopolis, a Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples. The family moved back to England in 1821, with Nightingale being brought up in the family’s homes at Embley Park (below) and Lea Hurst. • Her sister and mother were said to be intensely angry about and opposed to her intention to work in nursing. Despite
• Despite the opposition she experienced from her mother and sister, her father gave her an income equivalent to about $65,000 a year, allowing her to pursue her career.
that, she rejected the expected role and the restrictive social code for affluent young English women — basically to become a wife and mother — and entered the nursing field in 1844. • As a young woman Nightingale was attractive, slender and graceful. While her demeanor was often severe, she could be very charming and her smile was radiant. Her most persistent suitor was the politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, but after a nine-year courtship she rejected him, convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling to nursing. Most Nightingale scholars believe she remained chaste for her entire life.
• Nightingale was one of the first healthcare practitioners to recognize the importance of hygiene in patient aftercare, noting that ten times more Crimean War soldiers died from illnesses like cholera, dysentery, typhus, and typhoid fever than from their battle wounds. • A 1911 book about her work stated that her efforts reduced the death rate from 42% to 2%, although Nightingale herself never made such claims. • She was one of the first persons to ensure that healthcare was not denied to patients due to their morals or financial condition, making care accessible to paupers, and working to repeal prostitution laws that were overly harsh to women • Her travels took her as far as Greece and Egypt. • She died at age 90 on August 13, 1910 + Source: wikipedia.org
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