60 Minutes: CHARLES CULLEN NURSE SERIAL KILLER

Did you watch 60 minutes last night about the nurse serial killer Charles Cullen? He did the things I wrote about in my book, Medicinal Remedies. It's available on Amazon.com as an ebook and as a paperback. It's also available on Barnes and Noble.com. There are also 3 paperbacks available on ebay (different cover on the paperbacks). My nurse killer thought she was doing a good thing when she "put people out of their misery", Charles Cullen not so much.

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DRUGS, THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

I graduated from nursing school and received my Registered Nurse license in 1972. Newly married, and pregnant with my first child, I accepted a transfer to work at a new drug treatment center on the grounds of the Los Angeles County hospital. Patients were initially admitted into the detoxification unit where we helped them withdraw from whatever drug they were addicted to. At that time the favorites were barbiturates, sedatives, and heroin. These patients writhed in bed for the better part of seven to ten days, hallucinating, sweating profusely, vomiting, and having diarrhea. There really wasn't a good way to withdraw from drugs. Eventually they would recover enough to be transferred out of the acute ward and onto the general ward. If they progressed well during therapy sessions, and stayed clean and drug free, they would then move to the next unit where therapy was more intense and they enjoyed a bit more freedom. The ultimate goal was to be able to transition to a halfway house on the hospital grounds before being reintroduced into the community. Sadly, there were many failures and few successes. I remember some of the failures vividly.

     The first one that comes to mind is a young black female prostitute who was seven months pregnant when she came in for detoxification from heroin so her baby wouldn't be born addicted. She didn't last through the first three days of withdrawal and was packing her bags to leave AMA, (against medical advice) when I noticed her syphilis test had come back positive. I notified the doctor right away and before she left I injected her buttocks with more penicillin than I'd ever given anyone before or since. I've wondered all these years if that poor little baby was born alive and what happened to it. I can only imagine.

     One weekend I was working when the lab technician came up to me and said someone had stolen all of the used needles and syringes off of his lab tray. Alarm bells went off in my head. I figured that someone most likely had gotten ahold of some heroin and was planning a party. I had to work fast. I called the medical director and told him what had happened, and then gathered all of the patients together. Of course no one admitted to stealing the syringes and needles, so I mobilized the staff to search every inch of the unit. We finally found the stash hidden inside the zippered vinyl cushions on the chairs in the sun room. However, it was too late. The patients were already exhibiting signs of being high. Using drugs while going through drug rehabilitation was a violation of their individual contracts. I called the medical director again and he told me to discharge every patient that showed signs of being high on drugs and to do drug testing on all of the other patients. I still don't know where I found the courage to stand up to all those people who didn't want to leave, but with the help of my staff, I somehow managed to escort them out and lock the doors behind them. In retrospect, I was so angry at what they'd done on my watch that the adrenaline was flowing and most likely kept fear at bay. I was a bit worried when I left to go out to my car at the end of my shift, but no one was lying in wait. Once the weekend was over, several of the people came back, were remorseful, and were readmitted to the program where they had to start over from the beginning.

     One of the young men who returned was a teenager. He was a really cute little guy with blonde curly hair and big blue eyes. He’d been fun to have on the unit as a recovering drug addict. He was accepted back in, but changed his mind and left. Shortly after he left, another man came to the door and told us the teenager had shot up with heroin and overdosed. Someone dragged him inside and the doctor and I started working on him. He was in full cardiac arrest but we managed to resuscitate him and inject him with a medication to reverse the effects of the heroin. We saved his life, but I often wonder how long he lived. I still think about him and whether or not he managed to become drug free make it to adulthood.

HEARING IS THE LAST SENSE PEOPLE LOSE

     Mr. Ames was a 64 year old man who’d come into the hospital for rectal cancer surgery. The surgeon elected to put Mr. Ames in the knee-chest position on a special operating table. He was face down with his butt in the air for hours due to the operation being more complicated than the surgeon had anticipated. As a result, he had nerve damage to his legs from the bent position and compression and also developed blood clots in the femoral arteries. This wasn’t discovered until he’d been in our intensive care unit for a few days and was awake enough to tell us he had no feeling in his legs. They’d also become very swollen leading us to suspect blood clots.

     Unfortunately, one complication led to another and the blood clots traveled to his lungs and brain. He ended up in a coma and on a respirator. He remained that way for three more months in the intensive care unit until it was finally determined by an electroencephalogram he was brain dead. As difficult as it was for them, his large loving family made the decision to remove him from life support.

     The day came and the respiratory therapist turned the machine off and removed the endotracheal tube from Mr. Ames’ mouth. But he didn’t die. He took a deep breath, then another. His wife and children looked at each other in amazement. Hope could be seen on their faces.

     He continued breathing on his own so we moved him from the noisy intensive care unit into the quieter cardiac care unit. He was placed in a private room. It had glass walls and a glass door so we could see inside, but it also had a curtain that could be pulled for privacy when his family visited. He was a ‘no code’, so if his heart stopped beating we weren’t going to resuscitate him. This went on for another month, then we began seeing signs that he was getting closer to death. His family made us promise we would call them when he was within hours of death so they could be by his side.

     One night when I was working in the cardiac care unit, I could tell by the changes to his breathing pattern, his heart rate increase, and blood pressure dropping that he was going to die on my shift. I called his family as promised and they said they would be in as soon as they could get there. It was the middle of the night and they’d been asleep. I watched the heart monitor anxiously, hoping he would remain alive until they got there.

     Forty five minutes passed and they still hadn’t arrived when suddenly, his heart stopped and the monitor showed a straight line. I jumped up and ran into the room. He’d stopped breathing as well. I put my hand on his shoulder and leaned close to his ear. The last sense to go is the sense of hearing. I spoke loudly into his right ear, “Don’t go yet, Mr. Ames. Your family is on their way in. They want to be here with you. Hold on a little longer.” I watched as he took a big, deep breath and started breathing again. I looked up at the heart monitor and his heart began beating again. I stayed there another ten minutes until his family burst through the door. When they entered the room and gathered around I said, “Okay, Mr. Ames, they’re all here with you now.”

     The man who was brain dead smiled a brilliant smile, stopped breathing, and his heart stopped beating. He had a beautiful, peaceful expression on his face. I pulled the curtains closed and pulled the door closed behind me as I left the room so his family could grieve privately.