Teaching Vignette #43
(Submitted by an entrance assistant at the Springfield Caring Center)
March 4, 2120
It had been a warm spring morning and I was enjoying the weather after making it through a winter where we actually had several weeks of cold. I guess I shouldn’t complain since this was the first winter in decades where we had more than a few random cold days all season.
The morning had been quiet so far, with only a couple of folks coming in for minor complaints.
“Good morning,” I said to the person who had just come in and was walking up to my desk. “How can we help you?”
This is what I usually say to anyone who walks into the center, unless they are being carried in by someone else.
“I don’t feel so good,” they said. They didn’t look so great either.
“What seems to be the problem?” I asked.
As I said, it had been a quiet morning so far and although the caregivers were busy enough, I also knew that there were several that were doing routine work that could be handled later.
“I’m feeling sort of…” was all that they said before they collapsed.
I gave a yell for assistance before I scooted around my desk and felt for a pulse in the person’s neck. There was one and it seemed strong enough, but the person, although still breathing, appeared to be unconscious.
By this time, Belinda and Curzon were beside me with a rolling cot that already had a fluid bottle set up on it.
“They’re breathing and have a good pulse,” I said to them, “but they collapsed and lost consciousness in front of me.”
“What happened?” Belinda asked as we moved the person onto the cot.
“They walked in, said that they weren’t feeling well, and then fainted,” I said.
“Did you get a name?” Curzon asked.
“No,” I said. “They didn’t have a chance to tell me anything else.”
I helped them get the cot past the desk and through the doors into the back labyrinth and from there to an intake room where Deanna, one of the center’s caregivers, was waiting for us. I repeated my story but she was already checking pupils, as well as the heart, the lungs, and their belly.
As Deanna was prodding their belly, the person groaned softly and appeared to be regaining consciousness.
Their eyes opened and they looked blearily at us. “What… happened?” they asked in a soft, shaky voice.
“You fainted,” Deanna said, as she was putting a line in, inserting a needle that brought fluid in this person’s arm from the bottle overhead via some recently sterilized rubber tubing. “Do you know where you are?”
“I was…” they said, looking around the room before turning an unsteady gaze on us. “I was just coming into the care center. I think.”
Deanna pulled a jar off the shelf. “When was the last time you ate anything?” she asked.
“It’s been a while,” they admitted. “I’ve been doing a prolonged fast. It’s supposed to reinvigorate you.”
“It depends on how long you do it,” she said. She used a glass syringe to add the contents of the jar to the fluid bottle. I recognized the jar she used. It contained a simple sugar and it was probably derived from syrup we had sugared from the trees on the farm that I had worked on a couple of years ago.
Deanna glanced over at a jar of ephedra, which I knew had probably been grown in a greenhouse that was at a neighboring farm, but seemed to decide against using it. Both the sugar and the ephedra were likely to have been compounded by the commune near us that provided us with most of our remedies.
She began unwrapping a care kit, which had a metal tray inside that contained most of the supplies she would probably need.
While Deanna was doing that, I looked carefully at the shelves in the intake room. I’m responsible for maintaining the supplies in the care center, but it looked like the room was adequately equipped with almost a dozen kits, all carefully wrapped in cloth on the shelves. Still, I thought I might contact the community responsible for sterilizing them and order a few more.
I watched Deanna and Belinda work for a moment or two more before leaving. Curzon had already left and with the person conscious and being treated, I wanted to return to my desk before anyone else walked in.
(Note: I was asked to submit this as an example of a situation that the center faced recently. Our day generally consists of seeing people with much less dramatic difficulties. As of this writing, Deanna and Curzon are still at the center, but Belinda has left us to train in caregiving. As per our confidentiality norms, I omitted any information that might identify the person involved.)
