Oral History Gallery

Extract Text (Duration 1.37)

It seemed very funny, but then I'd always held the belief that a nurse should always be a patient in a hospital bed to learn what the other side was like, and it certainly was an eye-opener.  And I think it... in fact it made me a better nurse when I came out.  But you never forget you're a nurse, because we had a rather funny incident on the ward... well looking back it was a funny incident but at the time it was rather frightening.  Hmmm, one of the very large oxygen cylinders fell over and the valve fell out, so instinctively the first thing I did... I'd managed to collapse my lung and I'd had a chest drain in, so bottle, chest drain and everything, I jumped out of bed, and immediately evacuated my end of the ward to make sure the patients were safe, and then tried to concentrate on where my friend was at the other end of the ward.  In the meantime, this oxygen was still going and it sounded like a World War II bomb.  We managed to evacuate the other end of the ward as well and at the time one of the doctors happened to walk in the ward with a cigarette in his hand, and we sort of had to shout to get out, quickly.  We managed to secure the place, get the cylinder emptied, but the next morning, when Sister walked on the ward, she said, quite calmly, "Why didn't somebody just pick it up and throw it out of the window?"  As we had very small windows on E5 and also it was a very long way down because we were on the third floor, so I don't think that would have been very helpful really, but, it was a thought that we took in mind for the next time an incident like that happened.