Wendy's account of her experience at the Waikouaiti tuberculosis sanatorium (related in The Smile) is among the most moving of her prose pieces in Selected Works of Janet Wendy Last. Her compassion, practical common sense, devotion to care of her patients, shine through in equal measure. It is very sad that we failed in all efforts to encourage, persuade or coerce her into writing similar accounts of some of her other nursing experiences. Over the years she told me and I heard her tell others some stories often enough so I can probably tell them reasonably accurately, though not as well. Here are a few.
Making Raspberry Jam
This happened while she was a student nurse in Dunedin. World War II had ended but in 1946 or thereabouts, some things were still scarce or rationed. Several nurses came back to the hospital after a weekend off with buckets of raspberries; there were too many to eat them all for dessert. Making jam was the obvious solution. This requires lots of sugar but sugar was rationed. Janet Wendelken, a country girl, was volunteered to make the jam, and as sweetening agent, she used Golden Syrup or Treacle. Two things happened. The mixture burnt, filling the kitchen, the corridors, that whole wing of the hospital, with the pervasive smell of burning sugar. Then the saucepan (or perhaps it was a cauldron) boiled over, covering the top of the stove and much of the kitchen floor with a hot, sticky, rather horrible, inedible mess. That episode of jam-making has to be counted among Janet Wendy's failed culinary ventures. (Others followed during our half century and more of married life)
Caring for a dying patient and Observing the stages of dying
Wendy told me about this patient with tears running down her cheeks. He was a young man, a year or two older than she, with acute leukemia. Perhaps she was a little in love with him. In the late 1940s, there was absolutely nothing to do but watch him die. He was determined that he would 'beat' this disease and be back playing rugby soon. Of course that didn't happen, and as he rapidly deteriorated, she, as staff nurse on the ward, took a special interest in him. She sat with him offering words of comfort, swabbed the sores in his mouth, listened as he said he'd finally realized he was very seriously ill. Her account when she told me about him was far more vivid and moving than my bare summary. There came a day eventually when he said to her something like, "I've had enough of this. I'll go to sleep for a while now." He turned on his side away from her. Half an hour later he was dead.
Competing against taxi drivers
Janet Wendelken did her obstetrics training at Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty, close to a large Maori settlement where birth rates were very high. It ought to have been a splendid place to get rich and varied training in delivering babies. It wasn't. She told me all about it when we stayed for a few days at a very comfortable B&B, Pahutakawa Lodge, in that district. The trouble was that the Maori women disliked going into hospital (perhaps it was a tad racist?). Customarily, they waited until the baby's head appeared at the perineum before calling a taxi. More babies were born in taxis than in the obstetric wards. The taxi drivers all carried scissors, razor blades, clean string, piles of old newspapers (to soak up the mess, keep the seats of their taxis clean). Like some of her colleagues, Jan Wendy cut a deal with the taxi company, rode with taxis on the way to collect women in labour from the Maori community. This was after she had done enough deliveries to feel reasonably confident. She reached her quota, got her obstetric certificate, but some nurses with less initiative didn't reach their quota in the available time. Wendy loved the district, the work, the Maori people, planned to go back to work there for the rest of her life. Then she met me, and her plans changed...
Appearances can be deceptive
In 1953 Jan Wendelken was a staff nurse in the private wing of the Royal Northern Hospital in London. There was great excitement when a famous Hollywood film star, a he-man heart-throb, was admitted for a week's treatment; less excitement when the diagnosis was revealed. The tough guy had a venereal disease and required a course of penicillin. Moreover, he was almost a midget, not quite five feet tall, and built everywhere - and I mean everywhere - to scale. Jan Wendy had to jab his shapely but small buttocks with her needle and its load of penicillin four or five times daily. She learned that sets were designed extra small to make him look larger, that he wore shoes with soles six inches thick, that heroines had to be diminutive too, or if not, special camera angles were used to give the illusion that he was larger than she. This presented particular challenges when he played opposite a leading lady who was almost a foot taller than he (she was a peroxide blond who habitually styled her hair to conceal the eye that had a slight squint; they appeared together in several thrilling movies in the 1950s). Her patient was a gentleman, however, despite his diagnosis. When he was discharged he thanked his nurses, shook hands with each, and presented a pair of real silk stockings to each of them. Wendy still had hers, without any ladders too, 4 or 5 years after we married. I'll observe the rules of medical confidentiality and not reveal his name, or his blond lady friend's.
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