Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic: A Nurse Practitioner Remembers

by Marianna Crane

Overview

Running a clinic for seniors requires a lot more than simply providing medical care. In Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic, Marianna Crane chases out scam artists and abusive adult children, plans a funeral, signs her own name to social security checks, and butts heads with her staff—two spirited older women who are more well-intentioned than professional—even as she deals with a difficult situation at home, where the tempestuous relationship with her own mother is deteriorating further than ever before. Eventually, however, Crane maneuvers her mother out of her household and into an apartment of her own—but only after a power struggle and no small amount of guilt—and she finally begins to learn from her older staff and her patients how to juggle traditional health care with unconventional actions to meet the complex needs of a frail and underserved elderly population.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631524455
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Marianna Crane became one of the first gerontological nurse practitioners in the early 1980s. A nurse for over forty years, she has worked in hospitals, clinics, home care, and hospice settings. She writes to educate the public about what nurses really do. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Eno River Literary Journal, Examined Life Journal, Hospital Drive, Stories That Need to be Told: A Tulip Tree Anthology, and Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. She lives with her husband in Raleigh, North Carolina. Visit her at www.nursingstories.org.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Part 1 Getting Out

1 Dropping-In 1

2 A Difficult Decision 8

3 Getting Out 18

Part 2 Wild Goose Chase

4 The Senior Clinic 23

5 The Pigeon Lady 29

6 Home 34

7 Interfering 39

8 Ms. Henry and Delilah 45

9 Wild Goose Chase 50

10 B. J., The Canary 53

11 Visiting Ms. Henry 58

12 Dr. Braun Returns 62

13 Resurrecting Old Problems 69

14 Confronting Sanchez 72

15 At the Deli 79

16 New Clothes, Old Mattress 83

17 Planning the Funeral 88

18 The Video Guy 92

19 Dabrowski's Funeral Home 94

20 To the Bank 98

21 Good Friday 101

22 Easter Sunday 106

23 Have Dress, No Plot 111

24 Retirement Party 114

25 The Funeral 118

26 Pearlie Banks 121

27 Adopted Granddaughter 125

28 Thanksgiving 132

29 Chicago Conference 135

Part 3 Playing Sheriff

30 Inter generational Love-In 141

31 The Talky-Walky 149

32 Save One, Lose One 155

33 Josie and Margaret 165

34 The Faceoff 169

35 Dying Against the Rules 172

36 Checking the Taverns 183

37 Friday Night Blues 193

38 Playing Sheriff 203

Editorial Reviews

2020 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards: Finalist in Non-Fiction – Health (Medical)
2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Finalist in General Non-fiction
2019 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist

“In this thoughtful and compelling memoir, Crane’s keen eye for detail brings her stories, by turns heartbreaking and humorous, to life on the page. . . . Crane’s passion for helping others is obvious even as she struggles to figure out the best way to do that. An honest, compassionate look at what it takes to care for some of America’s most vulnerable citizens.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“ . . . a fascinating slice of life with a deeply personal and generous narrative, one that teaches us much about the faults in our elderly care system, and also about the pure kind-heartedness that the human spirit is capable of.”
—Readers Favorite

“Crane truly is an inspiration . . . Readers will see her compassion, heartache and ability to admit her mistakes in her emotional writing….I highly recommend Stories from the Tenth Floor Clinic by Marianna Crane to all families, caretakers and those who work with the elderly.”
—Reader Views

“Marianna Crane writes with compassion and insight about what it’s like to serve on the front lines of the medical profession—treating the most vulnerable among us. Her vivid account is moving and enlightening, a valuable contribution to the literature of social justice.”
—Philip Gerard, Professor, Department of Creative Writing, University of North Carolina, and author of The Art of Creative Research

“Nurse practitioners are well known for their willingness to be primary care providers for the ‘underserved’—those people who are waking bundles of multiple chronic and acute illness and myriad ‘social determinants’ of poor housing, little income, and almost no family or friends to call a support system. Society prefers that such patients remain invisible, because acknowledging their existence is too unsettling. It is my fervent hope that Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic will find a wide audience of readers who are willing to meet and care about the people nurse practitioners allow into their lives every day.”
—Marie Lindsey, PhD, FNP, health care consultant and founding member and first president of the Illinois Society for Advanced Practice Nurse

“Marianna Crane’s poignant and compelling stories opened my eyes to the daily health challenges low-income elderly patients face, and the struggles and small victories that nurse practitioners deal with. Crane's real-life qualitative study provides the rich texture missing from the more quantitative studies of needy populations. With empathy, compassion, and wit, Crane makes an important contribution to the literature of a vulnerable population. We, who research these folks, are indebted to the author for her insights and unvarnished truth.”
—Peter J. Stein, Ph.D., University of North Carolina Institute on Aging, associate director for Aging Workforce Initiatives, retired

From the Publisher

2018-09-15

A veteran nurse practitioner reflects on her time working in a clinic for elderly, low-income patients in this debut memoir.

In the 1980s, Crane left her job as a nurse with the VA to take charge of a new senior clinic in a high-rise public housing complex on Chicago's West Side, an experience she chronicles in her vivid, unflinching book. She was eager for the chance to prove her mettle and relished the opportunity to run her own clinic independently. But from her first day on the job, it was clear she might be in over her head. Her Evan-Picone suits were out of place in the makeshift, roach-infested clinic, where the single bathroom doubled as a conference room. Gangs and violence were a problem in the surrounding neighborhood. But the real challenge was getting used to her co-workers and patients. Though her instinct was to stick to giving checkups and dispensing medical advice, the author soon found herself planning funerals for people who had no family, defending the elderly against scammers, and visiting local bars to track down one woman's alcoholic son. In this thoughtful and compelling memoir, Crane's keen eye for detail brings her stories, by turns heartbreaking and humorous, to life on the page. Graphic accounts of treatments, like an at-home pelvic exam she performed on a seriously ill woman, are disturbing but reflect the reality of caring for a disadvantaged population with few resources. The author also has a clear sense of her own weaknesses. She admits she sometimes had a "mental block against taking action," which seemed partly born of wanting to help patients retain their dignity and independence but also a desire to keep her emotional distance in complicated situations. In one case, she admits to feeling a sense of relief when a patient died, since it meant she would no longer have to dedicate so much effort to arranging her care. Through it all, Crane's passion for helping others is obvious even as she struggles to figure out the best way to do that.

An honest, compassionate look at what it takes to care for some of America's most vulnerable citizens.

Kirkus Reviews