Former Nurse Transforms Adversity into Global Safety Enterprise

(Beth and her four girls in 2013 when she founded Pretty Loaded. This article is written by her oldest daughter, Chloe. )

I wanted to know what being a nurse was like for my mother, and what she remembers. What are the memories that keep her up at night in her dreams that she often talks about? It’s been 21 years since she experienced being a nurse, so the things that haunt her must be very significant.

There are both pleasant and horrifying parts of being a nurse, especially as an intensive care nurse for children. Children are so innocent and full of life, so it is stressful to see them on life support especially when parents are clinging to her every move in the hopes their child will live.

Children have so much life left to live. When that promise of life is threatened to be transient, it can be heartbreaking. I asked her what the worst part of being a nurse was, and she took a deep breath to tell me something that is eerie. “The worst part of being a nurse was definitely when a patient would die, or when the parents would scream at me to ‘save their child.’ That was…the worst thing ever.”

One thing that they didn’t teach her in nursing school was that she would have to prepare children’s bodies after they died. She changes her statement from before and tells me that that is the worst thing she had to do as a nurse. She tells me this, being vague with her words, “I would literally have to wrap the bodies and do certain things with the eyes…and tie the hands and ankles together…wrap them in a sheet a certain way…and take the body to the morgue. Putting them in the cold steel case and shutting the door was heartbreaking.”

A mortuary is a harrowing place. In movies and TV shows, it is usually dark, dank, and eerily lit. I can’t imagine the daunting task of preparing a child’s eyes for death. Eyes hold so much life, emotion, and personality…to see them empty would be unforgettable. I’ve heard about her preparing bodies before, but not in that much detail. She usually tries to shelter me and my little sisters from what she had to do. I know it was disturbing, and truly a nightmare.

She lightly invigorates the mood and tells me that she also loved being a nurse. “The best part of being a nurse was being reliable under extreme pressure. I had to perform tasks correctly under immense stress and have a sharp mind. It was almost like being in a warzone, but I felt like I was good at it. I was able to be compassionate to the patient, even though they were sedated and paralyzed by medicine, I felt like they could still hear me. I loved getting patients better and out of the hospital, that was fulfilling.”

My mother didn’t have a least favorite patient. She describes how most children were either sedated or very, very sick, so most weren’t able to even talk to her. She did, however, have lots of parents that were disrespectful, very cruel, rude, and invasive. Others were just contemptuous. She says, “Some parents were from other countries, and the men did not allow me to look them in the eye, or to talk to their wife because it was against their culture. Some would make sexual comments which was very uncomfortable since I was stuck in the room and could not leave my patient’s side.” My mother mentions how it felt for her to be disrespected like that. She was making sure that their child lived, and the parents or family members were depreciating her. On top of this, she worked in a dangerous location so going to and from work was incredibly stressful and her safety was constantly at risk.

DEATH THROUGH VIOLENCE

Every room in a hospital holds a story of a person. Who that person is, how they were injured or sick, and if they lived or died.  My mother witnessed so many children who were abused and killed. My mother recalls the dreadful sound of a child writhing and screaming in pain, covered in blood, and the traumatized look in their eyes. This child could’ve been kicked downstairs or shaken so hard that they became basically brain-dead. This child could’ve had a mother who drove her two girls into a cold lake and left them for dead. These children were so mistreated…given life just to have it stolen from them. My mom expands on this, “I can remember almost all of the patients that died…almost in every room at Minneapolis and St. Paul Children’s Hospitals.”

One of the worst things my mother had to do as a Sedation Nurse in Kansas City was sedate children who were raped. The youngest rape victim she sedated was a two-year-old boy. The rape victim cases were so disturbing that nurses tried to hand them off to other nurses because they didn’t want to see what these children had to endure.

My mom wanted to quit a million times as a nurse because of the stress of her job and all the disturbing things that happened to children. Some were so brutal and violent that my mother couldn’t handle them, but she had to. My mother explains how she didn’t have any counseling for these kinds of cases, or for anything at all. The hospital didn’t teach her any coping methods, they didn’t require her to get counseling…there was a lot of sadness, pain and violence to hold in her mind. There were times when my mom had worked on a patient that was so brutalized that she went out to go for a drink at a restaurant with other nurses at 7:30 AM so they could talk and decompress.

ADVERSITY TO EMPOWERMENT

My mom expands off, changing the subject a little, “In many ways, that’s why I do what I do now because I saw so much death through violence.” After my mother was almost assaulted with me and my sister eleven years ago, she realized that she wanted to prevent random violence and death. She wanted to find a new, out-of-the-box way to make a difference in the personal safety arena.

She tells me more about the subject, “I’ve always loved helping people, and I think that all of the violence I saw, especially all of the rape victims I sedated or the children mistreated…it inspired me to help people in a new way. Random acts of violence has always bothered me, especially when it could’ve been prevented.”

My mother resigned from being a nurse when she was twenty-nine years old. She moved back to Bismarck, ND, with my Dad, John, and had her firstborn child (me), my brother, John Paul, who died at birth, and my three sisters. After homeschooling, being an Uber-Mom and helping with my Dad’s orthodontic practice, my mom is now a businesswoman and entrepreneur. She has a personal safety and situational awareness company called Pretty Loaded, where she teaches people how to proactively protect themselves and is now teaching healthcare workers how to stay safe since this is close to her heart.

I end the recording, put down my pencil, and feel a sense of accomplishment and pride. Not pride in myself, but pride for having her as my mother because I now feel more aware of her life. She continued doing what she’s done all along, empowering and helping people.