Have you seen my walker?

An essential piece of equipment that is with me whenever I go to see an adult patient: The Rolling Walker, or RW, for short.

Many patients that come to the hospital and require the services of a physical therapist benefit from the short-term or long-term use of said piece of equipment. Many are also very distressed when, after you let them try yours out, you have to take it with you to see your next patient. They are a hot commodity, as they give otherwise off-balance or immobile patients the freedom to "move about the country" as the SouthWest ad goes. Therefore, these RW's, when spotted in the hallways of a large hospital, will inevitably be covered with colored tape, stickers, labels, stretchy bands, or other various pieces of "flare" in order to distinguish it as some therapist's individual property.

On the weekends, when different therapists cover for the regular weekday therapists, there is an unwritten but extremely serious rule that if you borrow someone's walker for the day, you return it to the exact spot at the end of the day. Nothing is quite so tragic or soul-crushing as the sound of that fateful Monday morning groan from an acute care therapist:

"Have you seen my walker?"

True story: It was the end of the day, and I had just seen my final patient for the day--and allowed that patient to use "my" RW, complete with a big orange sticker with my name taped to its front. After we were finished and the patient was safely back in his room, I collapsed the RW and set it against the outer counter of the nurses' station, then went around the counter to grab the patient's medical chart. Since our department is not included yet in the hospital-wide conversion to computer documentation, I had to scribble down my note describing the treatment session on one of our paper documentation templates. It may have taken me up to 5 minutes (but not likely) and definitely no more than 5 minutes.

When I walked around to the outside of the nurses' station again to grab my RW and be on my way, I stopped and cocked my head to the side, a frown forming across my brow. There was no RW to be found. The entire counter was free of leaning-against-it objects. Thinking I may have mistakenly left it in along the hallway near my patient's room, I wandered down in that direction. But no luck. So I began asking around--to the nurses, to the NA's (nurses' aides), to the HUC's (Head Unit Coordinators)--"Have you seen my walker?" No one could give me any clues. But they all knew what I was searching for. And I believe they could feel my soul being crushed.

Finally, the nurse manager overheard my question, and said, "As I was walking by room #12 down there, a woman was carrying a walker into the room. It might have been yours." "She was carrying it? Not using it, right?" I asked, clarifying that I was not looking for a walker that someone needed in order to be ambulatory.

"Yes, she was carrying it."

"A woman, you say--a staff member? Or a family member of a patient?"

"I don't know if she's family, but she's not staff. She was just carrying the walker into the room, and as she entered, she said to the patient, 'Look what I found!'"

"What??!!" I laughed. "'Look what I found!'?? What the...?"

I marched down the hallway to Room #12, peeked in, and saw a scene in which I did not want to involve myself.

There was an older gentleman, one leg out of the bed, upper body raised off the pillow as if to get up, with his nurse in front of him, both hands on his shoulders, trying to convince him to get back into bed. Meanwhile, I could hear and partially see a woman in the patient's bathroom across from the foot of the bed, running the water from the faucet, apparently cleaning out a container of some sort, and talking to the gentleman in the bed as if the nurse was not there. My RW was neatly propped against the wall. I made quick eye-contact with the nurse, quickly determined that she had the patient's safety under control, and whispered as I quickly snatched my walker, "This is mine; ok, I'm out."

"Is this your patient?" the nurse asked, assuming I had left the walker in his room after my treatment session with him.

"No--but this is my walker!" I responded, quickly exiting before the woman could completely emerge from the bathroom to reclaim her stolen goods.

I now keep my RW inside the nurses' station when I am writing notes--or at least in my direct line of sight!