Wednesday, May 12, 2010

When I was in 5th Grade I wanted to be Clara Barton. Look at me now!



Two years ago I had no idea what it really meant to be a nurse, I just thought it would be a noble thing to do, as Kurt Vonnegut said about Mary in Slaughter-House Five, "Mary O'Hare is a trained nurse, which is a lovely thing for a woman to be".
I also think it's a lovely thing to be.


So this is the story of a young woman who thought it would be lovely to be a nurse.


I've discovered that it is lovely, and it's frightening, and it can make you cry, and make you laugh, and it is exhausting, and often very disgusting, it's demanding, it's rewarding.
It requires total dedication, enthusiasm, wanting to possess understanding and knowledge of the human body, of the human spirit, the mind, the body, the connection of mind and body. It demands of you compassion, a gentle touch, a warm smile. You must stand up for what you belief is right, maintain your voice, because you are your patient's voice as well.
I've cried with a mother as her baby was entering into the world.
I've been in the operating room, watching pieces of a brain tumor being suctioned out of a middle-aged woman's head, knowing that this is someone's daughter, sister, mother, and hearing the surgeon say that her odds for surviving are minimal.
Days when you feel like there is nothing more you could do to help, and those days when the simplest thing brings the biggest smile to someone's face.
Two years of the hardest work of my life, endless nights of staying up late, poured over stacks of books, the coffee pot continuously on. The moments that have surrounded the academia; my nephew being born, and now he can say my name. The friends I have gained and the ones I have lost. My summer abroad and how that changed me forever. The truest things I have learned about myself, things that have been there all along, but through this, I can now see clearly and distinctively.
I am walking and looking back. I started with uncertainty but with passion, and prevailed. There were stumbling blocks along the way, and times when I wanted to walk back, but I followed the trail that I had envisioned. Now I stand at the end of the bridge, and there is a whole world to discover.