I find myself in a whirlwind of novelty and overwhelming responsibility the likes of which only motherhood has rivaled. I am a nurse. Two tiny letters follow my signature around. Two foundational pieces of a language that’s been in and around me every moment of my life, now placed triumphantly, reverently, behind my name with pride. RN. I am no longer a student and no longer in training. I have no more qualifiers attached to the title perched on my shoulder, a badge in every sense of the word.
It took a great deal to get here, but this is what I’ve worked for. This is what I thought about for years while trudging through the formidable preparatory tasks and struggles on the path to this place and this career. I clung to the idea of these moments, while pushing through those and the transformative power of simply moving forward, inch by priceless inch, has worked magic in my world, in my life, and on my perspective. I have been on the outskirts of this achievement for so long, looking in, trying to learn, feverishly preparing for what I saw coming, steeling myself for what I could not, and slowly, steadily pushing relentlessly forward.
It’s inconceivably better and indescribably worse than I ever thought it would be.
The joy and the pain of it fall on separate ends of a vast spectrum with exhaustion at its core. There’s an emotional depth in humanity that we encounter only on the brightest and the darkest occasions. Pivotal moments of trauma and crisis erupt spontaneously and with equal fervor in the lives of the kind and the angry, the rich and the poor, the victims and the survivors. Those unspeakable events burn themselves into the walls of our hearts, while moments of exultation and triumph build and define us all. A handful of these pivotal moments come to every soul on this great earth. All of us are touched by death in the periphery of our circles, sometimes close to home, and we all share in that eventual outcome. Likewise, we all have or hear or become stories of great achievement, surmounting all odds.
I now live in those moments, in the raw shadows of joy and grief where all nurses reside, waiting just off camera in the unspeakable corners of our world, ready to fight for you, to hold your hand, to cheer you on, to help you decipher and process the things you never saw coming, and choreograph your way forward on the worst or best day of your life. Sometimes I even get to empower and equip people to meet the struggles and trials that follow those life altering events. That’s what I get to do, and it’s powerful, incomprehensible and singularly fulfilling, and it comes at a price.
I’d be lying if I told you every hour of every shift rides those deep currents of purpose. There are piles upon countless piles of tedious, mundane, demeaning and filthy tasks filling the spaces between all that. I have never in my life been exposed to so much stranger goo and I am thoroughly unimpressed by parts and places that might once have been scandalizing. I regularly have full conversations with people I just met, about the intricacies and nuances of their bowel habits.
I learn something every time I set foot in the hospital. For example, reporting off to the incoming nurses has gone through a bit of an evolution since my first day. In the beginning I would get all my ducks in a row, shine those suckers up with pertinent details and critical labs and hand them off in dignified orderly fashion to the next nurse. Here’s the patient, the situation, background, assessment, and the plan for treatment or discharge etc. Most of the time this worked well, but there are some nurses who, it turns out, are quite predatory. Isn’t that the way with every profession? Difficult people and personalities exist in every layer of humanity and nursing is no exception. They’re the ones who aren’t satisfied by nicely arranged ducks. They see your shiny new nurse badge and they pounce, bleeding you dry with questions about every inch of paperwork, wanting to know the details of every breath and bowel sound, bullying and extorting information for an hour (or more!) until their assessments are virtually done for them at which point they begin swapping life stories with patients and family members during report while you smile and nod, silently offering to sacrifice your soul to the hospital itself if that nurse will only release you from their hostile grips! Now, armed with awareness and self preservation, I adjust my ducks in their neat little row, and whenever necessary, fire them off kamikaze style at any condescending nurse who mistakes my newness for weakness. There’s this dance of learning and adapting, rearranging and testing new angles. I enjoy the constant movement of that. I’ve never been one to thrive in monotony and repetitiveness, though I’m fascinated and awed by those who do.
One of the biggest changes I’ve encountered in my new life as a nurse is the schedule. Seven years ago I was working two jobs and struggling still. Later I went back to school and I remember feeling constantly torn between my weekend job, the endless classes and schoolwork during the week and the underlying feat of mothering. That has been my life for so long that I don’t really remember anything else. That’s not my life anymore. Now I have days off every single week, sometimes several in a row!
Let’s be honest here, for the first month or so, I spent a great deal of that extra time sleeping, HARD. That is after all, one of my greatest talents, you know. I am what you might call an expert sleeper, and the depth of emotions that ebb and flow through my world these days can be utterly exhaustifying. Unfortunately, sleep was not enough. Simply having time to rest did nothing to bolster me mentally against the trials and demands of the next shift. That’s another lesson I’ve learned about this new role. No amount of sleep can repair the emotional hemorrhaging that three twelves can inflict. There’s a kind of emptiness that finds it’s way inside of you as you struggle and fight to give your best to so many. It turns out sleep was only meant to beat back tired, never to fix emptiness. To date my best recourse is to live! The only unfailing way to renew this spirit that bears witness to a lifetime of pivotal moments in a matter of hours, is by purposefully living, vigorously emphatically and intentionally recognizing the goodness in the people around me and drawing from all that is right in my world, and remembering to be grateful for every single day.
I light more candles these days and hug a bit harder. I stop by randomly to walk barefoot in the sand and hear the waves. I notice the sky and world as I walk through it and I make more efforts to have the life I want because this is the only shot I’ll ever have at that. I travel farther, with less preparation because I know that I am truly alive and I have this burning urgency to feel, to be of use and to live, that I can’t and don’t ever want to shake. I’ve always been hyperaware of the rare exquisite gift that is these numbered days of mine, and this new journey, those two letters hanging off the end of my name, bring a renewed clarity to my perspective, and the moments on either end of the spectrum resonate that much deeper in response. This life is not lost on me, and neither are you.
The Glittery Nurse
Yes..well said.,❤️❤️