Starting Over

So I had deleted my few posts and cleared my blog in a fit of anger a couple of months ago.

Last night after work, I found Bo's post about her grand-mother dying after a long battle. http://bohemianknitter.blogspot.com/2009/09/do-you-think-angels-hear.html

As I was reading, I became aware that this is part of why I have come to love blogs. The intimate sharing of what we are feeling and how we have learned to cope. Nursing sucks out bits of your soul, but then adds other bits to fill in the missing parts. It is never the same, but is a new version of the old. It doesn't feel the same and it works a bit differently, but it gives you the strength to carry on with the job at hand.

I am happy to be alive at this time, but sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to live in earlier eras. I have read about nursing in both World Wars and found it to be a great time to bond with other nurses. However, as romantic as it all sounds in a book, the reality would have been quite horrendous. They banded together to survive the horrors that they were dealing with. I don't know that I would have been tough enough to do what they have done.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a military nurse. The first time I applied, I was 4 pounds over their parameters. I could have gone home, taken a couple of laxatives and come back and tested again ,but I refused to cater to "their requirements". The second time I passed the weight thing, but then I couldn't do the push-ups. Piss on that!!! But yet there is a part of me that thinks that this could have been the best career for me. Then again, I would have balked at all the restrictions and the rules. I don't do rules well. In fact, I find ways around the rules. I would have made a good lawyer if I had enjoyed school, simply because I would know all the ways around every single rule in the book.

I hated school from about grade 4. By then, I had to actually start studying and I couldn't master that art. I squeeked through high school vowing to never darken the doors of a school ever again. At the age of 26, I had worked more jobs than my father ever had in his life and I was currently working as a security guard in a fancy building on a 12 hour night shift. 6pm to 6am. For $8 an hour. I finally decided that it was time to do something with my life. I had always wanted to be a nurse, but the thought of more school had been enough to supress that dream. I signed up for the course at the end of August, not expecting to get in. When they called me to come to an orientation meeting, I had just finished working 3 nights in a row. I went anyway. I was told then that I was accepted into the course as I had my prereq's. My marks were still not fantastic, but they were OK enough for them. I was in.

It took me 6 years to do a 3 year course, and the dean of the school jokingly suggested that I qualified for tenurship. My biggest stumbling block was maternity. Why was I always bumping up agaist the meanest nurses in maternity, I will never know for sure. I do know now that it is the rules. Everything had to be done a certain way. In other rotations, you could use your brain and get to an adequately correct answer, but in the maternity ward, it all had to be done by the book and I couldn't be bothered to learn it all by heart. I finally had to suck it up and learn it. And then I passed that rotation.

By graduation day, I had done the whole course twice. All the teachers sighed in relief to see me go.

Funny thing about that was that I have seen some of them since as patients and they were happy to have me as their nurse. This would explain why they never booted me out of the program. They could see that despite my learning difficulties, I would manage to make a nurse that they would be proud of, and to have me be their nurse in their time of need.

It took me 5 years of working as a nurse to feel that I was a good one.

I jumped around several jobs in the first few years, but I have now been at the same job for 4 years. I am a psychiatric nurse, but I will never forget what being a medical/surgical nurse is all about. I can still do complicated dressings. I know how to run a code blue. I can draw blood from a stone and hook up an ECG. I'm not afraid of infectious diseases. And I have stories that will gross out even the toughest nurses.

But I still remember how bloody hard it was to be a student and the feeling of finally understanding the point of a care plan. I remember the panic of having to give my first injection.

I remember every person who's hand I held as they died. And I pray to them to help me through my daily trials as I try to help the broken and wounded.

I still get scared. The only difference is that now I know what to do.