I am an artist.

18 I never considered myself an artsy person. My sister can paint the most amazing landscapes, I was green with envy. I can barely color inside the lines. I looked up to her wanted to paint and draw and sculpt the way she did. After failing art class, I gave up on that dream, and found out I was a scientist. She went on to study art, and me nursing. We often joke about how opposite we are. Little did I know that I too was an artist.

In nursing school I excelled in the sciences. I have a continued passion for learning the whys and how's about my patients. I find the human body fascinating. It's amazing how far our bodies are pushed.

I thought nursing would be a great fit for me. I could exercise my knowledge hungry mind, while using my compassionate heart. I thought maybe the OR, or labor and delivery, something fast and bloody. However I lost my placement last minuet in school, and was forced onto a palliative unit. What an awful place to be. What really could I learn? Why would anyone want to be somewhere so sad? Sigh.....It has been a couple of years since my love of palliative nursing began. I am still on the same unit, and still learning.

Many times our teachers told us that nursing is an art. It never really clicked until just this week. A friend of mine who works in ER was reflecting on a pt she had who passed away. She said to me what an art form it is to be a good palliative nurse. From knowing just the right way to touch, the carefully chosen words, where to leave a box a tissue. Palliative nursing, all nursing, is an art. It takes a skilled craftsmen to just feel your patient will not make it, to call the family so they may arrive just in time. Science doesn't tell me how long I can hug my patients, it's can't help me tell the little girl her daddy is in heaven now and it will never tell me its okay to cry. A scientist runs the same a 100 times, with the same results each time, but an artist never paints the same thing twice.

An artist, a tittle I gave up all hope on after failing grade 8 art, is what I have become.