The Grateful Nurse Speaks

**VivaLasViejas**, ASN, RN

Alhough I have yet to make any solid plans for life after nursing, I have to be honest here: Nursing has become a lot leaner and a lot meaner since I got my start in school back in the fall of 1995, and I wonder sometimes how much longer I'm going to last. There's no question that things have been tough at work lately, what with my facility's unexpectedly poor showing during our recent state survey and my job essentially on the line. I'm chronically stressed, usually behind, and often overwhelmed with all the new documentation requirements imposed in response to the survey results......which take me even further away from the bedside than I already was.

Yet I know what awaits me out there in the "real" world, where people who are smarter and have more education than I are battling to survive on a sales associate's wages, and older women like me are all but invisible. And as much as I complain, whine, gripe, and otherwise kvetch about nursing, both as a profession and as a job, it's brought me blessings I never would have thought possible.

Like the parents of an infant I took care of one rainy night some years ago. Their little one was sick with RSV and not doing well, despite oxygen and other supportive care, and it was looking like he might have to be intubated and Life Flighted to another hospital. Needless to say, his young mom and dad were terrified. It dawned on me that this might be the reason why I'd gone through an eerily similar (and frightening) situation with my own baby son years before---so I could give someone else the strength to get through it. Drawing on this experience, somehow I was able to help this couple stay calm and focus on keeping the baby calm as well, so his medications could do their work.

Fast-forward ten years or so. I recently bumped into the couple at church one morning; they'd moved away for a few years, then returned at the end of the summer and began attending the 11 AM Mass. They recognized me right away and gave me bear hugs---literally in front of God and everyone. Then they introduced their sturdy fifth-grader to "the nurse that saved your life". Which I didn't, of course.....but to be remembered as such, a full decade after a single eight-hour night shift spent with this family, is an honor for which I'll always be grateful.

Another great thing about what nurses do for a living is what I call the "a-HA!" solution---when we get to play detective and figure out what's bothering a patient, recommend a course of treatment to the physician, and it WORKS. I love it when these things happen! One of my favorite success stories is that of an elderly woman who had suffered daily episodes of blinding pain along the side of her face for twenty-three years; she'd been misdiagnosed with post-herpetic neuralgia and given narcotics for most of that time with little relief. It just so happened that my sister's best friend had just been diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, and she experienced all of the same symptoms; however, once she started on gabapentin, she'd received a new lease on life. So I approached the woman's doctor with my suspicions, asked him to try her on the medication........and voila! Blinding pain completely gone within 48 hours, and the last time I saw her, it hadn't returned.

Now, what other job gives one such an awesome opportunity to "make it all better"---and change a life for the better in the bargain?

Then there are the economic benefits: most of us make better-than-average money, considering the median hourly wage in the U.S. these days hovers somewhere around $13-15 per hour. Trust me, I've been poor and not-so-poor, and not-so-poor is better. I'm proud that even with a two-year degree, I'm able to earn a solidly middle-class salary all by myself, and have been able to provide my family with a few of life's little niceties. We will never be wealthy, and even on my current income it's a struggle to keep our heads above water; but in this economy I'm very, very thankful that we've survived as well as we have.

I think of it this way: if I were working as a department manager at Wally World, I wouldn't be any happier or less stressed than I am right now, and I wouldn't have the opportunities that nursing offers to make a difference every single day. And as corny as that sounds, it's what keeps me going long after every other reason to stay has crumbled into dust and blown away.

The Grateful Nurse Speaks

About VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN

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