how did you become a nurse?

Well, I'm not a nurse yet. I graduate in May and write my registration exam in June. When I graduated from high school (in 1989), I had scholaships to three universities (two for education and one for journalism). Didn't attend any of them. Marriage, two children, and many personal experiences later - I decided to go into the healthcare field. Watching docs run around like chickens with their heads cut off (we have a severe shortage of docs here) I knew that they only had a few minutes with each patient and it was on to the next. Nursing appealed to me because you can and do establish a therapeutic relationship in a short time and have more of an opportunity for health teaching and health promotion (treat and TEACH, not treat and street - no revolving door syndrome). Through watching three loved ones die at various times - I knew that there were wonderful nurses, and not-so-wonderful nurses. I wanted to be able to touch someone's life and make it better - and if not better, than easier, just like those wonderful nurses had done for me and my loved ones.

And to be perfectly honest, while my husband has managed quite well to be our only provider for nearly ten years, I cannot wait to start getting a paycheck and start putting aside the money my kids will need for their post-secondary educations (now that I KNOW how expensive it is).

It was a combonation of things for me. I took care of a quadriplegic male that just a few years younger than I was as my high school job and continued for five years after high school. It all started wierdly enough I was dating his siter and she asked if I could help her with him one day when the regular aid did not show up.

Five years later we were living hand to mouth and I was working a stocking job at a grocery to help pay the bills, his insurance reward from the original accident had run out and when it did so did his family. He did own the house he lived in so I lived with him. Eventually he had a step brother that came and took over and they sort put me out bcause they didn't need me anymore.

My father asked me what I was going to do? I really had no idea and he sort of steered me toward nursing offering to help pay for school. I went to a one years V0-Tech and got an LPN certificate and took LPN state board.

I was and LPN for eight years and very slowly continued my education and am now an RN. The thing is though I relly believe it was a calling. I beleive this is what I was meant to do.

I probbably went over 300 words sorry... copied and pasted to word and its only 237 words amazing.

I became a nurse with great difficulty.