People frequently ask why did you become a nurse? It's like the daytime talk shows calling an unsuspecting person and playing everyone has a story. They call the unsuspecting person and hear their story. Well, this is my why I became a nurse story.
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I was in the first grade when I had to get my tonsils out. I was probably six or seven. My mom was an evening shift worker and when I went to sleep she was there but once I awoke, she was gone. I was crying and this nurse (I use the term loosely, she could have been a tech for all I know) was walking by.
She heard me crying, came in and asked me what was wrong. I replied that my mom was not there. She consoled me by telling me to eat the popsicle that she had gotten for me. She hugged me and promised me that once I fell asleep, my mom would be there when I woke up, and she was there!
How did this lady know that?
I am young and impressionable. Oh my Lord, I thought this lady was something.
From that point on I knew I wanted to be like her. I wanted to grow up and be a nurse. I wanted to able to help people and console them when their mommies were not there. When I tell this story, I well up with tears because this woman has no idea the impact she had on me. That little bit of compassion has gone on a long way; this is what my career for the last 16 years has been built on.
Fast forward to today; I am an adult ICU nurse who had the pleasure of getting to repay that nurse and be just like her. A woman in her forty's having a "simple" hysterectomy, was supposed to go home in a few days and is bleeding into her abdomen slowly.
Her nurse prior to me tries to find the cause of her vague "my stomach hurts" and the moderately low systolic blood pressure in the '90s. Nobody finds it until she crashes and is coded when she comes into my assignment. She has a husband and three children ranging in age from 16 to 7. Seven the same age I was when I had my first hospital experience! I see myself in this little girl, although the circumstances are different!
We both want our mommies; unfortunately, her mommy won't be there next time she wakes up because her mommy ends up being a compassionate wean and dies two days later in the ICU as my patient. In the two twelve hour shifts I took care of her mom, I got to give her many popsicles and promise her that mommy would be looking down on her from heaven, and got to give her many hugs as she would sit on my lap as daddy and her bigger brothers would be in mommy's room crying. I do not think she realized the situation as she often skipped up and down the hall from the ICU to the elevator.
I hope I impressed upon her a positive view of nursing, and she one day writes a letter about the ICU nurse that took care of her mommy when she becomes a nurse.
So, I challenge all that are reading this to be nice, promise popsicles, and that mommy will be there next time your little patient wakes up.
