My Mother Was Right

jlindsey, BSN, RN

When I was a young girl growing up in America's Mid West, my mother loved nursing and thought that her daughter should follow in her footsteps. It was her dream that helping people was a great profession and she wanted me to become a nurse when I grew up too. However as I grew up my dream was to become a teacher.

I felt that that was the career that I wanted for myself. While in high school there was an event that impacted my life deeply. A friend of mine from school was a foster child. On a couple of occasions when I visited her in her foster home I met three younger foster children, twin girls and their younger brother, that lived in the same home.

After a few months the three young children were returned to their biological father. It was heartfelt to see them go but that is how the foster system works. A few weeks later what I learned hurt me to the core. What I learned was that all three of children had been hospitalized. After some time of being admitted one of the twin girls was pronounced dead. Her father had beaten her repeatedly until she became unconscious.

No reason was ever known to me. However what I did learn was when she hadn't regained consciousness one night that the next day he took her to the emergency room stating that she had fallen off the swing in the park. No one was fooled.

When I was eighteen I got married and soon after at the age of twenty became a mother myself. Even though I did not go to college straight out of high school, it was still in the back of mind that I would be a teacher. At the age of twenty two my dream came to pass and I went to college and obtained a degree in Early Childhood Education.

My first position was as a substitute teacher at an elementary school. As all mothers, she still tried to persuade me to become a nurse. She must have saw something because she just would not let it go.

After a few years of teaching I felt that I was missing something. I wanted to do something to help others. I decided to become a foster parent. My mother thought the best way for me to help people would be to become a nurse. She was persistent if nothing else. After a couple of years of being a foster parent I was ask if I would be willing to take an infant with medical needs.

How did I feel about this?

Was being a foster parent for an infant any different from an older child?

What was going to be different was my thoughts?

I can do this!

First I took a baby from the newborn unit of the local hospital that had been born eight weeks early. He was so tiny; he still weighted less than five pounds. But I cared for him and nurtured him until he was able to be placed. The next child I took was an eighteen month old with Tay Sacs disease that had been abandoned at the same local hospital. The third child was a fifteen months old battling leukemia medical needs infant.

My leukemia baby was such a sweet, happy, loving child. The things I feared about becoming a nurse (holding a child so blood could be drawn; or placing a small needle so chemo medication could be infused or even the thought of sticking a needle in this precious child myself) were things I learned to do.

After fifteen years of being a foster parent I realized that my mother was right, I was meant to be a nurse. I returned to college once again and attained a degree in nursing. Better late than never so at the age of forty four proudly passed my state boards and became a registered nurse. That was well over a decade ago. My mother is now a resident of heaven and I know she is proud that her only daughter followed through on a dream that her mother saw in her and became a nurse like she was.

My Mother Was Right

About jlindsey, BSN, RN

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