Go to Nursing School? NEVER!! Ch 1

Julie Reyes, DNP, RN

I slam the alarm off in a fury, covering my face with my blanket. I just can't do this job anymore. My run as a paramedic in rural county America for the past lifetime has taken its toll, but this past year I have earned my name as the "Trauma Chick" and "Chyna" - the female wrestler.

Working as a paramedic has just been awful lately, for me anyway. Some of the horrible things I have done and seen in the past few years include:

Assuming scene commander role of mass casualty incidents, (including a horrible 2 car - 8 unrestrained passenger head on collision. A baby's head was caught in a vise between a truck door and fender of the truck. The baby was hanging in midair like a horror movie pinata);
Coding a 2 month old seizure baby who "fell off a couch"...it will never cease to amaze me how many babies roll off of beds or couches...;
Scraping three teenagers off the highway in a single car versus tree massacre;
A call for a male with a broken leg that turned out to be a man lying on his back with a slit throat and every bone in the body broken and sticking out at odd angles (he was catapulted from 100 feet while changing lights at a stadium. He hit the headache rack of the work truck and bounced to the chain link fence throat first, and finally stopped on a concrete sidewalk).
Rescuing a 300+ pound female patient who was stabbed by her husbands family members during a family BBQ. She accused her husband of cheating, and with everyone drinking and what-not, a brawl happened. When we arrived, deputies had her surrounded protecting her from being killed by angry family - she still had a knife in her chest. We had to treat her in a bedroom and escape through a bedroom window. Of course, the house was a mobile home up on stilts. We had to balance her on a backboard and pray that no one would kill us in the process.
One of my coworkers - a good friend of mine - was killed by trying to stop a fight. He was run over by a car and the wheels crushed his head. I didn't have that call, but I cleaned up the back of the unit after it was over - wiping blood off the walls and floor.

I braved roaches and angry / territorial pit bulls; I directed young volunteer firefighters who created havoc and chaos instead of helping because they knew the dead and dying teenagers in the rollover accident; I fought countless obstacles that stood between me and my patient and threatened poor outcomes. I had drunk/overdosed/angry patients; I was beat up by a huge mammoth for blowing his high by pushing narcan (lesson learned!); I have cared for beaten wives and stabbed husbands; I relied on deputies to hold back angry relatives in family brawls. I have searched fields in the dark for any possible survivors after car collisions. I have been to houses that seemed like they should be in movies like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Houses in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere - I had to pick up patients who had stroked out - or worse - all the time wondering who is staring at me from the behind the creaking hallway door that opens and closes slightly and leads to a pitch black room. I have slipped in brains and blood that had flooded the floor of the ambulance, and I have done chest compression on an infant with a crushed skull only to have blood come out of his ears with each compression.

Faces haunt me at night - the teenagers that I couldn't save but fought with all my might as my partner and I battled The Reaper. The babies I could not get stabilized in the long trips to the nearest ED. My life as a paramedic is one long, unending nightmare.

My alarm jars me - waking me from my nightmares to go to work. As I cover my face with my blanket, I decide I won't do it anymore. I just can't. I pick up my phone, call my boss, and I quit - just like that. I will never work as a paramedic again.

Here I am, floundering through my days - picking up odd jobs that include housekeeping and babysitting and I feel like a failure because I don't know what to do with my life. I know I don't want to be a paramedic any longer, and I don't want to be a nurse - taking orders from a doctor or wiping butts and emptying bedpans (in my limited experience, this is all I thought nurses did). I REFUSE TO GO TO NURSING SCHOOL!! I trudge day in and day out for months on end, moping about like a lost failure. Months turn into years. I have no clue what to do.

Finally, my husband has enough of my dreary misery. "You need to do something with your life," he says. "You are more than a house cleaner and babysitter." He encourages me to look at nursing again, because he thinks I would be good at it. I decide to call my sister-in-law who is a nurse, and talk to her about her likes and dislikes of her career. She sounds so happy and encourages me to go into nursing. I am worried, but maybe I can do it...as long as I never have to work with kids. I think I would probably be happy working in the ED at the trauma hospital. They don't take kids there - only adults, and I know trauma WELL. The idea starts to sound nice. Me - a nurse. I think I like that idea.

I decide to take my chances and apply at the local junior college to knock out the basic classes. I am determined to give it all I have, and I actually am really excited about the future now. I have a purpose! I go to my advisor to discuss the steps of getting into nursing school. There are two in the city about an hour away from where I live, and I apply for the one that will give me a BSN. My advisor tells me I should make a Plan B and apply at both schools in case I am not accepted into my first choice, but I opt against it since I have a 4.0. I don't think nursing school will be much harder than my basics - how hard is it to change sheets and give shots? Plus, I don't like "Plan B's"! I just have to make this work out, I cannot fail my "mission".

It is time consuming, but I jump through all the hoops it takes to get into another school and meet all the nursing school requirements. I applied, and I wait. You know THE WAIT - the horrible, gut wrenching feeling of dread and expectance, dread and desire, hope and fear all rolled into one massive burning fireball in the pit of your stomach. I am so frustrated of driving 30 miles to a post office to check the mail and find out THE LETTER has not arrived. Day in and day out I waited. I make the post office trip every other day for ....ever, it seems. What takes people so darn long to shove a piece of paper in an envelope and slap a stamp on it?! My attitude became snippy; my usually happy demeanor became partly cloudy with a chance of crazy.

Now, here I am in the kitchen scrubbing down the cabinets (nervous energy). The door opens and in walks my husband carrying a fistful of mail. I freeze as he hands me an envelope that has the university logo in the return address spot. My hands shake as I take the letter from his hand. I look at him - this envelope holds EVERYTHING. My entire future is inside. I tear it open and stare at the paper. This wonderful, marvelous, beautiful piece of paper! I look up at him, and nearly collapse in his arms - I got in!