How Can You Bear to be a Nurse?

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

(sorry for the stragne breaks....hope it isn't a hard read. I cut and pasted off of my school's bb)

HOW CAN YOU BEAR TO BE A NURSE!

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear the sight of blood?

Wait until you slide a catheter into a tiny vein just before it collapses. The flash back of blood you see will make you sing.

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear the sight, the embarrassment of urine?

Wait until your new postpartum patient cannot void and her uterus is rising. Your

persistent maneuvers finally work, making a catheter unnecessary. Urine then

looks glorious.

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear to touch that alcoholic who hasn't had a

bath in weeks?

Wait until you have repeatedly given ice lavages to that alcoholic and his

esophageal varices have finally stopped bleeding.

When he actually recovers enough to amble onto your unit to visit, dirt and all,

you'll be happy enough to hug him.

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear to watch someone die?

Wait until you've worked for weeks helping a dying woman repair a decades

old conflict with her children and at some point along the way you see the guilt

fall from their shoulders and peace enter her eyes. Watching such a death can be

exaltation.

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear the sight and smell of feces? Wait until

you've been anxious about the diarrhea that nothing has stopped in an AIDS

patient. Finally, your strategies work and you see and smell normal stool. You'll

welcome that smell.

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear to watch children suffer? Wait until you've

rocked and soothed a suffering child into peaceful sleep, and you feel the

child's relief washing over you like a blessing. Then you won't need to ask.

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear to look at searing trauma, at burned people?

Wait until you see healthy granulation tissue that has been given a chance because

your sensitive nose detected an infection before it could take hold. That healing

will look beautiful to you.

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear the stream of abusive words heaped on you

by psychotic patients? Wait until you've prodded and pulled a silent, withdrawn

catatonic back over the lifeline and she releases a string of expletives. Could

Mozart sound better?

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear the sound of babies crying? Wait until

your combination of vigilance, bulldog advocacy, and gentle handling has given

a preemie's lungs the time they needed to develop, and you hear his first lusty

cry. You will laugh out loud!

How can you be a nurse? How can you bear to care for frustrating, confused Alzheimer's

patients. Wait until you've devised a combination of strategies that provide

exercise and permit safe wandering and you see a lift almost a spring, in a

patient's shuffling gate. You'll feel the lightness of Baryshnikov in your own

step that day.

How can you be a nurse? So many of your patients are so old, so sick, these days. How

can you bear the thought that, in the end, your care may make no difference?

Wait until you've used your hands and eyes and voice to dispel terror, to show a

hurting person that his life is respected, that he has dignity. Your caring helps

him care about himself. His helplessness forces you to think about the brevity

of your own life.

Then and there, you decide yet again to reject the pallid pastel life. No tepid sail

across a protected cove for you. No easy answers.

So, you keep choosing to be a nurse. You have days of frustration, nights of

despair, terrible angers. Your highs and lows are peaks and chasms, not hills

and valleys. The defeats come more than often enough to keep you humble: the

problems you can't untangle, the lives that seep away too fast, the meanings that

elude your understanding. But, you keep working at, learning from it, knowing

The next peak lies ahead. And gradually you realize your palette is filling up with

colors. You see more shades of meaning. You laugh more. You realize you are

well on your way to creating a work of art, maybe even a masterpiece. So that's

why you've remained a nurse. To your surprise, your greatest work of art is

turning out to be your own life.

[luvmy3kids]

I'm only a pre-nursing student..... but thank you for that.... I have asked myself a lot of those questions these last few weeks worrying about what the he## I'm doing.... you just confirmed it all for me!

[LuvMyGamecocks]

Words cannot explain how awesome that post is, Tweety. Facing my toughest, non-clinical semester yet....thank you for this post.

:yelclap:

Absolutely....I'm speechless.

[MiRnSoon]

I couldn't hold back the tears.

[nursemike, ASN, RN]

Almost makes me feel like calling in and saying I will work that extra shift.

Almost.

Thanks for the post, though. It does make me feel almost not crazy for going back for my regularly scheduled shifts.

Almost.

I love my stupid job.

[jmgrn65, RN]

WOW coming from a seasoned nurse that was awesome, and I understood alot of that all but anything to do with PEDS, I don't do kids.

Thanks again for the inspiration it was lovely.

[nursemary9, BSN, RN]

THANKS, Tweety,:icon_hug: :1luvu:

I needed that this AM!

That was awsome.

Mary Ann

[TazziRN, RN]

This is absolutely wonderful, and so very very true

[CametoitlateTexan]

Thank you so much for helping to affirm why those of us in Nursing School keep going. This should be required reading for all potential Nurses.

[lpnstudentin2010, LPN]

That was really good.

[Roy Fokker, BSN, RN]

That was wonderful Tweety!

Thanks for sharing! :)

[sddlnscp]

Thanks Tweety! That brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. :)