How Can You Bear to be a Nurse?

Published

(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 Wait until you've prodded and pulled a silent, withdrawn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.

Specializes in ORTHOPAEDICS-CERTIFIED SINCE 89.

Tweety that was beautiful to this old retired nurse. Twas written by a past AJN president.

http://www.rncentral.com/library/articles/mallison1.html

Specializes in LTC.

That was amazing. Clear and concise reasons to love the profession we've all chosen.

Specializes in med/surg/tele/neuro/rehab/corrections.

What a great post Tweety. I think I will add that to my "nursing jewels" :)

What an inspirational piece! I've copied it and sent it to my former nursing school to place on their bulletin board! Fantastic!

Specializes in OR.

Going to print this out and ask some of my friends to read it...Maybe they'll understand the nursing profession better..

Specializes in Nursing assistant.

You nailed it. :balloons: :balloons:

Specializes in Med-Surg, LTC, Rehabiliation Nursing.

Thanks so much. That was precious, and I will post it beside my poem about taking care of geriatric patients. I thought you all might like to share that one with me. I dont know the author, but the story I got was that it was an elderly woman in a nursing home, and when she passed, the nurses found this poem in her drawer. Its long, hope you all dont mind.

CRABBY OLD WOMAN

What do you see, Nurses?

What do you see?

What are you thinking,

when you're looking at me?

A crabby old woman,

Not very wise,

Uncertain of habit,

With faraway eye.

Who dribbles her food,

And makes no reply,

When you say in a loud voice,

"I do wish you'd try!"

Who seems not to notice,

The things that you do.

and forever is losing,

A stocking or shoe?

Who, resisting or not,

Lets you do as you will,

With bathing and feeding,

The long day to fill?

Is that what you're thinking?

Is that what you see?

Then open you're eyes nurse,

You're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am,

As I sit here so still,

As I do at your bidding,

As I eat at your will.

I'm a small child of ten,

With a father and mother,

Brothers and sisters,

Who love one another.

A young girl of sixteen,

With wings on her fee,

Dreaming that soon now,

A lover she'll meet.

A bride soon at twenty,

My heart gives a leap.

Remembering the vows,

That I promised to keep.

At twenty-five now,

I have young of my own,

Who need me to guide,

And a secure happy home.

A woman of thirty,

My young now grown fast,

bound to each other,

With ties that should last.

At forty, my young sons,

Have grown and are gone.

But my man is beside me,

To see I don't mourn.

At fifty once more,

Babies play round my knees,

Again we know children,

My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me,

My husband is dead.

I look at the future,

I shudder with dread.

For my young are all rearing,

Young of their own,

and I think of the years,

And the love that I've known.

I'm now an old woman,

and nature is cruel,

'Tis jest to make old age,

Look like a fool.

The body, it crumbles,

Grace and vigor depart,

There is now a stone,

Where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass,

A young girl still dwells,

And now and again,

My battered heart swells.

I remember the joys,

I remember the pain,

And I'm living and loving,

Life over again.

I think of the years,

All too few, gone too fast,

And accept the stark fast,

That nothing can last.

So open you're eyes people,

Open and See,

Not a crabby old woman,

Look Closer, See ME!

I cry every time I read it.

KristyBRN

Specializes in Med-Surg, LTC, Rehabiliation Nursing.

PS, Does anyone know the author of the poem, or has anyone heard the story behind it, or maybe another story behind it? I would love to know. And I know it isnt as uplifting as the first one, I am sorry if I bummed anyone out. I just know it makes me remember that my elderly patients all have stories behind them, and it makes it easier to understand them.

peace and happiness

KristyBRN

Specializes in Nursing assistant.
PS, Does anyone know the author of the poem, or has anyone heard the story behind it, or maybe another story behind it? I would love to know. And I know it isnt as uplifting as the first one, I am sorry if I bummed anyone out. I just know it makes me remember that my elderly patients all have stories behind them, and it makes it easier to understand them.

peace and happiness

KristyBRN

Wow Kristy! I thought it was wonderful. But then, I am a geriatric pushover;)

Thanks Tweety, brought tears to my eyes. That says it all!

Specializes in Med-Surg.
Tweety that was beautiful to this old retired nurse. Twas written by a past AJN president.

http://www.rncentral.com/library/articles/mallison1.html

It's nice to know the source. Gee it's almost 20 years old, but as evidenced by the response here and my own, it's moving and relavent even today.

oh, the thrill of nursing when you do something for the first time and you it works out well. like the first time I did CPR for real on a live patient and that person lived and then came back into the clinic to thank us for saving her live. What a charge. Oh the first time that you have to draw blood on a baby because the lab tech is busy and the doctor wants it now. when you see the little tube fill, you feel on top of the world, it is at these times you know why you are doing what you doing. :balloons: :balloons:

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