(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 Wait until you've prodded and pulled a silent, withdrawn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.
StrEssEdX2
10 Posts
WOW that was touching. Ya know....we are in such a rewarding carreer. At times I wish I chose a different path in life, but now that you knocked me upside the head with that I can't think of any other career that is as rewarding as nursing. That makes the hectic days, all the b#tch#ng from the other nurses about the other shifts and the other nurses that missed a stool guiac seem very minimal. Thank You!