Becoming a Nurse

I don't know how it happened. It just did. The schooling , the classes, the job as a certified nursing assistant. The elderly people who needed me to care for them and love them. I think God intended for me to always do this. I feel complete when I am at work, I also feel challenged every day, to make the right choices and do the right things.

I always thought that nurses were special. My father was a hospital administrator and so grew up around hospitals with the linoleum floors and the smells. When I went to see him at work it seemed like all the doctors and other people were always in the halls, but the nurses with their white dresses and white shoes and pretty hair covered in that funny looking hat always smiled at me when I came. They always had a minute to talk to my mother and older sister.

I graduated from high school in a small desert town that didn't offer too many choices for jobs. I naturally gravitated to medical facilities, but didn't want to work in the same building with my dad. We did not get along all that well when I was a teenager. There was a nursing home, or a "convalescent hospital' as it was called then, and I got my first real job there. As the time went by, I thought I should just go to school to be a nurse. No real motivation about money, or career; I was too young to think that far ahead. I just "knew" that that was what I would be. I loved the old people, but did end up helping out my dad a few times at the local hospital when he was desperate for help. I didn't feel comfortable with people my own age as patients.

The most challenging part was the schooling, learning all the anatomy and pathophysiology plus it was the first time I was ever in an academic setting. It felt good.
.
Going on clinical rounds with my class to larger hospitals in the desert, performing wound care, giving shots, calculating doses before medication pass...all the skills we had to learn to take care of people filled my days with dread, apprehension, and excitement.

Rotations to the pediatric center, the mental health prison that caused me much sickness and anger were experiences I will never forget. Nursing has taught me that I have to deal with my own emotions, as well as my patient's.

As I grow older, and hopefully wiser, nursing has been my constant instructor, mentor, and of course, my salvation.