A Response #nursesunite

Anyone who has met me has probably had a conversation with me about either the Catholic faith or nursing because these are two things I am most passionate about. 

I believe in the Catholic faith. I chose it on my own as a 15 year old because for the first time in my life I found home. I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I love everything about my faith and I want to be Jesus to each person I meet. 

The other thing I am passionate about is nursing. If you've had a conversation with me, chances are nursing came up and my face lit up and I got really excited to tell you all about what I was learning or my patient that week.. or something. 

I picked nursing because I knew for as long as I can remember that I wanted to spend my life helping people. I knew I wanted to care for people and to love people. I knew there was a lot of brokenness in this world and I knew that love, care, and compassion were the cure - so I wanted to spend my life doing these things. To me, nursing is more than a career path - it's a vocation, a calling. 

So you can only imagine my reaction to The View this week and the commentary on Miss Colorado's monologue, which brought tears to my eyes. 

At first, I was enraged. How could someone be so ignorant, rude, disrespectful, and degrading?!

But maybe she's never had a loved one in the hospital. Maybe she has never known a nurse personally. Maybe she has been hurt by someone who was a nurse... I don't know. I hope that she some day realizes how inappropriate her commentary was - and how it enraged, but more than that, wounded nurses everywhere. Her commentary cut to the heart of nurses. But I'll forgive her...

There aren't adequate words to put to our experiences as nurses. I've cared for women from different cultures, where women don't have a voice, and her husband spoke for her. I've cared for patients who were actively dying. I've cared for patients who got highly confused and I was able to calm them down because they recognized my face from earlier in the day, and they thanked me for caring for them all day. I've had patients give me a hug their last day in the hospital and promise to change their lives. I've cared for patients who couldn't remember how to give themselves a bath. I've seen the difference a listening ear can make in a patient's progress towards healing. 

Yesterday one of my nursing friends had to do chest compressions on a real person(not the dummies we learn CPR on) for the first time and all she kept saying was how she could feel the ribs breaking. They tried for 45 mins to save this patient and did everything they could. And it was obvious this girl was affected, just as any compassionate human being would have been - especially for the first time. 

I've had patients who wouldn't let go of my hand. I've stayed in procedure rooms where I normally would have left because the patient only stayed calm if I was present. 

The lady on The View made comments about our "doctors" stethoscope and about our scrubs being a "costume" but I think what kills me the most is overlooking the care and compassion nurses have to their patients. What kills me most is not that she doesn't realized medical professionals everywhere use stethoscopes and that scrubs are the practical attire for a nurse, but that these women overlooked the whole point of the monologue in the first place - to remind herself and nurses everywhere that we are more than just a nurse and to try to teach this world that nurses do far more and care far more than anyone who has not spent time in a hospital realizes. 

Lose Yourself in the Service of Others

Life is hard, but the Lord is good -- is better.

One time, scrolling through pinterest I found this image (left) with the quote and fell in love because it reminded me exactly why I decided as a junior in high school that I wanted to go to nursing school. I've been spending a lot of time dwelling with this quote lately.

I'm a 5th year senior. All of my friends I met as a freshman, and came into the Catholic community I'm a part graduated in May, and most of my closest friends have left - the city, the state, or the country - and it's actually really hard. It hard because the people I started journeying through college with have moved to the next state of life, and I feel stuck, still being a student, still going to school. Thankfully I became really good friends with the women a year younger than me, and that has been one of the greatest blessings in this time.

I'm currently repeating a class I took last year, but didn't have a high enough test average because life happens and it happens all at once. And because anxiety is tough beast to wrestle. And it's hard. It's hard to sit through lecture when the powerpoints, the professor, and the stories from the professor are all the same. I thought I would at least like repeating the clinical portion of the class, but that was also really hard. It was really hard because when I think of clinical I now think of my time at the James Cancer Hospital.

 A year ago, I was leaning towards specializing in neonatal intensive care nursing. Today, I sit here longing for the day I can go back to the James, or at least work with adult oncology patients. I realized how much I like interacting with my patients - talking to them, but more than that -- preserving their dignity, treating them like the human beings they are. At the James I cared for patients who were actively dying. Caring for someone actively dying is probably one of the hardest things nurses do.

Let me tell you a story about the patient who changed my perspective. This patient had a dressing change that was really uncomfortable and I was sharing her care with one of my classmates. He was doing the actual dressing change, but I was there and I talked to my patient and distracted them from this very uncomfortable task. At the end, the look of surprise on their face that was it was already over was reward enough. Later in the day, this patient got extremely confused and anxious and I was able to calm them down because earlier in the day when I was talking with them I held eye contact, and they remembered me, knew they were safe - but more than that, they thanked me! A patient, thanked me, a student who was rather insecure being in the hospital, for caring for them. I could see, I experienced the difference a single person can make in the life of another by loving them. And the thing is, on mother infant and labor and delivery units you don't get these patients. You see the gift of new life, which is beautiful, and a true miracle, a true gift from God, but it's not the patient population I have been given a heart for. So school is hard, but the Lord is greater than school. And I know good will come out of this time I spend seeing new life.

But the Lord is good - Each day, I remind myself of this truth - that the Lord is good. Life has been hard lately, but I don't often notice that I'm in  rough patch, only when people ask how I am, or how school is. I am convinced I don't notice these things because the Lord is pouring an abundance of His grace upon me, upon this city of Columbus, upon his people here. Because even though it's hard, I am still joyful, I still know I am loved, I still have a zeal for the mission of the Kingdom of God - the mission to be a beacon of light and hope in this world of darkness.

We have a Father who loves us deeply, and intimately. We have a Father who keeps His promise to never leave or forsake us. We have a Father who ceaselessly lavishes us in His love - he literally wastes His love on us because He cares for us that much. So I may be wishing I was in a different state of life, I may be wishing things were different, I may be wishing I was taking classes that I loved and wishing I loved what I was learning as much as I did last year, but all of this is nothing because the Lord has something so much better in store for us than what we plan for ourselves. For these things too shall pass.

Through the ups & downs, through the good times & bad may we remember that this too shall pass. May we recall the Father who loves us without ceasing. May we seek to know who we are as children of God in serving our God and laying down our lives for the building up of His Kingdom.