Nevertheless, She Persisted

Many years ago, there was a blonde nurse who was a member at the pool club in my town.  She used to arrive in the late summer mornings to relax by her cabana before work.  Around 2 p.m., she would change into her smart uniform in that cabana, like a superhero in a phone booth, and set off for her shift, arms glowing against the brilliant white of her capped sleeves.  I watched her every summer afternoon as a teenager, envying her sleek, professional air, and wanted to someday be like her.

I was a kid on a raft trying to get a tan, instead getting splashed by an endless gaggle of fourth graders on the diving board.

She was a critical care nurse.

And so I, too, signed up to become a nurse.

My nursing career began much like the medical career of Doc McStuffins – wearing one of my father’s white shirts as a “lab coat” and my mother’s volunteer pins from St. Michael’s and Clara Maass Hospitals as my “badges,” tending to an array of toys with assorted ailments in my imaginary intensive care unit.  I even crafted an IV pole from a portable aluminum clothes hanger, complete with a bottle of normal saline (otherwise known as water) connected to my “patients” with string.  I wrote thoughtful, detailed notes on the care I was giving, which I hung on a battered clipboard.  Most importantly, though, was my homemade identification tag, on which I had written in thick, official, black marker and safety-pinned to my shirt:

LISA, R.N.

Later on, I actually went to college and received a real nursing license.

But I didn’t have the confidence to be a critical care nurse.  I practiced in a bunch of other areas which, while satisfying and challenging in their own ways, were not the elusive Holy Grail of nursing practice I had always envisioned critical care nursing to be.  In my mind, I believed myself to be unsuited, underqualified, and unprepared for such a role.  A role to which, while secretly coveted, I would never admit to aspiring aloud.

Until one snowy day in January of last year.

On that day, I was offered a job as a critical care nurse in an urban teaching hospital.  Shocked, I immediately accepted before it was retracted.  Which I was sure it would be.  (It wasn’t). I told practically no one until I got in my car to drive to my first day of work, fearing it would somehow not be real.

It was real.  It is real.  And I am now approaching my one year anniversary.

Although I would like to say it was a smooth and simple journey to transition into intensive care nursing, I would be lying.  It was not.  On my first day on the unit, I was very close to running away screaming (not hyperbole). I had to convince myself – and so did quite a few others – to return each day.  To keep trying.  To be an old dog learning new tricks – because, yes, these were all extremely new tricks for me.  Skills I wasn’t sure I could ever master at this point in my life.

Nevertheless, I persisted.  I persist.

I show up.  I learn something new every shift.  From my awesome coworkers and educators –  the smartest and toughest group of nurses I know.  From my manager – the smartest and toughest of the smartest and toughest group of nurses know.  From the attendings, fellows, residents, and respiratory therapists.  From the patients.  Mostly, from the patients – not an array of toys attached to pretend IV fluids, but really, really sick people.  Sick people who arrive on our unit from all different corners of the socioeconomic spectrum, and who receive an equal level of superior care and respect.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be that blonde, tan critical care nurse, gliding into her evening shifts like an afterthought.  Now I know she was a myth.  I have no way of knowing what her work life was actually like; however, I do know what mine is like.  My scrubs are full of unidentified stains when the lights come on at 7 a.m.  My clogs are sticky.  My hair is messy.  My eyes are bloodshot.  My confidence is sometimes non-existent.

Nevertheless, I persist.  As we all should.  In whatever it is we do.