Nurse Sean (dot) com

I needed this…I’ve been feeling extremely stressed out lately, and I keep wondering how the heck I’m going to get through the next few months. I’ve been browsing past journal entries and came upon this one from about a year ago. Reading it made me feel so proud of myself. Sometimes…journals are there to remind you…

From Dec. 21, 2002

Its been a great few days. After letting my entire life crumble into pieces and scatter to the wind for the last three months, it feels nice to be picking up the pieces and putting them back where they belong.

Of course like any life changing event, going back to school has changed me. In two of my classes I proved to myself that I really am smart enough to get an A. However, in two of my classes, I proved that no matter how hard I try, sometimes things are just going to be shitty! In the end I can say that there really wasn’t anything else I could have done. I’m not sure what my mark will be in those two classes, but I know that whatever mark I get, that its the best I could have done.

Unfortunately, those two really bad classes may turn out to be low enough to prevent me from getting into the nursing faculty. So, I’ve learned how to deal with the possibility that I may have to take a different path. There is a certain amount of surrender involved in letting someone push you down the right path, rather than doing it on your own, but taking the wrong path. I’ve done both, neither is pretty, or easy, or wrong.

I’ve taken leaps and bounds in my ability to cope. What hasn’t been thrown at me in the last few months? My life long friends - my seventeen and nineteen year old cats - passed away. I had to move. I dealt with my car breaking down. I ran out of money and didn’t know how I was going to make it. I had to sing in front of people - a life long fear. I struggled with my classes more than I knew possible. I watched practicaly every friend of mine have cars, computers, jewelery, rent, vacations bought for them while I had nothing. I saw all my friends partying and going to movies, while I sacrificed sacrificed sacrificed my time to studying and working. And now my grandma is sick in the hospital.

I made it through though and everything was just fine. I made my marks, I worked extra shifts, I got on that stage and sang the shit out of my songs, and I reveled in the knowledge that I can make it through life without someone paying my way. I learned that every crisis really is small. I realized that my problems are smaller than a hell of a lot of peoples!

Hospitals lack any sense of time…

That’s the first thing I noticed when I stepped foot into the hospital for the first time as a student nurse about three months ago. And as I find myself there several hours a week, with more nursing responsibilities at every moment, time means less and less.

When you’re dying, whether fast or slow, it doesn’t tend to happen on a schedule. Sickness happens when sickness happens, and Pain exists at night as it does in the day. The hallways are always brightly lit, and there’s always traffic.

It’s as though you step from one reality right into another as you pass through the hospital’s entrance. There’s a strange, intangible barrier that separates the outside world from the hospital. It’s filled with fear, uncertainty, and mystery.

The day is measured by bowl movements, diaper changes, needles, physiotherapy, pain, heartache. Who has the presence of mind to notice the time flying by. After eight hours on my feet, I feel as though I could go another thousand…because I truly care about the patients I discover. And I know that when I step through that barrier, and back into the real world, I will never see, or know about the patients I cared for. All I want to do is stay with them…

I think it’s I fall in love with every patient I encounter. Not romantically of course, but in what I could only imagine a mother-child relationship to be like. I mean, I’ve cared for patients who couldn’t talk, walk, communicate, or truly think. They simply sleep, eat, pee and poo…so I only feed them, change their diapers, clean them and make sure they’re comfortable. They are fully dependent on me for their care, and that takes a leaps of emotion for me.

There’s also a sense of immense fear. No matter how much we practice the skills on each other, and study the theory and science, when they scoot you into a room, point to a patient, and say, “he’s all your’s,” the most prevalent emotions is excruciating panic. They may as well have been telling me to perform open heart surgery…

But what’s there to do but take a deep breath, and dig in…do your best…struggle through…make it happen. So far, the struggle has only become bigger…wider and deeper, but at the same time, the rewards become infinitely greater. It feels as though piles of bricks are continually dumped on me. I’ll just keep putting them aside, one by one.

There’s infinite pages of things I could say about my first few experiences in the hospital. The incredibly simple, yet life changing moments just keep on coming…but there simply isn’t enough time in my life to express them properly…..

As for my personal life… *laugh* …I’ll let you know when I have one again