Happy Nurse's Week!

To my fellow nurses...HAPPY NURSE'S WEEK!

It's hard to believe that 5 years ago I graduated from nursing school at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Since then, I have been working in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). I entered the PICU directly after graduation and haven't regretted it since. I learned the basics of nursing in a fast-paced, high adrenaline setting. It was a great opportunity to work with other dedicated and motivated nurses. It was a great opportunity to grow professionally and gain self-confidence.

I always wished that people could see what I have seen at work. It amazes me what research, technology, and medicine can do to a human being. I've seen the worst of the worst and the best of the best; in some sad cases it can be the same thing. Think of the following statements as a confessional over my past 5 years...I never kept a diary about these things. Maybe because it make me sad to think about it, but at the same time it makes me proud of what I had to endure to become the nurse I am today...

I have seen the real beating heart in an infant's chest and manually squeezed the blood out of it.... I've seen a mechanical heart beating outside of a patient's body.... I've bottle fed infants who were born at 22 weeks gestation.... I've seen patient rooms turn into mini-ORs because the patient was too sick to leave the room.... I've dressed the wounds of an 8 year-old child whose mother threw him into a bath of scalding hot water....I comforted his shaking body as best I could when the morphine wore off and the pain returned.... I've wiped the feces off the floor belonging to an 18 year-old battling cancer.... I took care of a 5 year-old girl who nearly died twice and spent 6 months in the hospital. I also sent her home with her mother...healthy.... I've played Super Nintendo with a 5 year-old who was diagnosed with depression.... I've sang "Happy Birthday" to a child who stayed in the hospital.... I've danced in a room with one of our "frequent flyers"....

I've cried with families who have lost their children unexpectedly over the weekend.... I've pulled the breathing tube out an 8 year-old who was struck by a car and died.... I've given her lifeless body to her father and watched him gently cradle her like a newborn.... I wiped away the blood that oozed from her mouth and onto his shirt.... I've cried alone in storage closets because there was too much sadness at the bedside.... I've heard the cries of mothers who have lost their children....It's an eerie cry because no matter what culture or language, the cry always sounds the same...like a wounded animal.... I've hugged grandmothers who should have been real the mother instead.... I've taken care of teenage mothers and their premature infants in the same week.... I've attended more funerals of patients than I have of my own family. I've picked up a mother who collapsed in the hallway when she learned she was 30 minutes too late.... For families, I've cut locks of their dying child's hair for them to have as a keepsake.... I have been the last one out of the room when their child has died....

Next Friday, I will be walking again to officially receive my Master's in Nursing in the presence of my friends and family. While one chapter is slowly closing, the next chapter of my nursing career will begin in about a month when I join a gastroenterology practice as a nurse practitioner. I'm excited to start because this will be a different role and huge leap from the comforts of bedside nursing....

Cheers to those dedicated nurses....here's to more years of memorable nursing...