Tears

Instant tears. The ones that spring up, uncontrollably, with no warning. Tears that are triggered by the deepest of emotions. Have you ever felt those tears?

Taking care of little old grannies in the ER for vomiting or weakness is a daily routine for me. Start an IV, get an in-and-out cath urine, gently rehydrate, and repeat everything you say at least twice because a hearing aid battery is inevitably not working well. I feel for these patients for so many reasons. The stretchers are uncomfortable. I deny them water at first because they might have a small bowel obstruction. We're out of sandwich trays. The blankets are never warm enough. It's four in the morning and their children went home for the night, and now they're all alone in the room in a strange place. Each little incident wears on them.

I do this so often that while it wears on me too, it's just a routine.

Until it isn't.

It ceased to be a routine the moment I turned her arm over to place an IV and saw a row of old, faded numbers tattooed there. I froze. I couldn't think of anything to say or do. After a long, uncomfortable pause, I dumbly looked up at her and asked "are those...?" Her daughter nodded, and the tears were instant. I managed to apologize for losing it, and after a few minutes was able to compose myself enough to place the IV. The patient was sweetly oblivious to the entire interaction.

At the end of the ER visit, I apologized again to the woman's daughter. "It's okay," she said. "If she were feeling better, she'd tell you about it all."

Auschwitz saw an estimated 1.3 million people during the years its camps were in use. Around 1.1 million of those people were murdered or died in other horrible ways. Of those 200,000 survivors, even fewer are alive today. I am so incredibly humbled to have met and cared for just one of them.

There are moments in life that irrevocably change you, and this was one.

TEN years?!

This week marks the 10th anniversary of starting my first nursing job ever. Ten long, short years ago. I remember how nervous I was to take care of patients, even though I hadn't yet passed my NCLEX and thus was still considered a new nurse graduate not even allowed to chart or administer medications.

It's been a wild ride. I worked my way up from terrified brand new nurse, to mostly competent baby nurse, to proficient trauma/critical care nurse, to occasional charge nurse, and then decided to leave my confidence level in the dust to start travel nursing. I spent nearly five years doing that, where I met friends all around the county, worked in varying levels-of-shitshow hospitals, learned to adapt out of my comfort zone, and then met and married some dude I met halfway across the US. I'm now back to full time nursing at a single hospital. I bought a house and generally live a pretty cushy life full of caffeine, friends and family, and instagramming about my cats. I get cursed out pretty regularly at work but that's to be expected because I do work ER after all. I precept new grads occasionally, and have had the opportunity to change some of those new grads for the better. I mostly have my shit together at work, although sometimes the day does wear me down and defeat me.

I don't know if I can do ER forever, although I swore up and down when I started that I absolutely would. The changing environment of emergency medicine is probably the biggest obstacle, but the lack of respect from hospital administration, my aching feet after 3 long consecutive shifts, and need to challenge myself are also factors.

I do love my job though. I love the ER, and honestly can't see myself doing anything else for the forseeable future. I'm good at this job, and when I need a change or to challenge myself I take on a new grad orientee, or learn a new skill, or ask to be trained into a new role. When or if I do get tired of all this - perhaps hospice nursing? I think I'd enjoy that. We see so many people yanked out of this life violently, tearfully, unwillingly, that I imagine it would be a welcome change to be with people who know their time has come. I don't think I'm mature enough for that job just yet though, but maybe in a few more years.

It's also been a fun ride with this blog. I started it over eleven years ago! ELEVEN! I haven't even had my all time #1 comfy sweatpants for that long. Shit, I've had this blog for double the time I've known my husband - even weirder is that this thing is how I met him in the first place. Life is funny sometimes.

Here's to another ten years of nursing and blogging about it, although I ain't even gonna lie and say I'll post more frequently. Y'all know better than that. Cheers!