So I've introduced you to the "scrappy" side of my life....let me give you a quick idea of my "real" job. I've been a nurse for ten years, those entire ten years have been spent in one hospital in NC. It's a major trauma center, associated with a college/medical school and it's one of the most wonderful jobs I could imagine.
About thirteen years ago, I decided that I wanted to go back to school but wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do. It was a toss up between teaching and nursing. I guess....really that the only reason I even considered teaching is because it was what my mom had done all of her life and I knew that she had hoped I would follow in her footsteps. Instead, I went the nursing route. When I told her, I'll never forget, it was the ONLY time in my life that she questioned my ability to do something. I went to college and graduated with honors as an RN. I know she was proud of me and that was all that matter....I proved doubt wrong! She passed away a few years after but that's a story for a different day. I hope she knows that I did follow in her footsteps just not in my career. I have her personality and her patience and her kind, loving heart. I would do anything for anyone I meet. I'm sure she saw that in me but I wish she could have stayed with me a few years longer to really see it in me like it is today!
Any who...I applied at the one hospital that I really wanted to work at and was hired straight away to a medical/surgical floor. I worked that floor for the first four years of my career to get my skills in check and just basically to get my feet wet. When the manager that hired me left the hospital, I decided it was time for me to move on to a different focus of nursing. The then manager of our float pool had tried for years to get me on to her staff and I decided to give it a chance. I'm still there today, after three management changes, and still loving my job! I wake up on the days I work and give the supervisors a call to find out where I'm working for the day. There's never any scheduling on specific floors and I never know ahead of time, only the morning of at 5 a.m. I love it like that! There's no red tape, I avoid the drama of co-workers and I get a different experience every single day there. I work trauma one day, oncology the next and I just work my way through all the different areas. If you name it, I can do it. Well, I don't deliver babies....we don't have a birthing area in the hospital which is shocking because of the size and complexity of our facility. We are world renowned but they decided not to put any focus on that. I'm okay with that.
Each day, I have patients that I fall in love with and patients that even though they pick on my nerves, I still have to step back and look at where they're coming from. Of course, there are some days and some patients that I look at and silently think to myself, "What in the heck were you thinking"?! The world may never know, we've all done crazy things, I'm just figuring out some have done a lot crazier than me. I've laughed, I've cried, I've gotten angry and I've loved. I learned a long time ago to never hate, it's just ugly. I always greet people with a smile because you just never know when it might be the only one they see.
That's pretty much my job in a nutshell. I'm a jill of all trades in nursing and I wouldn't have it any other way! I love it and will do it for as long as I'm privileged to work there!
I'll talk to you folks tomorrow, for now, remember to smile...you never know when someone needs it! Ciao!
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