Recently I was nursing, or as I like to call it, saving lives one patient at a time, when I passed my co-worker at the nurses station with a peculiar look of melancholy clouding her countenance. She was looking down at a message she had received from home when she sadly announced, “my daughter just spoke her first words, and I missed it.”
We all looked upon her with a sympathetic glance, but also an empathetic one, for I don’t think any of us had not been through something quite similar a time or two. The fact was the profession of nursing, especially the bedside variety, consumed a large portion of your life. So while you were sharing in life-altering circumstances of strangers, you were missing out on those at home.
Shift work, weekends, thirteen hour days. Overtime, holidays, and crisis call. Beepers, cell phones, and call schedules. All these cumulated to overtake the usable twenty-four hours in each given day, and in a nurse’s efforts to meet the demands of a grueling work schedule, sometimes their home life slipped.
Weekend picnics and birthday parties were missed. You left in the middle of a church service when duty called. You couldn’t remember the last time you were off for New Year’s, and never Christmas Eve and Christmas Day consecutively.
And even though it’s awesome to bring a smorgasbord of goodies to the break room on Super Bowl Sunday, adult beverages are absolutely out.
And even though your co-workers sing a joyful Happy Birthday, nothing compares to being without responsibility on your special day.
But the fact is people get sick on your Birthday. 50 year old men have acute MI’s on your anniversary, and little old ladies fall and break their hip when your son has a big game. Illness doesn’t stop for bar mitzvahs, and disease takes a holiday for no man. So, nurses work. They work the night shift, weekends, and mandatory overtime. All the time.
I remember once having a patient on Easter Sunday morning who was terribly upset to be hospitalized on that particular day rather than being at church, and although I was in the same frame of mind as her, I made it my mission to make her day a special one. I told that woman that the resurrection wasn’t at the altar, but within her, and we had ourselves a Sunday service right there at the bedside. By the end of my shift she was smiling.
I guess that’s the thing. Nurses miss their own child’s first steps, but they also get to celebrate the triumph of their patient’s first walk down the hall after emergent open heart surgery.
Nurses miss their baby’s birthday party, but witness the miraculous birth of another mother’s child.
Nurses miss a good night’s sleep when they’re called out of bed in the middle of the night, but by doing so help to ensure a patient with a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm lives to sleep in late another day.
Nurses miss Thanksgiving dinner, but help feed those who cannot feed themselves.
Nurses miss out on time with their family, but help put their patient’s family at ease.
So it’s true, nurses miss out on so much, but they also gain more than most professions do. They gain that pride and satisfaction that is well-earned when one gives of themselves.
And that is why nurses do what they do despite the things they miss.
Lynn says
God please bless abundantly those of the nursing profession who go over and above the call. Who put their all into the care of those in need and help those who can’t help themselves. Thank you Lord for their selflessness and may they know Your Holy presence in their lives everyday. Lord I thank You for giving us beautiful souls who put others before themselves everyday! May they know how much they are appreciated and loved! ✝❤️
Grace Macchiaruli says
Poem written August 21′ 1980 7:30 a.m. My second daughter’s knee operatio. Have 4 children like you all grown up now. TO THE NURSES. HAIL TO THE NURSES OF THE PEDIATRIC WING —WHO OOZE WITH CHARM AND GRACE AS THEY DO THEIR THING—CRYING BABIES, FUNNY TODDLERS, TEENS ROCKING TO THE BEAT—IT’S A WONDER, YES A MIRACLE , THEY CAN STAY SO SWEET—-THREE CHEERS FOR THE DAY CREW,MIDAY AND THE NIGHT —-WITH THEIR PILLS AND COLORED UNIFORMS—THEY’RE REALLY OUT OF SIGHT—HERE’S TO A TEAM WHO PULL TOGETHER THROUGH THICK AND THIN—WITH THEM ON OUR SIDE WE’RE ALL SURE TO WIN. IN MY BOOK… THROUGH THE YEARS WITH GRACE. WHERE WE WOULD WE BE WITHOUT HIS GRACE. 12 grand children now and my dear husband of 56 years on a new path in Fl. Full time. Enjoyed all your writing. Signed up to read more. Enjoying similar memories when we were young raising our four, 3 girls and a boy. Last 3 in 3 yrs. Waiting to publish my 4 book, a children’s book called: IF MY TABLE COULD TALK. my youngest granddaughter illustrated 24 pages. Her major at RIT in NY. Proud granny speaking. LOL. God Bless you and your hubby & your precious ones. Love in Christ. Grace Macchiaruli
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
Thanks so much for commenting and sharing. God bless you!