I’ve been sitting on this post for as long as I can remember, certainly longer than I’ve even been blogging. It began over a decade ago, when I first became a nurse, and I would drag in from a 12 hour nightshift exhausted, and sore from lifting the dead weight of others all night long. I would gaze at the empty spot in the bed where my husband had slept, and I imagined how rested he must feel for his day after a full eight hours of sleep, and a normal circadian rhythm.
It’s something nurses think, but seldom utter. After all, to say “my day was worse than yours” either seems like a complaint or a statement of the obvious, neither of which we have time to remark before our next shift is upon us.
And even though it’s something I ponder at least twice a month, especially after an exceptionally heinous shift, it’s not something I would ever imagine saying out loud. But sometimes I wonder if I should.
There seems to be an awful lot of awareness abounding in this world, but the fact that nurses pour blood, sweat, and tears into their job is easily overlooked or swept under the hospital bed over which they achingly lean. There’s so many tough jobs in this world, but there seems to be only a few I’ve noticed where you are jeered if you ever think for a moment that you have the right to complain or voice your frustrations over the difficulty of what you do.
Just like how a teacher is ridiculed for stating the very real fact of his or her absurdly low wage, so too is a nurse flogged for voicing the same frustration. A teacher’s complaint will be glossed over with the ridiculous remark, “at least you get summers off,” as if this vacation somehow changes the bottom line.
And so it is also with the profession of nursing, and the disdainful look a nurse will receive when they dare to verbalize how hard their day has been. “You chose your career,” is something I may hear, and while this is true does it magically make me more than human, and above and beyond the ability to experience stress, fatigue, and injustice?
While so many career choices are a calling, and that despite the tough parts, we would still make the same decision to follow this vocation, it doesn’t automatically make it easier or any less stressful. It doesn’t magically make these careers something they are not. They’re still hard, damn hard, and possibly more difficult than what you do from nine to five. But since I made my choice, I am not allowed to say that out loud. Ever.
When I was 23 I made the decision to join the military, something I felt led and compelled to do. After a year of service the country experienced the tragedy of 9/11, and then the subsequent War on Terror. I remember when I found out my deployment platform was headed to Iraq I called my mother. I tried to act nonchalant, and I even made my bed while we spoke. But as I tucked a bottom corner I began to cry in fear, and I confided tearfully, “Momma, I don’t want to go!”
I remember feeling so bad that I was scared. I was a soldier! I signed the bottom line, and I therefore felt that excluded me from the right to feel apprehension over going to war. I sat on the phone, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and I listened as my mom and dad, two veterans, told me it was okay to be afraid.
I realized I was simply being human, with human feelings. Then I got up, finished making my bed, and went to work the next day ready if I was to be called to leave my comfort zone and go overseas. Just because I had a moment of fear didn’t mean that I was no longer a soldier, or that I had lost the honor, courage, and commitment for which I served. Do you see where I’m going with this?
Nurses work hard. They deal with death on a daily basis, and then they bring your grandma a Popsicle with a smile. They endure the stress of long days, an overwhelming amount of knowledge to maintain, and the ridicule of pompous physicians and angry patients. Yes, they made the decision to endure this very thing, but does that really mean they can’t have moments where they are human, moments where they hurt, and moments where they just need to sit on the floor and cry?
Makes me miss my Momma, and the fact that I can’t call her anymore. As a nurse herself she always understood.
The point is, it’s not so much whether I think my day is actually worse than yours. I’m fully aware there are many jobs much more difficult than my own, with a much lower paycheck. The main point is the reaction I receive if I try to say that it is. It’s just not socially acceptable, and I am actually expected to stand stoically like a Florence Nightingale angel, taking repeated hardships unflinchingly onto my already sagging shoulders, when in reality I just need to vent sometimes.
That’s not to say you should feel sorry for me. I am strong, and honestly because I have to be. Just consider why I am also sometimes weak.
The field of nursing often reminds me of my other calling, motherhood. While extremely difficult and often exasperating, I can’t imagine life without my kids. Funny thing, though, is I often receive more support and less flack when I blog about how crazy my children are in comparison to posts where I disclose my nursing frustrations.
Does it make me any less of a nurse that sometimes, after a really tough day, that I come home and complain to my spouse? I don’t think so. I think it makes me human. What makes me a nurse is that despite the difficulties I get up and do it again the next day.
I do it again because I love it, and that’s the bottom line. Is it hard, really hard? You betcha. But I love my patients, and I love what I do. It’s who I am. I have bad days, and sometimes bad weeks. In these moments I want to scream, and sometimes I do, but then I hop back on the horse that bucked me, and I carry on. I carry on even when I think, my day was so much worse than yours.