It’s been almost ten years. Ten years since I first started on a dream that was imagined years prior. A dream of becoming a nurse, and helping those along at times the most difficult journeys. I went into this work to care for others, to ease suffering, and make the most difficult times just a little bit better. And ten years later, it’s crazy to think of where I’m at now. As I prepare to the leave the bedside, and transition to palliative care, I’m flooded with memories.
I can’t tell you how many meds I have hung. How many milligrams of zofran or ativan, dilaudid or morphine I have given. How many antibiotics I have hung, or gallons of chemotherapy I have helped administer in hopes of a cure. I was lucky enough to care for the very first ever patient to receive T cells for a brain tumor. I’ve given T cells, immunotherapy, and bone marrow transplants, and helped take part in numerous other research trials. I have seen patients from all walks of life but who come to us with the same hope, a cure.
I have cheered during countless bubble parades, danced and limboed in patient rooms, and shared too many laughs to even begin to count. I have comforted far too many parents while they have watched their child slip away from this earth. I have held space for so so many tears. I have wipes more butts than I can remember, changed linens, fetched water and popsicles. I have showed up, and I have done my very best. As I get ready to leave the bedside, I am sad, but above all I hold so much gratitude. After all, I am a nurse.
These patients, these families, there is no way to put into words what they mean to me. There is no way to put into words how much I have learned, how much I have grown, or the magnitude in which these patients and families have shaped my life. In a culture where there is often so much complaining about being in healthcare, I’m here to tell you that it has felt like such a gift. I would not trade these years for anything.
I am a nurse, and it has been perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. It has pushed me to tears, left my body aching, and taken so much out of me. But what I have gained is so much more. The patients and families are doing the hard stuff, we are just allowed the opportunity to walk alongside them.
Leaving bedside is so bittersweet to me, but I will carry all I learned at the bedside with me forever. For the patients and families, and the coworkers whom have supported my along the way, they made me who I am today.