I became a nurse because I am a very pragmatic person. I needed a job — one that wouldn’t go away. One that I could take with me anywhere I went. When I started working at my facility in 1995 — I was an ICU nurse. I learned a lot about being a nurse to very, very sick patients. The job was physically brutal. I drifted through several different departments — GI procedures, PACU, and pre-op until I finally went into the OR. The OR was my happy place — I loved the work & my surgeons. However, I was getting older. The day I decided I needed to leave the OR was the day I worked 23 hours straight scrubbed into the open heart room. By the time I got to my car — I still couldn’t comfortably bend my knees. I knew that physically — I had to make a change. I ended up then going into a transplant coordinator position — 6 years later — I went back to the OR, but at our surgery center. No call, no nights, no weekends, no holidays. It was the first time my career I worked in a job that I didn’t have to take call for. Six years later, found me driving a desk as an oncology nurse navigator for one of my surgeons in the OR. COVID came & my facility was discussing sending anyone with ICU skills back to the ICU to backfill the spaces in staffing due to nurses getting sick & dying of COVID. I liked living, so I retired.
I am fortunate in that the only physical ailment my career gave me was kidney stones. Many of my colleagues have had joint issues & had joint surgeries. Most have high blood pressure. A few have had severe back injuries. A few have had heart attacks & strokes.
Nursing is not a kind profession to the nurse. I loved my career mostly because it’s provided a generous pension (I was a state employee). But mostly I’m simply grateful to have made it out alive.
I worked a lot of low level, low stress jobs until I was 30 & went to nursing school. Those jobs held a different kind of stress — the stress that I wasn’t making enough money to pay my bills. So no — I needed the salary nursing provided to raise my kids. And when I was younger, that was the driving priority in my life. :)
