Have Patients, Have Patients, Don't be in Such a Hurry!

Two weeks from today I will start classes for my full-time nursing program. It's been a slow, upward climb these past six months, trekking back and forth between Capitol Hill and an outer-ring suburban community college 4 nights a week, all the while trying to juggle my more than full time job, home work, and staying in some sort of contact with those I hold dear. In six months I have taken 21 credits of lab sciences. I can name every bone of the body for you or do the necessary cultures to find out if the staphylococcus sample is from your skin or your tonsils. I've learned a thing or two. I applied and was admitted to a good program, won myself a scholarship, applied for financial aid, hired and trained my replacement, found a new roommate, ordered my textbooks, and learned CPR. For months, I've lain awake in bed, willing the next the months to go by, ready to move onto the next step, my new life.



All the boxes are checked, my physical and administrative ducks lined up in an orderly row. Now, I'm faced with the much more difficult task of preparing emotionally and mentally to walk into a hospital room and deal with what I find waiting for me, laying in the bed. Whenever Squirrel puked, I made a point of cleaning it up myself to practice taming my gag reflex. Now, I find myself standing in line behind people, waiting to buy a cup of coffee or get on the bus, imaging sticking needles into their neck. The idea of body fluids has never bothered me too much, but I've never even held a needle. More than that, though, I'm trying to prepare myself to step over a divide that separates health care and emergency service workers, clergy, and a few other groups, from most everyone else - a daily interaction with death. The idea of death has never bothered me too much, but I've never even seen a dead body.



Last night I lay awake for a long time, forcing myself for the first time to think of all the people out in the world who will eventually die under my watch, sort of wishing that the minutes would slow down, the days would tarry.