When I first entered nursing school, I had gleaming visions of myself, slim and cool in fashionable-yet-comfortable scrubs, gliding from one patient to another with overflowing compassion and empathy. I would never, ever be behind with anything, including charting, medications, and any and all general nursing care. I would diagnose and treat all illnesses, and watch my patients recover so quickly, with remarkable progress, and I would go home each night satisfied that I made a difference, cook a fantastic dinner for my husband and myself, and look forward to my next shift, arriving at said next shift refreshed and ready to go again.
Instead, as a nurse, I find myself running wildly between my patients, hair falling out of whatever contraption I've used that day to hold it up/back, wearing something unknown that looks like spit-up on my scrub top, praying frantically that NOTHING ELSE WILL GO WRONG, staring blankly at beeping/alarming patient monitors, and generally feeling like I am keeping my patients only one step from total catastrophe. I sometimes chart my 0800 assessments at 1700 (that's 5pm for you non-military-time types...). I go home completely disheveled and exhausted. I eat cold cereal, mumble only unintelligible words to my husband as I collapse into bed. I hear the alarm sounds of the unit in my dreams. I roll out of bed 5 minutes before I need to leave for work, only taking one quick look in the mirror to guarantee I am not completely offensive, and run out the door.
Do I love it? Yeah. Totally.
Would I trade the reality for the fantasy? Naw. How boring. Well, except maybe the slim-and-fashionable part.
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