Tales from the Nurses Station

I have been trying to write some of my experiences as a nurse down every Monday, but suprisingly I had a rather boring week, with no fun patients at all. They were generally nice, grateful, calm patients. Which of course is totally not normal for an ED. If you only knew the ED you would think the whole town was full of idiots and lunatics, normally. I tried to tell some friends of mine about the time I had a guy with something stuck in his woohoo- have you seen ER or Scrubs when they talk about the Butt Box. Well, I don't know if they actually have a Butt Box or not, but they do have people that actually do "walk around naked and accidentally slip backwards" on all kinds of things. They didn't "get it" either, so I won't continue. You, my reader, are too naive and that is the way you should stay. When I was in nursing school and they talked about all this sexual stuff, so that we would understand what patients were talking about and then recommended that we rented a few x-rated films to really understand, I decided to stay naive as well! Unfortunately, I now know that there really is a need for a Butt Box out there- uh, yeah gross!
So Anywho- I thought I would write down how I decided to go into nursing in the first place. I loved sports growing up and lettered in 5 in high school. I also was facinated with how the body worked, so I wanted to somehow put those two loves together. I first thought of physical therapy, but then decided I couldn't hurt old people and children, so I didn't want to do that. Now athletes, I had no problem hurting- they needed to just suck it up. So I first went into sports medicine and loved it. The only thing I didn't love was that I did this at Rick's college- when it was still called Rick's. I know- I am showing my age. The perception there was that you were going into Sports medicine just so you could work in the clinic and meet athletes. I had no intentions of getting married while at Rick's and dated very little. I was a double major at the time and took 20-21 credit hours every semester. I was serious about my schooling. The only B I received at Rick's was due to my tragically being thrown off my goals by the unforseen monster called the RM. Yeah- I had to get rid of him! After Rick's, I applied several other places and found that it was actually a very competitive program and that I would have to get even more serious. Enter in the very handsome and ever charming Mormon male. Ah, very distracting! This one wasn't so easy to get rid of, though. He swooped me off my feet and I was history. Alas, he took me back to Idaho- somewhere I thought I was thankfully free from and there I had to finish my edumacation. What's a girl to do when she is stuck in Shelley, Idaho and has already graduated from Rick's. She must go to Idaho State University, silly. Unfortunately, they did not have a sports medicine program. I fought with my husband and complained and finally started investigating this Sports Medicine thing and found out that it wasn't really a very practical major for a LDS wife and sometime to be mother. Really the only thing you can do with it is work for a college or professional team and uh, that means a whole boat load of traveling. So I finally had to come to grips with the fact that I had wasted 2 years of my life and start over again. I got the list of majors that Idaho State had and looked them all over and near the end- which is a funny place for it to have been- was nursing. Now I never wanted to be a nurse. You remember growing up and going to career day. They always had a nurse speak and I never went to that one. I thought nursing was way too girly of a profession. But here, I was stuck without a major and really wanting to do something where I could learn about the human body and what better major could I pick than that. Rob moaned when I said "nursing!" and tried to get me to change my mind. He had tried to date a few nursing majors and he said they were always studying. Well, study I did and the rest is history. I made it through 5 whole years with only a couple more B's and my marriage intact- which was sometimes hard! And found out soon after I graduated that I was pregnant at my graduation- something other people suspected from my all around grouchiness, but that I never did. I now have 4 children and I really feel like I was inspired to choose nursing as a career. Working in the ED is far from girly- in fact most male nurses go into the ED and the women are generally atheltic and smarter than anything! I have never met so many rock climbing, marathon running, belly dancing women in my life than in the ED. They really inspire me to be fitter and smarter. Besides that, I can work when my husband is home, so no need for babysitters. I can pick my hours and e-mail them to my boss, because nurses are in such demand. I don't have to work Sunday's, because I don't have to work full or part time. I get to work what is called PRN- which is an appreviation of a latin term meaning as needed. But really it should say, as wanted- because I get to decide when I want to go in. They give me odd shifts to accomadate my life. A normal shift is 7pm to 7 am. I only work until 1 am so that I can function as a mom the next day- and they let me! This is really one of the greatest jobs out there. Now if only I can remember that the next time someone pukes all over me!