word vomit

I wrote this about a year ago...

The nurse forgets her soul

The first semester of my third year is practically over, just a few exams and I can kiss it good-bye and come to the grave realization that I will soon also have to kiss my student days good-bye aswell. This week we are all required to give in our titles for the thesis, which is yet another reminder that our nursing school is preparing for our departure.

I must say that in two and a half years, nursing has certainly taken its toll on me. In this short while, I have become engulfed by it, its all I ever really want to do with my life. Yet it has not always been this way, at the beginning of my course I honestly thought that I was going to have a nervous break down and that I was wasting my life…that I was and am capable of great things and being elbow deep in diarrhea every day was not one of them. However now I realize that nursing is a great thing when you look at it holistically.

Throughout this course, I have noticed a great change in myself. Sometimes it is not so positive and it really makes me think.

Yesterday I attended a dinner party with some people who were all about ten years older than me. I don’t find that intimidating, not in the least. Yet for some reason I found nothing to say to them. Absolutely nothing. Everyone was talking about books and movies, two subjects I am knowledgeable about and love and yet I could not really find a way of participating. I kept telling myself, Pica, say something! Where is your soul? I just sat there and listened, which is not something I hate doing, but it is very atypical of me. At a point the conversation turned to health care and my ears felt that familiar buzz of the world with which I am most acquainted with and feel at home in, and then I was talking a mile a minute.

On the way back home in the car, that’s when it hit me. Nursing has stolen my soul. It has become much easier to be Nurse Pica than my regular self. When I think about it, it is only natural. After all, whom do I hang around most? Nurses. Where do I spend most of my time? At the hospital. When I’m at home what do I do? Study nursing procedures. When people meet me what do they do? Tell me about their illnesses, their families’ illnesses and how their great aunt had her leg amputated. I can’t seem to escape it.

At the moment I am studying for a few credits in psychology, mainly about Carl Roger’s theory. He believes that people have a real self and an ideal self. The ideal self is how people perceive you, and how one can act in accordance to the way people think you should be. The real self is that person who you know you really are, the underlying factors that really make you tick. The neurotic is that person who has absolutely no congruency between the two. And I am really starting to wonder if I am that person.

A few days ago I was speaking to one of my colleagues and I told him how I managed to grab an audition for an upcoming performance and he was really happy for me. He was telling me about how much hidden talent there was within our course…we have singers, dancers, ballerinas, actors, painters, writers, poets…the works, you name it, we’ve got it. And yet, all we ever see each other as are nurses or competitors for the top grades.

I think it is so important in this profession not to lose who you are. Everyone needs to do a little bit of something extra to keep themselves sane, to give themselves time to reflect and to remember that they are not healing machines. We are constantly being taught to look at the patients as people. Yet nobody ever teaches the nurse not to forget that we are people too.

Hence the reason why I grace you all with Nurse Life. To transpose myself from nurse Pica and have a good, long, hard look at her and turn her from something I’m supposed to be into something I am.

And that something is up to you to decide what it is. Yet only I can ever really know the truth.

With love, nurse Pica (?)