PASSION

1983

For almost 34 years my passion was being a nurse. When I was 28 years old I decided to go back to school to become a nurse. It was not my passion at that time. But I needed a way to help raise my boys in a world where expenses were ever growing. I had always found anything medical to
be interesting...even fascinating. But I didn't plan to be a nurse.

And then I started nursing school. Well it wasn't really a nursing school. It was a community college. I have an associates degree in nursing. It was those first few years when it became my passion. When I sat at the side of an elderly lady in the nursing home and she showed me how to quilt. When I watched babies being born. When I stood at the shoulder of the surgeon and watched as he extracted a huge cancer from a man's colon. As I hugged a teenage girl who had just lost her mom to breast cancer. Yes, even when I broke the rules to help a dying man smoke his last cigarette in a world where NO SMOKING now reigned. Nursing became my passion.

This passion led me down a very long road. The road of hospital nursing where so many changes took place that it was hard to stay on top of all of them. The road to long term care where I found my true passion in nursing. The elderly have so much to teach us. All we have to do is listen to them. Give them time. And the attention they deserve.

My nursing career ended with me giving care to the most wonderful patient I have ever had. My own husband. I am glad that I was able to be there, to give back to him all the love and care he had given to me and our sons. I ended my career at an all time high!!

I am grateful to have been a nurse.