I have received the familiar green postcard I see every other year. It is time to renew my nursing license. This is my fifth time receiving this little card, and I've decided it will also be my last. I have chosen not to renew my Registered Nurse license. It is a dichotomous pull for me, but I have realized at this point I'm only holding on to it for the off-chance I may need it. I've learned over the years, that off-chance isn't coming. I have been asked numerous times, by a variety of people why I left my job as a nurse and haven't gone back. Here is my why...
In May of 2005, I was newly engaged, weeks away from closing on my first home, and being pinned as a Registered Nurse...I was also twenty. At twenty years old, I knew I had adulthood by the horns and I was certain I would succeed. Before I graduated, I already had a great job offer: a full-time day-shift position at a fabulous hospital, working on their medical-surgical floor! I was thrilled and felt ready to take my NCLEX (the computerized nursing license exam). Since this is the test I'd spent the previous two and half years preparing for, I booked a hotel next to my testing facility to take make sure I wouldn't be late for the exam. Mike accompanied me and even drove me to the facility. Twenty-five minutes after dropping me at the doors, I called him to say I was ready to be picked-up. A few weeks later I learned I had passed and enthusiastically started my nursing job in late-June. A few weeks later, on July 15, we signed on our little townhouse. It was going to be our starter home for the next three to five years. I was doing this adulthood thing! I was able to check all the boxes I had assumed entailed being adult. So I worked and planned our wedding. All the while, I was rapidly approaching my twenty-first birthday.
Reality was slowly rearing it's head to me, and my twenty year old self was too naive to understand or adapt. I was a good nurse and I was frequently commended by coworkers and patients. I was requested by patients that were admitted to our floor regularly, and I put my nursing school knowledge to work. What was missing, was life experience and personal confidence. I knew pharmacology like the back of my hand, but what does a newly twenty-one year old young woman say to a fifty year old woman dying of cancer? I remember working a PM shift and being assigned a patient with metastatic pancreatic cancer, awaiting her consultation with hospice the next day. She had morphine infusing through an epidural, but was still in an immense amount of pain. I looked at her chart and saw that she had an as needed order for buccal morphine: in essence a morphine lollipop. So I went to my Pyxis (the computerized medicine vending machine), and dispensed one for her. I brought it to her and she silently cried. She would be facing tomorrow's consultation alone. Her family refused to see her, and she knew that she would also likely die alone. I sat with her far longer than my supervisor would have liked, and just held her hand. At twenty-one, I could feel compassion for her. That was never difficult. But I couldn't really wrap my brain or heart around her reality. Nor was I sure I wanted to be exposed to those realities yet. But I kept on trucking, because her thank you and kiss on my hand, encouraged me that I was doing something right.
A few weeks later, I was working an overnight shift on a Saturday and was assigned a post-surgical patient. There is protocol to follow with post-op patients, and I usually looked forward to them because the care expectations were very clearly defined. I met the patient and noticed a cot on the floor of her private room. She told me that she had trouble sleeping without her fiance present, and the previous RN said he could stay the night. I said ok and kept making my rounds. A few hours into my shift, around 2:30AM I heard yelling and a crash come from the room. I signaled to my nursing supervisor and went into the room. The fiance had thrown the cot against the wall and assaulted my sleeping patient. I stayed in the room until Security came and tried to gather details. After everything settled down, I asked my supervisor if I could go out for a break. By this time, it was nearly 4AM, but I knew that Mike was still up. I called him, because I needed to hear someone familiar. He couldn't talk then because he was playing poker and it was down to him and another player. I hung up the phone and stood outside in the stark quiet of the four o'clock hour and realized I was living the wrong twenty-one. I was too young to handle this. I was too naive to be an adequate caretaker. I was not ready to help other people live, or die, through the ugliest parts of life. I needed some irresponsibility that I never allowed myself. I needed to slow down. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I would have heard those exact words.
In late-November of that same year, I resigned my position. I did not have another to replace it, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I knew I didn't want to keep working as a Registered Nurse for that moment. The problem, is that with nursing, so little experience means nearly no future job potentials. Looking back, it was probably foolish. Looking back, I would do many things differently. But I'm not looking back, I'm looking forward. And because of this time, my life is being lived the way that fits me best for now. I have let go of the guilt and settled into my confident adult self. Now I just have to figure out, what I really want to be when I grow up. ;)
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