Crumbled Walls: A Transformative Caregiving Journey

Confronting fragility: a perfectionist father’s illness.

“Nurses make horrible patients,” my dad’s words echoed in my mind as I stood beside his hospital bed. Confined to this cold and sterile room, he, once a seasoned nurse, now teetered between worlds, fighting to maintain control of his crumbling body and the walls that had always surrounded him.

My father took pride in his immaculate exterior wall. He kept a well-manicured lawn and showcased three exemplary children and a life partner we referred to as our “uncle” when outside the wall. The inside structure was sharp and less forgiving. Within the confines of his perfectly controlled life, I was subjected to restrictive diets and forced to starve myself, all in pursuit of fitting his external vision of a perfect 16-year-old girl. I didn’t match his mural, but at least I had “a pretty face.”

In this hospital bed, my father’s wall became brittle and translucent. Machines whirred, extending their tentacles, both charging him with life and subtly stealing it away. Weakened by the long-term use of prednisone, his body bore the weight of cancer’s progression, leaving him moon-faced and unrecognizable. His once unblemished mural, now in ruins, left him dependent and vulnerable, requiring nursing assistance for basic tasks like toileting and bathing.

In his time of greatest […]

2023-06-13T07:28:49-04:00June 6th, 2023|end of life, Nursing, nursing career|4 Comments

A New Nurse Learns Focus and Grace Under Pressure

“I entered this new chapter in my life running at full speed. But at nearly the same time, the world seemed to be coming to a full stop.”

That’s from the August Reflections essay in AJN: “2020: What a Time to Become a Nurse.” Alicia Sgroi finished nursing school and started as an RN in a Florida ICU in February 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to get a foothold in the United States. By June, her unit had been converted to a COVID-positive step-down unit.

Much has been written about the pressures and trauma of being a nurse during the pandemic. We know that it’s been tough for all nurses, sometimes overwhelmingly so. In fact, the original research article in the August issue of AJN is a study that looks at personal and institutional factors affecting levels of well-being and resilience among nurses during the pandemic, from staffing to support networks to personal resilience.

Rising to the occasion.

As a new nurse, Sgroi was understandably worried about catching the virus and also about having the skills to care for such patients. But as she tells it, far from discouraging her from continuing as a nurse, the experience taught […]

How I Would Prepare My Child to Become a Nurse

‘Mommy, do you like your job?’

Photo by Tatiana Syrikova from Pexels

My five- and seven-year-old daughters are now old enough to understand that Mommy has a job as a nurse where she takes care of some pretty sick patients. From what I gather, their young minds really only seem to grasp that sometimes Mommy comforts her patients when they don’t feel well. As much as I would love to explain to them that my work as a pediatric ICU nurse is much more complicated and challenging than this, I also don’t mind them seeing me as someone who comforts others as a key part of my job.

But lately my five-year-old has started asking me more questions about my job: “What kind of patient did you take care of? How was your day at work? Do you like your job?” As one with a strong disdain for fluffy answers, even to a five-year-old, I’ve found myself considering how to answer her in a way that is both age-appropriate and honest.

When she asked if I liked my job, I thought about my patient writhing in agony yesterday—his loving parent present in the room—as we struggled to perform necessary interventions while also looking […]

2021-05-03T09:46:09-04:00May 3rd, 2021|Nursing|5 Comments

Being a Nurse, or When Did You ‘Grok’ Nursing?

How does one “become” a nurse, as opposed to learning nursing skills? What is “being” a nurse as opposed to “doing” nursing?

On our Facebook page last week, we posted this query: “Professional identity is more than what you do—it’s a part of who you are. What does being a nurse mean to you?” One of the responses we received was, “Caring providers that own it, do right, work together and solve problems with innovative methods to improve care methods and optimize outcomes.

The respondent’s use of “own it” resonated with me: from the thesaurus, to own something means “to possess, preserve, maintain, hold, profess, declare, accept, have possession of…” To me, it hints at holding onto something valuable, being mindful of it and not losing sight of it.

This original post came about because I had recently attended a meeting at the University of Kansas School of Nursing, where a group of about 50 invitees were asked to brainstorm how nursing students develop a professional identity—How does one “become” a nurse, as opposed to learning nursing skills? What is “being” a nurse as opposed to “doing” nursing? Most of us say, when asked what we do, “I’m a nurse,” not “I do nursing.” And some of us identify […]

What Would You Do If You Weren’t a Nurse?

“The further away I get from direct patient contact, the less I enjoy being a nurse.”

Last week was Nurses Week, and on its Facebook page, the American Journal of Nursing posted the question, “What would you do if you weren’t a nurse?”

It was not surprising to me that many nurses commented something to the effect of, “I don’t know. I like being a nurse.” Others, though, posted a variety of career choices, often unrelated to nursing, many of them in creative fields.

I did not grow up wanting to be a nurse.

The List Inkjet, collage, and water media on paper, by Julianna Paradisi 2018

When I was three years old, I wanted to be a horse. Once I realized it was impossible, I settled on becoming a ballerina. However, the small community where I grew up did not have a dance studio or classes, so this aspiration also fell to the wayside.

In junior high school, I decided I would become a writer. I already knew I was an artist; I’d known that before I wanted to be a horse. I’ve always drawn, and still do, nearly daily. I began writing and keeping journals in elementary school.

A librarian’s intuition.

When I was 15, our […]

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