‘You Could Do This’: Heeding A Late Call to a Nursing Career
The daunting challenge of family caregiving.
Illustration by Eric Collins / ecol-art.com
“When I meet with families for the first time, I always remember the helplessness I felt as a new caregiver,” writes Linda Beall, the author of “A Clear Small Voice,” the Reflections essay in the September issue of AJN.
Beall, now a hospice nurse, is referring to the confusion she felt while caring for her mother during the week after her initial hospitalization with metastatic cancer:
I recall helping her into the car at the time of her discharge. She had difficulty taking even a few steps. Huge staples laddered down the front of her body from sternum to pelvis. She had a drain to be emptied. I had a handful of prescriptions that I took to the pharmacy, not really knowing what the meds were.
Beall was not yet a nurse at that point. In fact, she didn’t graduate from nursing school until age 47. What spurred her to consider beginning a nursing career far later in life than most?
A clear small voice, easily missed.
In this engaging essay, she describes the experience of caring for her dying mother, and how, in the […]
