If You Were Here...

(from: aloveletterforyou.com)

Nursing: A Science and an Art

I used to have this terrible perception of nurses. I thought that people who chose nursing were med-school rejects, those not willing to work hard enough, those too scared to be doctors. I used to think that.

I first became interested in Nursing as a career in 2004. I was in Mexico, where I fell in love with mission work and vowed to return again and often to help the people who I had grown to love so much. However, the unique opportunity to go as a high school student was just that, unique. While still in the Yucatan I began looking for a way to return. I decided I needed a skill, and since I'm not that strong, relatively, I figured it needed to be more scientific-based.

Each year the Archdiocese of Mobile sends a group of teenagers to Akil, Mexico to give aid and love to the people. Each year they take a "medical team". It usually consists of a doctor and a nurse, but in 2004 the Archdiocese was unable to send a physician, so they sent two nurses instead. While there I got assigned to work with the "medical team" and visit the people in need. I was so impressed with the special way the nurses were able to interact with the patients. The wheels started turning in my head.

In 2006, when I discerned that I was to attend Auburn University, I knew I needed to pick a major. Still on fire with my desire to return to Mexico I decided on Nursing. When I applied in 2008 I had a lot of doubts. You see, I wasn't particularly good at Nursing essentials like Anatomy and Physiology, and Microbiology. Still, when I got accepted, I felt that God was not opening up other doors for me, and this one was wide open.

With essentially a semester left in Nursing School, I reflect on my experiences and realize they have mostly been difficult. It is draining work, that is rarely as rewarding as the amount of effort I put in. It has broken me. Repeatedly.

Still, there are times when I do remember why nursing is beautiful, unique, and not just for women who are too afraid or too dumb to become doctors.

What do nurses really do other than empty bed pans, give medications, and take vital signs? I think it's a common misconception, that I myself bought into, that nurses are merely glorified maids, or essentially physician's handmaidens. However, I have come to understand and know that nursing is both a science and an art. The purpose of Medicine is to treat diseases. The purpose of nursing is to treat human responses to diseases. Physicians see sick bodies. Nurses see sick bodies, sick minds, and sick souls. Nursing is unique in it's holistic approach to healing.

Nurses diagnose. Did you know that? We don't make medical diagnoses, but we have nursing diagnoses which help us to see what's really keeping a sick person sick, and help us to make them well. These diagnoses go beyond "Diabetes," "Congestive Heart Failure," and "Lyme Disease." Nursing diagnoses look at, "Knowledge deficit related to new diagnosis of diabetes," "Ineffective tissue perfusion related to congestive heart failure," and, "Fatigue and poor self image related to lyme disease."

There are several nursing theorists, and each novice nurse begins to adopt her own theory for taking care of the sick. Mine is loosely based on the theory of Dorthea Orem who identified that patients "wish to care for themselves", and will have better outcomes if they are taught how and encouraged to care for themselves as much as possible. Essentially, "Give a man a fish, and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and feed him for a lifetime."

Nurses are teachers, patient advocates, case managers, researchers, leaders, and counselors. We fight for the rights and well-being of our patients. We see the pain, the fear, and the life in our patients. We help to provide dignity and peace to the ill and the dying.

As nurses we have our weaknesses too. We fight relentlessly with physicians, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, and lab technicians. We demand the best care and respect for our patients. We know our patients, and because we know them, we find it impossible to separate our emotions from a case. We listen, we feel, and we cry.

Some days I don't feel any of this. Some days I come home from the hospital and want to ball up and cry. Most days I do. More often than not you might hear me whining about my long day, my long classes, and my ridiculous assignments. But some days, every now and then, I remember what I am a doing, and Who I am serving.

I have chosen a profession where I have every right to pray with a patient. I get to hear what a patient really thinks and feels when the physician leaves the room. I watch as a patient finds out he needs open heart surgery, tomorrow. I give a two-hour old baby her first bath. I get to hold the hands of cancer, look into the eyes of pneumonia, and listen to the heart of end-stage renal disease, and I know that when a monitor flat-lines the soul lives on.

I may grumble, whine, and cry, but today, and every day I care for a patient, I am a scientist and an artist, and I am making a difference.

Fiat!

Poem of the Week V

As the Ruin Falls

Clive Staples Lewis

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love—a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek—
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

Poem of the Week IV

A poem I have committed to memory. (Thanks, Mrs. Dozier). Trees Joyce Kilmer I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,	5
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.	10
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

A Secret Affection

I have a great secret. And I am going to tell you because you are my good and faithful readers. In the past couple of days I have discovered a secret affection. It is one that I am nervous to admit, mostly because I carry a lot of pride and am nervous to look like a fool. 

Still, I must risk it. It is worth it (I hope) to come clean, finally about my secret affection:

Chocolate.

This may not seem like some great surprise if you don't know me. I mean, what ordinary woman doesn't like chocolate?  But honestly, I don't, or rather didn't, like chocolate until a couple of days ago. Don't get me wrong, my greatest affection still lies with vanilla, white chocolate, or whatever, but recently I have come to crave chocolate.

Now before you go inviting me to your choco-holic parties and trying to get me to eat chocolate cake, please understand that there are a couple conditions for my chocolate affection.

1. It must be refrigerated. I do not like room temperature chocolate. 

2. It can't be too sweet. In fact, semi-sweet chocolate baking morsels have become the object of my latest food affection. There is something deliciously bitter tasting about this type of chocolate. Something that tastes a little real. This is the kind of chocolate that is not afraid to talk back to me, that would never do anything insulting like melt in my hand. This is not the double-fudge, death-by-chocolate kind of chocolate. This is a handful of chilled morsels popped in my mouth in a visit to my grandparent's house. This is me shutting the refrigerator door and knowing that my grandparents will never notice the morsels are missing. This is a secret affection; well, not so secret anymore. 

My (supposed) Geekdom

My laptop has been needing a new hard drive for some time now, and I finally got one yesterday. It was a momentous occasion. "And all the people rejoiced!" (2 Chron. 29:36)

For a couple weeks I struggled with the choice between getting an external hard drive or getting a new internal hard drive and enclosing my existing drive to make it into a small external drive to back the documents, music, and pictures currently on my existing drive. Anyone who has spent even a minute (the adjective, not the noun meaning 60 seconds) amount of time with me knows well that I have extreme issues with making decisions, but when I finally did, I decided to go with the second choice. Truthfully, external or internal hard drive is a much easier choice than, "hamburger, taco, or chicken." I'm not entirely proud of that fact, but it remains a fact despite my lack of pride in the matter.

So, after finally making my decision, getting the necessary supplies, and a lot of drag-and-dropping, I am living with over 250 more gigs of space. It feels pretty good. I don't have to delete songs off my hard drive immediately after loading them on to my iPod. I don't have to wait to open attachments on another computer for fear of my computer exploding with information. I can create a word document instead of using my (hopefully) unpublished blog posts as a place to write. I can browse and download new widgets. This is very exciting. 

What has been the most shocking thing about the whole experience, though, is the reaction from my peers. I thought that new hard drives were pretty standard things, but apparently by publicizing my excitement I have entered a new ring of geekdom. I had no idea that people would respond with such surprise. I am surprised at their surprise. I am not sure how to take this.

Either:

I give off a silly persona, and couldn't possibly be capable of hard drive thought.

I have been hiding the fact that I am (moderately) interested in computers. 

I don't talk about my interests enough to give people a clue that I am even interested in those things.

Or, what I fear the most in this situation:

I'm not as nerdy as they think; I'm just a hard drive poseur.  

In addition to general surprise in my newfound geekdom, I have found that people are increasingly eager to talk to me about nerdlette things. Today someone said to me, "SATA or IDE?" Excuse me? These are things I'd honestly never heard of until yesterday. My box said, "SATA", but do I really know that that means? Absolutely not. Still, I'm not sure how to react. I'm interested in learning so many things, and computers are something that I am particularly interested in, but I'm no expert. I don't want to give people the impression that I am, but this seems to be much more difficult than I thought. 

Well, mine or theirs, someone's reality is going to have to change.

Poem of the Week III - El poema de la semana III

So That You Will Hear Me

Pablo Neruda

So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

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Para Que Tú Me Oigas 

Pablo Neruda

Para que tú me oigas 
mis palabras
se adelgazan a veces
como las huellas de las gaviotas en las playas.

Collar, cascabel ebrio
para tus manos suaves como las uvas.

Y las miro lejanas mis palabras.
Más que mías son tuyas.
Van trepando en mi viejo dolor como las yedras.

Ellas trepan así por las paredes húmedas.
Eres tú la culpable de este juego sangriento.

Ellas están huyendo de mi guarida oscura.
Todo lo llenas tú, todo lo llenas.

Antes que tú poblaron la soledad que ocupas,
y están acostumbradas más que tú a mi tristeza.

Ahora quiero que digan lo que quiero decirte
para que tú las oigas como quiero que me oigas.

El viento de la angustia aún las suele arrastrar.
Huracanes de sueños aún a veces las tumban.
Escuchas otras voces en mi voz dolorida.
Llanto de viejas bocas, sangre de viejas súplicas.
Ámame, compañera. No me abandones. Sígueme.
Sígueme, compañera, en esa ola de angustia.

Pero se van tiñendo con tu amor mis palabras. 
Todo lo ocupas tú, todo lo ocupas.

Voy haciendo de todas un collar infinito
para tus blancas manos, suaves como las uvas.

Burton Street

I think it's funny that I am returning to Burton Street my senior year of college. I spent so much time here my freshmen year. I remember sitting across the street and thinking, "Ghee. That construction is really noisy!" And later, "Those townhouses are really cute." But I never imagined that I would one day be on this side of the street looking at that house that I spent so much of my life in 3 years ago. 

The Burton House, and the street itself, hold so many memories for me. Seeing it is seeing my freshman self, visiting three unlikely roommates, helping Shawn paint his room, laying with Mary in hammocks tied to the trees in the backyard, going to Britney's first dinner party and tasting her delicious food, experiencing the freedom of being in college, staying up late, having ridiculous "dance parties", chasing mice, watching endless hours of television with Cole, playing halo, ruining futon mattresses and friendships, listening to Ben sing, walking back to campus in the early morning hours, taking risks, making mistakes, growing up. 

Burton Street changed a lot of things that year, especially me. It, and the things that happened there have drastically altered my life, how I view the world, and who I have become today. 

So, as I return to Burton Street I feel hopeful. It is a powerful place. I have incredible roommates who I am excited to live with and get to know even more, and a great location close to the things that are important to me. I feel this townhouse on this street has a lot of potential to change my life yet again. I am ready to learn, take risks, make mistakes, and grow up. 

Poem of the Week 2

Southern Sunrise

Sylvia Plath

Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, thier balconies
Fine as hand-
Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.

Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.

A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
Of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun.