I wish I had an impressive answer. However, in all simplicity, my heart was in the medical field, and when the idea of being a nurse entered my brain, there just was no exit. Perhaps the glue that made nursing stick was my experience working with special needs children in the past, or my gap year which I spend many hours volunteering in a assisted living centers and hospitals. If I really think deeper, it was on a visit to a children's hospital: St Jude, in Memphis, TN. It was there that I saw nurses in action, in one of the hardest fields to practice, pediatric oncology. If there was anyplace in my past that I contribute my strongest unyielding desire to be a nurse, it might have been then. During all segments of nursing school, my future was with pediatrics. In my head, I was going to be a pediatric oncology nurse. I wanted to be like those humans I looked up to with so much admiration while in St Jude. But then life happened and I landed an externship on a cardio-thoracic surgical unit. And then cardiology became my dream. But then life happened again and because of Hurricane Sandy I was unable to to continue on that unit when I graduated and I became a surgical nurse. When my adrenaline got to the better of me, as nurse became my title, my passion and my being; I wanted it all. Lung, heart, brain, surgery medicine... and that's when I settled in the one place that would give me a flavor of everything; the ER.
1 year in and it is my calling. The energy, the variety, the mindfulness, the constant movement; it took adjusting to, but now it feels like home.
This month I embark on on the journey that culminates the accumulation of my nurse dreams, the one field I haven't yet tasted among the flavors of medicine and nursing; the children. I have had a taste in almost every type of medicine, almost every system. I will still rotate in the main ER, but additionally I will now take on the miniature version as well.
I'm excited and nervous for my pediatric emergency training journey, but it's time to act on my very first nurse dream, the field that attracted me to that title: "Nurse" and to the my acclaimed description as the: 5 ft tall woman with curly hair and big glasses, whom people call 'Nurse'.
