A Plea For Innocence

Lately it seems that every second person wants to be a nurse. They want the good money, the long stretches of time off, the guaranteed job, the ability to travel. They want all the perks that come from having a job that has one of the most powerful unions out there and uses it's power to get nice big pay raises. And, let's be honest, they want to wear scrubs and run around the hospital giving CPR and yelling things like "I need another round of Epi, STAT!"

Now, I want to make this very clear. I'm not judging. I am in nursing school for all the reasons listed above. And I'm honest about it. When they asked us all in first year why we were in nursing our whole class sounded like a Miss America pageant with "helping people" replacing "world peace". When I said "for the money" people looked at me like I'd just flushed their goldfish down the toilet while smoking a cigar made out of the last panda bear.

So, I'm not judging. I just want people to make informed decisions. That's part of being a nurse. It's too late for me. I'm 3 1/2 years in. At this point I've written 300 pages of self reflection, 100 papers on topics as enthralling as "Uncle T's Chronic Ulcer" and "How My Personal Trauma, Explained in Depth in This Paper, Makes Me a Better Nurse". I have spent what feels like 9000 days in clinical, worked two summers as an undergrad (read: low level labourer) and worked as a care aid to support my scrub buying habit. I owe like $30,000 to the government and still haven't managed to find a way to make it go away. Basically, if I don't finish the last 6 months of the program now I will hate myself forever. But it's not too late for everyone else.

As a public service I have decided to put together a list of reasons that you, and everyone around you, really, really shouldn't become a nurse. I mean, there's the obvious. There aren't enough nurses. There are too many patients. There aren't enough beds. Still too many patients. Doctors are mean and NOT hot like on Grey's Anatomy. You will, most likely, ruin your back. Blah, blah, blah. There's also the other reasons. Here they are. Read, contemplate, run in the other direction.

1. Shit.
Literally, shit. As a nurse you will get shit on. And I don't mean you will accidentally get some on your hands when changing an oldies bottoms. That happens pretty much every 5 minutes. I mean that sometime in your career, for most people several times, someone will find a way to actually expel shit directly from their body onto yours. I personally have been sprayed by a patient while I was standing 5 feet from her bed. My friend had a client poo ON HER HEAD and spent the rest of the year being called Capt. Bowel Movement by her instructor. The same goes for vomit, sputum and blood.

2. People call you names.
Sure most of them have dementia, so really it doesn't mean much. But after a whole day of being called things that I'm pretty sure even sailors don't call cheap hookers anymore it becomes VERY difficult to remember that all the nastiness being sent your way is really the result of the twisty bits in old people's brains. The forty-eighth time someone calls you a rancid donkey carcass with maggots where your brain should be Alzheimer's starts to sound a lot like an excuse. The lady that came up with that gem couldn't remember what cheese is called for christ's sake.

3. Other nurses.
Remember my two blogs about my class? Get a good mental picture of the stupid girl. Now, give her a massive sense of entitlement, an inferiority complex and 10 years of experience, just enough to forget what it was like ever being new and lose all the knowledge she gained in school and replace it with bad habits and antiquated techniques. Multiply by twenty, add some mean spirited gossip and backstabbing and you have a nursing floor. Worst of all the second a nurse turns 40 she gets the nursing haircut (the one that looks like someone was cutting hair with a weedwacker) so they all look alike. A bunch of scary, mean twins. It's like a Steven King movie.

4. Patients.
When my little sister was three she got her ears operated on. She went to the hospital, got to eat some popsicles and had to take medicine that made her all dizzy. She weighed a whopping 40 ish pounds (I think) and I'll bet you she was as nice as pie. That is what patients in hospitals USED to be like. Patients now are only in the hospital if they are siiiiiiiiiiick. Apendectomy? You can go home the same day. Bowel resection? A couple days. But a 54 year old smoker that weighs 650 pounds, doesn't have enough upper body strength to turn themselves over in bed and has laid in one place for so long they have a bedsore the size of Texas? Welcome! Our hospital is your home. For the record, trying to turn a patient that size over is like going cow tipping, except you aren't allowed to be drunk.

5. Monotony.
You don't get to yell "STAT!!" Doctors yell. You hand them shit. And hang IVs. And change dressings. Anytime you switch areas it's cool for awhile, and then its the same old same old. Work is usually either boring or soul crushingly terrifying and they don't let you take home samples of the good drugs. While its a big step above the old days, when nurses scrubbed floors on their hands and knees.....sometimes I still want to yell things and cut.

So, I don't think that any of you that read this actually want to be nurses. But if you know anyone that does, please, for their own sake, save their innocent souls. No one deserves to be shit on.