The beginning.

Where to start, where to start?!

Perhaps the most personal question you can ask a nurse/patient care assistant/health care worker is why they do what they do. Why do we choose to work 12+ hour shifts, holidays, weekends, evenings, nights? Why do we choose to work with doctors who are often rude and degrading to us? Why do we choose to work with patients who think of us as servants while we are doing all that we can to help them? Why do we choose this profession each and every day?

I will begin with my story.

Many years ago I was a young, naive 18 year old with all the hopes and dreams of becoming an FBI agent and working in a missing persons unit. It's alright, I am expecting some laughter here. You might say I was a tiny bit obsessed with the TV show, Without A Trace! And so off I went to a way too expensive private university majoring in International Studies and minoring in Arabic. Yes, Arabic.

As you might imagine, that plan failed miserably. Suddenly, I was changing majors and changing life plans. I was now set on studying physical therapy. My thought process was as follows: I would be helping people while making buckets of money. Maybe I was on the right track but not for the right reasons...

Turns out I tried and tried and tried again to get into an undergraduate program of Exercise Science or anything along those lines. I was unsuccessful each time, even when I transferred to several different schools. I was miserable. I felt like a tremendous failure to myself and to my family who helped pay for those wasted years of college. At this point in time, I knew physical therapy wasn't going to be in my future.

Perhaps one of the most difficult periods in my life was trying to figure out what I was meant to do/where I was meant to be. I knew I wanted to do something medical, wanted to help people. Cliche? Maybe.

Several people in my life asked me if I had thought about nursing. I immediately dismissed the thought each time. I don't know why. Maybe I thought the pay would be too low. Maybe I thought I would be scared of blood. Maybe I thought I couldn't do it. I'm sure many other trivial thoughts crossed my mind...

And then one day this thought just popped into my head..."hey, what about nursing...?"

I turned to the internet, of course. I researched and researched until my eyes burned from looking at my computer screen too long. At the end of that very long day in front of my laptop, I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach. An excited feeling. A feeling that was saying, "hey, maybe you were meant to do this..."

I shared my new life goal with my family and friends, many of which responded with, "I was wondering when you would realize you are meant to do nursing!" Thanks guys, that would've been helpful about five years ago. But hey, I had to figure things out for myself right?

Okay, so now we know that nursing is the path I must embark on. It took me several years to figure it out, but hey, life is about the journey. And this is only the beginning.