My mother always wanted to be a nurse and her dream influenced me to go to nursing school.
Positive feedback from my coworkers and heartfelt gratitude from patients and their family make me very happy to be a nurse. Also, I think it is so rewarding to take care of the sickest patients in the unit and help them recover.
I took care of a female patient who had postoperative complications after a simple valve replacement. She was bleeding to death and was acidotic. I worked hard, transfusing 34 bags of blood in 6 hours, until the surgeon decided to bring her back to the operating room. The next night, this patient had disseminated intravascular coagulation and I had to transfuse another 24 bags overnight. The complications continued for days and weeks, and so did the nursing care. The patient’s family asked me...