All I know since yesterday Is everything has changed- Taylor Swift
Stairways in hospitals. They are the same everywhere. Hot, muggy and with random locked doors. It’s a strange constant in an otherwise new beginning. I reach the 5th floor and open it, letting the air conditioning roll over me. I glance at my list and head towards the room.
I quit bedside nursing. I tucked into a graduate program in 2019, finished and landed a job. I left bedside for more reasons than I can count but the main one is a little over 3 feet tall with shiny red hair and deep brown eyes. I told myself for 11 years in the ICU that when I became a mom I would leave bedside nursing. I don’t regret it. Not even a little.
I now work as a nurse practitioner in a bustling community hospital about 25 minutes from the downtown hospital I spent so many years in. My specialty is something I would have never picked and yet do not regret one day. I spend my days talking about pancreatitis, cirrhosis and GI bleeds. I can explain entire procedures that I had never heard of before a year ago. It’s a strange existence. Both harder and easier than my prior career.
Maybe when my son is older I will find something else. Something that takes me back to the excitement of ICU or cardiac. But I doubt it wholly. I’m home every weekend and only work 4 days a week. I’m off by 5:30 and never work nights or holidays.
I write this from my living room where my almost 3 year old is grinning while bouncing on a ball and showing me a family of dinosaurs. French press coffee is steaming beside me and homemade rolls are cooling on the stove. It’s a quality of life I never dreamed possible when I first started in nursing, but now it is my reality.
