"What Kind of Nurse do You Want to Be?"

As a junior nursing student, I can confidently say that the most common question asked by professors is "What kind of nurse do you want to be?" There are typically two ways to respond to this question: the first, and most common response, is declaring a specialty such as pediatric, gerontology, or oncology. The second response, and the one most professors are looking for, is a description of qualities that future nurses hope to possess.

When the question is presented without warning, most nursing students laugh and say "A good one?" or "One that doesn't kill people?" At first, it seems like a dumb question. You wouldn't be a nurse for very long if you weren't good at your job, right?

Well, I'm about to tell you the answer that I would like to give, but have never given.

Being the stereotypical nursing student, I have watched (and re-watched) my fair share of Grey's Anatomy. Recently, I re-watched every episode in search of one particular scene, and the scene ended up tying into three different episodes. If you want to see the actual scenes, fast forward to season 5 episodes 11 through 13. In these scenes, with one specific patient, Meredith Grey resembles the kind of nurse that I want to be.

In episode 11, the show introduces William, a prisoner who was brought to the hospital. He told the doctors and nurses why he was in prison, even though he was not required to tell them. He had murdered five women. When he told Meredith that he was in pain even after he had been given morphine, she gave him extra morphine even when the other staff refused.

In episode 12, William's condition worsens, but Dr. Shepherd is adamant that William does not deserve to die in the hospital. Meredith thinks that William should be able to do whatever he chooses, and since she is his doctor she supports his wishes. She informs the patient that in order to kill himself, his brain is already exposed, so he just has to hit his head on the bed rail which will cause his brain to bleed and swell. When Meredith is questioned about her reasons for this, she states that "I'm the type of person who feels bad for serial killers."

In episode 13, William has attempted to kill himself by doing what Meredith instructed him to do. When his alarms started going off, Meredith turned them off and then prevented others from stopping him from bleeding out. Before William's attempt, Meredith went to find Bailey to see if she would consider him for an organ transplant. Once Bailey found out who this patient was, she immediately shot her down. As William was in excruciating pain, Meredith asked him if he wanted Dr. Shepherd paged to come and help him. William said no, but when Christina came in, he said that he wanted to be saved. Meredith continued to follow what her patient had told her, she told others that she was "following my patient's wishes." After Dr. Shepherd saved William, he laughed at Meredith and said that he was just playing her, Meredith didn't let that comment get to her. Once William had recovered from his surgery, he was sent back to prison and his execution was scheduled. He asked Meredith to come to his execution, and she agreed to. When the day of William's execution came, Meredith did go to watch it. Derek Shepherd met her afterward and asked her why she went to his execution. Meredith's response resembles the kind of nurse that I aspire to be, she said "I wanted to show him compassion, that's the reason I went...and it was horrible."

I want to be the kind of nurse that proves to people that they are all worthy of compassion. My patients' past will not change the level of care and compassion that I will show to them.

SOME People Make Me Lose Faith in this World

If you are one of my Instagram followers, you might be looking forward to this post. To make it easier to identify, I have used the same picture for both locations, and will post this same image on Instagram when this post is up.

So here's why SOME people make me lose faith in this world.

I get done with classes early on Fridays, so I agreed to do some grocery shopping for my mom after class. I was at Aldis in Tomah. I had been e-mailing my academic adviser about my schedule, and she asked if she could call me to talk things through. I agreed and gave her my cell phone number. Shortly after sending, she called me and we spent a little over six minutes on the phone. During that time, I got a phone call. When I glanced at it, I thought it said "Mom," so I decided that I would wait and call her back when I was done talking with my adviser. Once my adviser hung up, I hit "redial" and my phone started calling "Farm." I was confused so I hung up and checked my recent calls, it showed that the farm had called me. I wasn't sure what was up so I called the farm and my grandma answered and asked if I was okay. When I said yes, she kept asking, and then she asked if I was in trouble or needed money. I again assured her that I was okay and she said she had gotten a call from someone saying I had been in a car accident with a rental car and needed $4000 right away. "I" asked her not to tell anyone about it. They wanted her to go to Sam's Club to send money, but she told them that she doesn't drive in La Crosse. Once they heard that, they dropped the cash amount to $2000 and told her that she could get two gift cards from Walmart and put $1000 on each and that would work just fine. She had been on the phone with them for about 45 minutes, and she explained the situation to my grandpa. "It sounds like a scam to me," he replied, but grandma insisted that she needed to help me, so he agreed to drive her. Within the couple of minutes that I missed her call, she and my grandpa were getting ready to head to Walmart. Luckily, I called back just in time and saved her a lot of money. Once we hung up, she called the cops and told them what had happened and gave them the phone number that she had been given.

These strangers almost cost my grandparents $2000. It's money that they really could not afford to just give up. For me, it was terrifying because I would have blamed myself forever if the phone call with my professor would have cost them all that money. You see, small family farming does not make you rich, and they cannot afford to just throw money away. I am so thankful that I was able to call her back and stop her from going to Walmart. The people who come up with these scams are just horrible. They prey on the elderly because they know that grandparents will drop everything to help their grandchildren. We are just lucky that this happened and we were able to catch it. We have discussed the situation with everyone in the family and agreed that we would not keep secrets from each other. Spread the word about this new phone scam and save your grandparents from having this kind of experience!

Quick Update

I have about half an hour until my next class, and it's been awhile since my last post so here's a quick update on where life is at right now...

My classes are going great. Gerontology clinical is done. I have one test left before the "big tests" during finals week. I have two papers, two group projects, and two presentations due before the end of the semester. Gotta keep on truckin'.

I have registered for some of my classes next semester. Due to scheduling issues throughout the nursing program, a lot of people are not able to register for every class that they need. Right now I am registered for two classes, and one clinical section. I am waiting on openings in a lab, and a different clinical. One of the classes that I need doesn't currently fit into my schedule, but I can't take the other section offered because there are no open spots in the class that it would clash with. (I know that is wordy and probably doesn't make sense, but that is how I feel.) Right now, I'm just waiting out finals week and hoping people drop classes or change their schedules!

Work is going. One of my coworkers leaves for a month-long vacation in the beginning of December. Hopefully my schedule stays pretty consistent and I don't get scheduled for back-to-back weekends. Also, this weekend is opening gun-deer weekend and guess where I'll be? ...working. Oh well, we all have to make sacrifices sometimes, right?

Speaking of work, Hintzy Photography is getting some more publicity as I had the opportunity to take pictures at a gender reveal party for my very dear friend and his girlfriend. They will be having a little girl in March of 2018!

That's all for now, class is about to start!