Tuesday, August 7, 2012

My Top 5 Reasons Why I Could Never Be A Nurse

Yesterday, my older brother had his wisdom teeth taken out. I happened to have the day off from work, so I devoted my time to caring for my brother. When he returned home from having his surgery I supplied him with a bell to ring me in case of emergency. Needless to say there were never any emergency’s, but the bell rang quite a bit. J He remarked to me later that he must have given a lot of angels there wings today because “every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings.” :D
Honestly, I didn’t really mind. I would fetch him ice packs, his medicine, and every hour I would help him change out his gauze. When it came to the gauze changing part, though, I wasn’t too much help. I would hold the trash bag out at arms length and close my eyes tight ( I have a tiny bit of a problem with blood). Then, I would fold up clean pieces of gauze to put back in. Overall not a tough job. Actually, I was glad that I was able to help take care of him… just call me nurse Nelly! J
However, this whole thing made me re-realize that I could NEVER be a nurse. I love taking care of people, but I could not do it as a permanent occupation. I takes a special kind of person to be a nurse.
Anyway here are my top five reasons, in no particular order, why I could never be a nurse.
#1: Hospitals- Yeah, hospitals scare me. I’ve only been in hospitals like three times. Well, four actually if you count when I was born. The second time was when my mom had her gull stones removed. I wasn’t really afraid of hospitals at that point. My fear of hospitals set in when I was rushed to the ER after having pulled a one-hundred and fifty pound icicle down on my head. I think it was partly because I was scared about what was going to happen to me. The other part was because there was a dude in the room next to me doing this coughing/vomiting thing, and every time he did it a whole bunch of machines would go off beeping…freaky and disgusting! My fourth and last time in the hospital, was when a friend of my was hit by a car. I was so scared! I wanted to be there for her ,so I went with my mom to see her. And really I’m glad I went, but after a while I started to get pretty freaked out, so I had to step out into the waiting room. I don’t know what it is about hospitals, whether it’s the overly sanitary smell or the fear that death lurks behind any door, but I go into full on freak-out mode whenever I’m in one. It’s the same way with nursing homes and doctor’s offices too. I’d say that they’re just not my thing, but that is a BIG understatement. If I go to a hospital it means I care a whole lot about somebody, or that I did something stupid again.
#2: Doctors- What to say about doctors? Well, I just don’t like them. It’s not like a personal thing. I know lots of doctors, and I don’t like them any less because they’re doctors. It’s the doctors general occupation that I don’t like. And also because I had a bad experience with a doctor when I had my icicle accident. This doctor went on his lunch break, which I totally get doctors need to eat, but then he comes back to check on me and his breath smells like Doritos! It was like, dude, you get paid a ton of money in your field, can’t you at least invest in some tic-tacs so that your poor, sick patients don’t have to be nauseated by the smell of your breath? Geez! So, while it may seem a little ridiculous to you that my only reason to not like doctors is because of that incident, it does not seem ridiculous at all to me. Thank goodness I didn’t have to spend the night in that place! Can you imagine what his breath might have smelt like in the morning? I shudder just thinking about it! Let’s just say I don’t think I’d work well with doctors. I’d go poor investing all my money in tic-tacs for them, because I have a heart for sick patients.
#3: Death- I guess not all nurses are faced with life and death situations, but I know I could never be a nurse that was. If someone were to die on my watch I would not be able to handle that. Or what if some family made the decision to take a family member off of life support, and I was the one who had to flip the switch off… I would feel awful! I just don’t handle death well.
#4: Blood- Yuck! Blood is just nasty. It’s red and it oozes. If I see a lot of blood I get nauseous really fast. Like I said with my brother and the gauze, I closed my eyes super-duper tight so I didn’t have to see any blood. Blood kind of freaks me out a little bit… well, a lot actually! I try to man it up a bit, but that doesn’t really work. I don’t think it would be a good idea for a nurse to be closing her eyes. It’d be like, “Oh sir, you were just shot. Well, here are the bandages to clean yourself up, but if I stand here looking at all that blood for another minute I might hurl on you.” Yeah, it just wouldn’t go over too well. Although, oddly enough, blood in movies doesn’t bother me at all. Hmmmm…
#5: Needles- Haha! Yeah, needles are a big NO! They come in two sizes, HUGE and MASSIVE! I remember when I had my wisdom teeth out and I had to have an IV. Just the sight of that needle made me want to pass out. Then after my doctor put it in my arm he’s all like, “You can still bend your arm if you want.” And he was all going to bend it for me. I was like, “Dude you just put like a twenty-inch needle in my arm, why would you think that I’d want to bend it?” Okay, so I didn’t actually say that, but I sure was thinking it. No, what I actually said was more along the lines of, “No thank-you, sir!” as I jerked my arm away from him before he could torture it anymore. I’m telling you doctors just don’t think!
Anyway, though, it grosses me out to even think of injecting a needle into another persons flesh. My patient wouldn’t have any room to freak out, because I’d be the one doing all the freaking out in that situation. Sewing needles don’t bother me too much, though. Only if they’re being used to give some one stitches, but I think they have a special name for those types of needles… Oh yeah, they call them Instruments of Torture!!!!
This is what I look like when I think about becoming a nurse!
Well, after all that I probably seem like a pretty big wuss. Yeah, you may be right! The thing about me, though, is that I like to face my fears. So, I don’t like doctors… I’d go out and become one. Hospitals freak me out… I’d go work in one. No idea how I’d face the death issue, but whatever the way, I’d go and do it. Needles… I go buy a bunch of them… really tiny ones of course! J Blood…I go swim in a big vat - yeah, uh, no I wouldn’t! I guess my fear of blood I’m just going to have to live with.
Not that I’m trying to prove that I’m not some big wuss or anything like that, but here is a little tidbit about me that I’m sure ya’ll will find rather disturbing… I’m quite proud of it though! J Barf does not bother me one bit! Not the smell, not the sight of it, not hearing people talk about it. Actually, I think it’s quite fascinating! Just by looking at some one’s vomit you can tell exactly what they’ve had to eat, and all that good stuff. I’d be that creepy nurse who’s all like, “Oh, I see you had a Big Mac for lunch.” And then I’d give some little kid a fear of nurses for the rest of his/her life. Yet another reason why I shouldn’t become a nurse. So, just in case you were thinking it, I am not a wuss. I may be a tad disgusting, but at least I can handle barf, not many people can say that.
Anyway, in conclusion… hmmm how do I put this? Oh yeah, I should never become a nurse! J




Thursday, August 2, 2012

If Today Was Your Last Day...


“It’s not length of life, but depth of life.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson


 

What if you knew for certain that today was your last day to live? If you knew that after today there would be no more tomorrows, would that change how you would live out this day? Well, as it is, no one knows for sure when they’ll die.

Sometimes I wonder to myself what it’ll be like when I die, not for myself, but for others. As weird as this may sound, I sometimes wish that I’ll be able to go to my own funeral. I wonder how people will talk about me after I’m dead. Will they say good things? When a man see’s his end, he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in the years to come?

I think we all hope that only good things will be said. I think we want people to acknowledge the things we strived for in life. For example, if your goal in life was to build a successful business empire, and you did succeed, you would want people to acknowledge your accomplishment. Or if you strove to be a billionaire, you would want people to acknowledge your wealth. We want to be acknowledged for things that were important to us if life, and that we dedicated our time and resources to.

I’m sure you can think of something that you strive for, and hope people will be able to recognize it in you, in life and in death. For me personally, I strive to touch peoples lives with my own. I pray that I can be as much of a blessing to them as they are to me. I pray that through my love to others, the love of God may shine through me and touch someone’s heart. If I reached the end of my life and was able to touch even just ONE person’s life, because I strove toward my goal, even when it seemed the most difficult thing I could ever do, I would feel reassured that my life meant something, and that my efforts weren’t for nothing.

People are very important to me. God created every single person on this earth, even the ones we don’t like so much, for a purpose. He obviously thinks they are important to His plans, or else they never would have been created. No person is more important than the other. A lot of times I’ll see a person, maybe covered with tattoos and piercings, or they just kind of look like they’re messed up, and I will think to myself, “There is no hope for that person.” But what a horrible thing for me to think for several reasons: #1 Who am I to judge? I could have easily been in the same shoes as that person. #2 That is not a thought that should ever enter a Christians mind, because we were ALL lost in sin at one point in our lives. #3 “They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” Matthew 9:12

Sometimes this goal that I strive toward is very difficult for me, because it is so much easier to judge and be cruel to those that I don’t think are worth my time, rather than to view them as lost souls that Jesus Christ died to save. He did not think that they were too lost to be saved, so why should I? I often find myself wondering whether or not my time is wasted on certain people, but I must then remind myself that Christ died for the WHOLE world. Now mind you, not everyone of them will choose to accept His great gift, BUT it is not for me to judge the ones who will or will not. It is my Christian duty to show EVERY person in my life the love of God, whether it be by praying for them or reaching out to them in some way. This is the goal that I strive toward being successful at in life. This is what I pray people will see in me now, and even after I am long gone, God’s love reflected through me.

I now return to my earlier question: if today was your last day, would you live it differently? And if so, how? If today were my last day, I probably wouldn’t have wasted away my morning in bed sleeping. I probably wouldn’t have been so concerned with checking my face book for updates and messages. I probably would have set aside all fears of persecution and boldly proclaimed Jesus Christ to the lost. I probably would have taken the time to make sure that my loved ones knew how much they truly meant to me. I probably would take the time to make sure I made amends with someone that I held a bitter grudge against. I would make sure that I forgave those who had done me wrong. And I probably would strive even harder toward my goal.

It’s not to late you know? Why don’t we live the rest of this day as if it were our last? And not just today, but everyday for the rest of the short time that we have here on earth. Let’s live each day as if it were the most important day of our life, because what we do in life echoes in eternity! Life is too short to even waste away even just one day of it! Live today as if it were your last!