I think we all have that "dream job" somewhere in our minds.
You know, the one that we've always wanted, but the one that-- for one reason or another-- we'll never have.
For me, it's being a nurse.
When I was a high school senior, I applied to college thinking I'd go into medicine. That career path lasted all of five days. When I got my first semester class schedule the week of freshman orientation, I saw that I'd been scheduled for a six-hour intro to chemistry lab on Friday afternoons. That just didn't jive with my idea of living the college high-life, so I dropped the course-- and my pre-med major-- before the first day of classes even began.
It wasn't until years later-- eight years later, to be exact-- that I realized what a mistake I'd made.
My daughter, G, was born on time... but she was born with a medical condition that forced her to spend the first nine days of her life in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit, better known as "NICU". Those were some excruciating days for my husband and I; we didn't know how serious our daughter's situation was (blessedly, it was minor as NICU cases go), or when she'd finally be allowed to come home with us. But it was the nurses-- the women, and in a few cases, men-- who guided us through the rough waters.
They called us in the middle of the night, when our daughter was screaming her head off because she was in pain from the medications she was on.
They gave me tips on how to nurse her, even with the octopus of cords and wires protruding from her little body.
Most importantly, they gave us a shoulder to lean on, an ear to listen, when the doctors in charge of G's medical care didn't give us the time of day.
When G was discharged from the hospital-- happy and healthy, but a week later than we'd initially planned-- I whispered in her ear that she would return to those hallowed halls one day... to work.
For months after her birth, I considered making a career change myself. Did I have what it took to be a nurse? Did I have the mental fortitude and the compassion to tend to the sick, the suffering, and their families? Ultimately, I knew myself too well. I knew there was a reason why I dropped my pre-med major without really giving it a chance; I didn't have what it took. I didn't have the perseverance to get through the overnight rotations, or the gumption to tell a grieving mother the truth she longed to hear, or, quite frankly, the stomach to deal with bodily fluids on a daily basis.
What I do have, though, is the dream that maybe one day my daughter will do what I cannot. No, I don't dream for my child to become a doctor; I want my girl to be the most stalwart of all medical professionals... a nurse.
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