I've been a nurse since before I could legally drink. I graduated in 2004, youngest in my class, youngest to be hired by Athens Regional Hospital, still a kid. I celebrated my 21st birthday with my coworkers just a few months after I started working.
Nurses raised me. Keri Jo mentored me in high school and through my first early hard losses when I didn't know how to cope with losing someone's uncle on Christmas eve, and later coached me through the first baby lost in a delivery.
Nurses threw me my wedding shower, my baby showers, and every small celebration in between, because you live more of your life with coworkers than family sometimes, and celebrate more holidays with them too. When I couldn't nurse my first baby, and couldn't cope with postpartum depression, my coworkers walked me through it. When we took a leap and moved to Nashville my coworkers paid for our gas and hotels for the trip down.
I have learned to budget, sometimes to coupon, to work hard, to step back from the job, to lead and be led by amazing nurses, amazing friends.
For a long time, becoming a nurse was the only decision I felt really confident in making, and I am grateful that I still love what I do and the people I do it with.
Happy nurses week to all the nurses who raised me, delivered my babies and let me deliver theirs, grieved my miscarriages with me, help me parent and help me wife, and who stay up long hours working with me sometimes more than they get to be with their families!
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