Life at the Bedside: Stepping Away

As some of you know, I quit my job as a nurse last month. It was a long time coming, and if you’d read my blog from Nurse’s Week this year, there might have been an indication that this was coming sooner rather than later. In truth, when I wrote that blog back in May, I really hadn’t been contemplating leaving the profession at all, but had instead been trying to find ways to come to terms with what the nursing profession and the healthcare environment in general had become, and what the future might hold for me. Between the reality of being understaffed, overworked, under-supported, and underpaid, to the murmurings of administrators behaving badly on company money and time, I found myself thinking more and more like maybe I need to find another avenue of nursing that might be a better fit, or maybe I just need to step away for a while.

I was originally hoping that maybe I could find a way to dissociate from all the things that made my job so challenging, and focus instead on all the things that I was still able to do, which was provide the best care I could for the patients who came my way. The problem with that is that I’m horrible at dissociating…from anything, really. I’m an empathic person who is quick to respond to the world around me, but I also can’t help but respond emotionally, much to my detriment. Every barrier, be it real or imagined, started to become a personal affront to the work I was trying to do. When the going got tough, I shouldered most of that on myself, and the feelings of self-loathing, blame, and guilt that came along with me feeling unable to provide the care that I believed the patients deserved became too much to bear. I found myself envying my fellow nurses who were able to just put their heads down and do the work, moving ever closer to their financial and personal goals. It’s not to say that they care any less than I do, or that they are okay with a subpar work environment, they’re just able to process it differently and are more effectively able to remain and sometimes thrive in the workplace. I wasn’t thriving; I was withering away, and it was affecting not just my work life, but it was leaching into my personal life as well.

In June of this year, my aunt Carol, who lived in Texas, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I went out to support her after her diagnosis, and she decided not to treat the cancer; she wished to live however long she had left as normally as she could, and when it came close to the end, wished to have a comfortable death with minimal suffering. I told her that I would come back when her condition worsened, and I would help her in any way that I could to give her the death that she desired. Because the cancer was so aggressive, she declined quickly and within a month I was back in Texas. I had been in contact with my nurse manager about Carol’s situation, and she was incredibly understanding and was agreeable to let me out of my travel nurse contract so I could take as much time as I needed to provide care for Carol, but to also take care of myself afterwards. I was incredibly grateful for her patience and understanding. I'm currently writing blogs about both my experience providing care for Carol, and about her life and what she meant to me and those she loved. Stay tuned.  

Prior to me leaving my job to head to Texas, I had three incredibly challenging shifts at the hospital, one of which had me in tears at the nurse’s station. Not because I was being challenged beyond my expertise, but because there was a simultaneous compounding of unmanageable events. I won’t get into specifics, but as my fellow nurses can attest, there are certain things that can absolutely make or break a shift. For three shifts in a row, everything just felt irrevocably broken, and not only was I struggling, I didn’t feel supported when I asked for help. Thank goodness on my very last shift as everything was falling apart, the fellow nurses working with me on the floor were able to step up and help me. And let me just say, any nursing assignment that requires 4 extra healthcare personnel in addition to the assigned nurse is a complete failure of the system. Unfortunately, instead of those responsible taking the blame for being the failure, the feeling of failure falls to the nursing staff, and truth be told, I am beyond sick and tired of feeling like a failure.

Ah, the COVID days...

So I left. The relief from stepping away was instantaneous, but somewhat short-lived. Immediately after quitting my job, I was on my way to Texas to care for my aunt, which ended up being more challenging than I was prepared for. While I was incredibly honored that she trusted me to help her and her family in her final days, caring for a person in their home is very different than caring for a person in the hospital. I found myself again feeling like a failure, feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing while still trying to do my best to care for this person who I’ve known and loved for my entire life. How in the world I ever thought I could just walk into that situation and be completely okay with it is beyond me, especially when you take into account that I was grieving the loss of my career, while simultaneously caring for and pre-grieving the loss of my aunt. I guess you truly don’t know what you don’t know. I just wasn’t prepared for the mental and emotional load of it all, but with the help of my cousins and the support of our extended family, we were able to care for her and give her as comfortable a death as possible. Now that I’ve had some time to process, I realize how hard it was to take all that on, and that I’m not a failure, and that I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat. I learned that people who take on the care of a dying family member are some of the strongest and most badass people out there. The fact that there are people out there who have never had a career in healthcare who boldly take on the huge responsibility of keeping a loved one comfortable in their final days is incredible and so very brave, it truly is.

So, in the month of July, I walked away from my career of 21 years, and I lost my beloved aunt to cancer all in the span of a week, and up until the past couple weeks, I haven’t really given myself the space or the time to process or grieve. There’s been a lot of anger, sadness, shame, defeat, and hopelessness. But there’s also been so much support and love from my friends and family. I had a friend read this blog prior to posting it, and while I admitted that some of it was pretty harsh (parts that I’ve since removed), she really helped me so much by pointing out that it’s okay to be angry and to process in my own way, but I should be mindful of trying to be productive with my processing. I’m so thankful that she was able to check me like that, because I definitely needed it, and I feel better taking those more negative parts out of this blog. She helped me to realize that dwelling on the negative aspects of my career while completely ignoring all the positives I left behind me and the ones standing in front of me wasn’t doing me a whole lot of good. I can grieve and I can process and I can be angry and sad and all the things, but I still need to move on; I truly just needed someone to tell me that, and to tell me it in such a way that I knew it came from a place of love and support. There are definitely thoughts and feelings that I truly need to let go, and my nursing career doesn’t owe me an apology. My nursing career actually gave me a really good life, and overall, I’m thankful for it and my energy will be best served by focusing on gratitude and moving forward, not anger and looking back.

I don’t feel like I’m done with nursing, but I do think I’m probably done with the bedside hospital setting. I just don’t think that’s a healthy environment for me anymore, and I’m learning to be okay with that. There’s a part of me that feels like I need to jump right back into a job in nursing, but there’s a bigger part of me telling me to wait, to give myself time, that nursing jobs are out there and they’re not going anywhere. I’d been in contact with the director of a home hospice provider in Flagstaff, and had tentatively set up a time to shadow one of the nurses, and I found I just wasn’t excited about it. I was dreading it, in fact. I had to keep telling myself that shadowing isn’t a commitment, and that maybe once I saw what home hospice was all about, I could either pursue it if I liked it or cross it off my list if I didn’t. The idea that maybe I would be wasting everyone’s time if I didn’t take the job was giving me anxiety, like I would be letting myself and everyone else down all over again. The fact of the matter is, I don’t think I’m currently in the right head space to give a fair assessment to any job pertaining to nursing right now. Everything is still too raw, and to be completely honest, I think I’d focus far too much on the negative without giving myself the space to see the positive. When I go back to nursing, it has to be with open eyes and an open heart. I need to be able to give myself to my patients again, and right now I just don't feel like I can. 

At some point, I would love to work with people again, and I still would love to someday have a career in hospice, palliative care, or grief support/bereavement. I have in my head that I would like to re-brand death. I want to provide a space physically, mentally, and emotionally where people can come either together or individually to talk about death. Maybe over coffee and snacks, low lighting and soft music. I’d love to provide a space where people feel comfortable sharing, and if they don’t want to share, I’d like them to feel comfortable just listening and being in the presence of others who are going through a similar experience. I’d love to ask the hard questions about what has influenced people’s opinions about death, and give people the space to freely express the way death has impacted their lives. We all die, and I think it’s important that we not only acknowledge this fact, but we should also feel safe and supported talking about it. I want to do that for people, I just don’t know how. Well, I should clarify…I don’t know how to monetize it so that it’s something I could make a living off of and fully devote myself to. The reality is that I still need to make money, and if I’m employed elsewhere and doing death work on the side, then I don’t have the capacity to put my full time and energy into it. I’m hoping to use this time away from nursing to really dig into this, and find out how I can help people comfortably grieve not just for others, but for themselves as well. Maybe that means going back to school, maybe that means getting involved with a community grief support program, maybe that means working in hospice for a while to see if/how I could help support the grief work while backing off on the hands-on caregiving. 

So there it is. I’m starting a job at my friend’s plant store in Flagstaff later this week, and I’m super excited about that, more excited than I’ve been about a job in a long time. It's been over 2 decades since I've worked in retail, and there's a big part of me that's really looking forward to flexing those muscles again. I probably mentioned this in a prior blog, but a few years ago, I found myself getting very into house plants. I amassed over 50 plants during the first year of the pandemic, and while in the beginning there was a lot of plant death as I figured things out, I still have some that have continued to thrive despite my initial ineptitude. Don't get me wrong, plant death will continue to happen (I’m actually killing a plant right now; not on purpose, obviously), but I’m embracing the learning process. I’m really excited to connect with other plant people, to hear what’s worked, what hasn’t, and to hopefully pass along helpful information. There is so much research out there about how getting our hands in the dirt makes us feel connected to this earth, and I think right now that’s what I need. I need to get dirty, and I need to see things grow. I need to see that my influence can bring about something positive, and learn to not see myself as a failure, even when things don’t turn out the way I want them to. I need to work where the stakes are lower, an environment where a misstep doesn’t result in humanly harm. Not that I’ll just flippantly move on when a plant is doing poorly or dies, but the emotional burden will be less, and I need that so badly right now.

A special shout-out to my Flagstaff girls, to Simon, to Amy (who will always be a Flagstaff girl to me), to my cousins Clint, Tiffany, and Katrina who were by my side in Texas, to my family and friends who have reached out or sent me funny videos. It takes a village, and I’m realizing I'm a member of the very best village. Thanks from the bottom to the tippy top of my heart.