New Path

 Good Wednesday Morning.  The sun is on its way bringing familiar Summer Texas temperatures to triple digits.  I hear the few meet at the town diner for coffee and chit chat and early commuters pass by my little house.  I am starting a new job today.  Well, not just a new job but new kind of job.  I have been a nurse for oh, 20 some odd years, 24 actually I think.  I still remember nursing school with all the craziness, exhaustion, and excitement after passing each semester and finally getting my black striped cap and pin.  Nurses do not even get a hat anymore.  I was proud of my starched white dress with the puffy sleeves, white hose, polished white nursing shoes,  short perfectly trimmed fingernails with clear polish (no long or artificial nails allowed) , stiffly starched white nurses hat with the one black stripe across the top-bobby pinned very securely around the bun that held my long dark hair.   Physicians arriving at the nurses station would look for that hat knowing that only an RN wore them and would be qualified to assist in patient rounds.         I was blessed to start at a teaching hospital with lots of experienced nurses.  I have had to deal with patients in various states of disease, injury, end of life and just a multitude of situations nursing school did not even touch upon.  I learned a lot.  You never stop learning and just when you think 'you have seen it all'  you realize you haven't.  I do not even know how to begin to describe what it feels like to deal with some of the things I cannot even bring myself to talk about to anyone.  I lost count the first year of patients that passed away and never in my wildest dreams of wanting to be a nurse did I realize I would have to "get them ready" for the family to say their good byes.  Well, I gotta get ready for work, but not nursing.  I think at least for now I am kinda done with that.  Gotta keep moving forward and try new things.  Have a Hunky Dory Hump day.  kisses