Nurses and carers stay bonded in friendship because we share things that others don’t. We watch strangers die, holding their hands and consoling them and their loved ones. We watch miracles take place as we help babies come into this world, seeing the rawness of love and its pure beauty. Doctors often deliver the good or bad news, but the nurses are usually the ones to help their patients get through it. Together we share the bonds of healing the sick, and share the physical and emotional strain of doing this incredible work. Perhaps women were born to be nurses, as many of us have those instinctual mothering tendencies. Women are very good at multi tasking, and usually skilled at getting to the heart of things with their loved ones and friends, a skill also needed to be a nurse. One of my best friends nursed with me when we were 17 years old. Together we shared in watching suffering that was beyond our years, more than any kid aged 17 should have to watch and bear. We saw things that made no sense, patched up bodies after crimes and accidents, and laid out dead bodies, sometimes those of our close friends. We did things we did not expect we would have to do quite so soon, as we were much too young to have understood what we had signed up for. We were simply excited to have a career and paid job! Did this make us tough? Yes, but also much stronger and more resilient. The things we had to see and do made us look far beyond our selfish teenage years, when many others were still learning to drive a car or work out how to save their first pay cheques. We were too worn out to worry about spending it all anyway!

I used to be a nurse. I think I was probably born to be a nurse, even though it wasn’t my first profession of choice. I loved nursing sick animals on the farm, looking after the neighbours little kids, and generally being there for others from a very young age. I loved helping newborn animals into the world, watching the vets heal or operate on our sick animals, looking after elderly relatives, and so much more. I think I still am a nurse. I love helping others to heal, from emotional or physical wounds. I love to share the pain of others, strangers or friends. I have a friend who is a general practitioner, and she gently puts my occasional harsh words about things or others into perspective. It is easy for a nurse to have high expectations of others, as the need to be a perfectionist is quite high to survive in the health care industry. Unlike a banker making a mistake in counting money, making a mistake as a nurse (or doctor, paramedic, etc) can have fatal consequences. This almost ensures you have high expectations of yourself, which can also rub off meaning you having high expectations of others. The university nurse graduates might have a much harder time finding their way around illness and dying than I did as it is some time before they really get to know what will be expected of them, and then to find out how they will cope with it. Nursing take its toll on your heart; it is difficult for it not to as no amount of preparation can prepare you for the dying, especially when you are young and inexperienced. Our communities get stronger in times of great loss and crisis, for example victims of flood or fire, or victims of 9/11. This is surely because of the shared pain of loss and suffering. The shared efforts to restore each other’s worlds, turns everyone into a nurse, looking out for each other, helping to heal hearts, not just the buildings and homes of a community. To the nurses and carers out there, who are working against the odds with low pay, high expectations, and often poor facilities, I want to acknowledge and thank you all.