nurse-tastic! part 1

I decided to become a nurse because I remain hopeful that my preoccupation with stupid, trivial things (the number of calories in yogurt, for example, or the width of my knees) is a character flaw that I can somehow "manage", rather than an immutable fact of who I am. I love to write, and for a few years in college and shortly after, I thought I would be a writer or an academic. Most days, though, I am hard-pressed to convince myself that anything I have to say is going to make anyone else's life better. And while there may be enough therapy, yoga, and issues of Bust for me to live comfortably in a world with obstetric fistula, for example, I don't want to be the kind of Amanda who could do so.

Since the people I love all live here in the continental United States, where women mostly have babies that live, and are not permanently disabled in the process, I wanted to find a way to be of use to people who are suffering, regardless of geography. And while the health concerns in American communities are arguably less devastating that those in the developing world, they are still overwhelming, and unnecessary, to the point where we're again treading on that uncomfortable terrain of God-math: is it okay that a woman gives birth terrified and in pain and then has her baby taken away and "cleaned" by strangers, since at least she's still continent and her baby is still alive? Is it comforting to a parent whose child died of an asthma attack to know that his odds, though ultimately losing, were better than those of a child who contracts HIV in South Africa?

In the moments in my own life in which I've been sick, scared, terrified, or grieving, I have needed every bit of care I received -- despite the fact that many people do go without that care, despite my white skin and economic privilege. When my grandfather was dying, what he needed, right then, outweighed the ocean of needs going unmet in Sudan and Cambodia and Uzbekistan. And what I love about nursing is it allows you to enter the lives of others at the very moments in which you are most needed, in which your patient's need is absolute and you are uniquely positioned to meet it, if only because of proximity. You can get their their medication; you can keep them clean; you can make sure the phone call gets made, the chemo gets hung, the order for Zofran or a tray of food or stronger pain medication gets put through.

One day, when my child no longer wakes up at 3:30 ready for action and at least the apex of my mountain of student loan debt is eroded, I hope to find a way to help all children get immunized and all women have babies safely myself, and not just with my money. But now, even as a student in Brooklyn, I've found a way of living my life in which, if I just show up, I find myself in a position to improve a particular person's life at this moment. And since -- whatever the status of eternity -- all I have been given to work with is this moment, nursing is the best way I've found of experiencing grace, of participating in God.