A New Path

Today I began to walk a new path in my life.  I am about to continue my nursing career in a brand new direction.  Pretty soon I will hang up my scrubs, pretty cloth hats,  latex free gloves and night call - all the tools of my beloved career as an Operating Room Nurse.  Fifteen years is a long time.  Days and nights spent with some of the most hardworking, genuine and intelligent people I have ever known taking care of our patients at the most vulnerable time in their lives.   While they slept, we fixed what was wrong, broken or in some cases bringing them back from the brink of death.  Most of the time it was uneventful, but there were a couple of times that, when looking back, the circumstances seam surreal, and we were not as successful as we would have liked.  All in all, it was a good run.  Saying that I learned a lot is an understatement.  Originally I went to the Operating Room "to figure things out."  I was discouraged with floor nursing and I had questions that could only be answered by getting right in there where all the action was happening.  A nurse named Katie-Jo Brown saw something in me that she thought might make a good Operating Room Nurse and she gave me the chance of a life time.  I took it and ran.  A few years later after a plane ride from Portland to Fargo, ND on my way home to Baltimore I met someone else who put me in touch with another nurse named Pauline Svetska, and before I knew it I had a job in Portland, Oregon three thousand miles from my hometown of Lewes, DE, and honestly, that's when the big things started happening.  Here we are now again at a cross roads.  The previous paths were much the same, the geography was just different.  Now it's the same geography but the path is different.  Next Friday June the 3rd I'm going to have my own "Oprah Moment" where I say good bye to one adventure and begin a whole new one.   I have to say that's a daunting prospect.  My mom told me just this week during a tiny freak out moment, that the unknown is a little scary sometimes.  She's right.  I'm about to walk down a road I've never been down before.  A few days ago it looked pretty dark down that road, but not anymore.  I spent today with two great women who have been down that path already and they handed me a flashlight!  Thank you Jill and Clare!  I'm feeling much better about walking down this path now that I have my trusty flashlight.  That's not to say that giving up what I've been doing for the last fifteen years is easy, it's not.  But what I do know is that I'm channeling the sadness that comes with moving from something that I've given my whole self to to something  totally different into something really great.  I can take all that I've learned and use it on my new journey, and that makes me feel safe and secure.  I might not be walking along the same path as my Operating Room colleagues anymore, but I'll be there with my trusty flashlight ready to show a whole new set of folks the way down a new path, and that will be good.