For Christmas I got a shiny new laptop. I have wanted one for years, thinking that the portability would make me more likely to write--you know, Starbucks and all. I have considered myself a "writer" all my life, but rarely made time for it, thinking that "after nursing school," or "after my kids are in school," I would find the time. I had so many ideas for articles that needed to be written--topics I feel passionate about. Now that I have plenty of time, I sit here staring at a blank screen...
I hit 46 this year, no denying middle age now. I have been a nurse for about five years, most of them in a cardiac critical care unit of a major hospital. This job, that I love, has made me keenly, morbidly, aware of the fleetingness of life. People die--badly--all the time. They die hooked to ventilators, restrained so they will not pull out the tube that is keeping them alive. They die because they should have died two weeks ago, but their families kept believing that Jesus would heal them, or worse, that the doctor would heal them. While I want to save lives, I want to save lives that will live--not lives that will keep moving from hospital bed to hospital bed. I want to join a discussion about changing views of what medicine can and cannot do--and helping people come to grips with their own inevitable mortality.
