Hellooooo, Nurse!

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A photo posted by Erica Day (@msrikkiday) on May 26, 2014 at 11:33am PDT

That’s my momma up there in her third year of nursing school.  My mom is retired.  Prior to retirement, she had always been a nurse.  She started out working on the patient floors. When I was 5, she became the employee health nurse.  She’s also worked with people who are on long-term disability, and her last job was with an insurance company, evaluating the necessity of a patient’s stay in the hospital.  She was (and still is) a very good nurse.  I think that she should have been a doctor.  If you tell her your symptoms, she’ll tell you what she thinks is going on with you. She will warn you that you should still see your doctor, but she’s usually right when she diagnoses you.

Her knowledge has been invaluable to me in all phases of my life. Well, except when I was in school.  We had to be halfway dead before we were allowed to stay home!  Other than that, I don’t know what I would do without her.  When I had my breast reduction surgery in 1998, I wasn’t afraid because I knew she was there to advocate for me.  When I had Sweetpea in 2000, same thing.  In fact, when I thought they were messing up with my anesthesia, I  made them bring her in before they did my C-section.  She assured me that everything was fine, and reduced my stress level considerably.  When my son was born, they handed him to her.  And they both sat there and looked at me like I was crazy, which they continue to this very day.

My mom has been an awesome nurse.  If I was like most children, I would have wanted to be just like her.

But I was never like most children.

When the hospital director asked me (a 5-year-old) if I was “going to be a nurse, like your mommy?”, I flat-out told him: NO.

I was born an introvert. My mother is about as far from an introvert as you can get. She actually enjoys being around people. I avoid it as much as I possibly can.  I couldn’t imagine being surrounded by people, let alone sick people all day.  Having to talk to them or worse: touch them.

No thank you, ma’am and sir!

I didn’t always know what I wanted to be. I still don’t.  But I always knew what I didn’t want to be!

Did you want to have the same job as either of your parents when you were young, or did you always want something different?  Tell me about it!