National Nurse's Day!

May 6-12 is Nurse's Week. A whole week! I feel like there should be fun activities every day, or some sort of subdivisions to the week. And a carnival! For instance:

May 6: ICU and ER Nurse's Day, celebrate by riding the Cardiac Monitor Roller Coaster!
May 7: Pediatric and Geriatric Nurse's Day, celebrate by eating soft foods!
May 8: Outpatient Nurse's Day, celebrate by running the 10k Foot Race/Obstacle Course!
May 9: Surgical Nurse's Day, celebrate in the Nursing House of Horrors Fun House!
May 10: Inpatient Nurse's Day: celebrate with exciting competitions like "Who Can Juggle the Most?!" and "Speed IV Placement!"
May 11: School Nurse's Day, celebrate by going to the park with a gaggle of kids!
May 12: Labor and Delivery Nurse's Day, celebrate by playing Midway games like "Catch the Baby" and "How Big is This Hole?"

In honor of Nurse's Week, and Nurse's Day, I would like to thank all the wonderful nurses that have touched my life.

First and foremost, of course, is the nurse that brought me into this world. The first, and always most important nurse I have ever known. I am, of course, referring to the Labor and Delivery Nurse present at my birth.

Haha! Of course not. Though I'm sure that nurse (whoever she or he may have been) played an important role - making sure I was breathing, not dropping me on my head and all that jazz - the most important nurse (and the best!) in my life is my mom!

Here she is, at what I believe is the beginning of nursing school. She is with her friend, and my godmother, Jean. Don't they look all young and cute in their uniforms?

And here she is at graduation.

I loved going to work with her and seeing all the medical-y stuff when I was growing up. While I wasn't smart enough to follow her lead to become a nurse, I did follow her steps into the medical field. And thus, nurses have continued to play a large, and very welcome role in my life.

From the nurses in medical school, who tolerated my presence with a minimum of annoyance and only occasional (light-hearted) threatening...

To the nurses on Davis 7, who were an absolutely integral part of my education...

To the nurses in the PICU and NICU without whom many a resident (including me) could have royally screwed up a child's life...

To the clinic nurses, who have to be the bad guys and give all those shots that we insist the kids get...

To the ER nurses, both at Davis and Memorial, who are often first in the room and have to let us know who is sick, and who is less so, all while tackling 20 other tasks...

To the Memorial L&D and post-partum nurses, who I think have one of the most reliably difficult patient groups and family situations possible...

To the Memorial ICN nurses, whose presence at difficult deliveries always makes me breathe a little easier...

To the Memorial Peds Nurses, who I could not function without...

And to my friends who are nurses, who I know are the best kind of nurses there are.

I don't know if I am just lucky, but I have had a life filled with so many amazing, intelligent and compassionate nurses. I suspect it has more to do with the field of nursing in general and less to do with my own luck!

So, thank you to all of you!

I'll keep working on the Carnival idea, because I think just having a week in which we are supposed to celebrate you isn't quite enough.