Mayna has left for U.K; Cat is adjusting well in Canada's weather; and soon Che will be off to KSA leaving a tiny proportion ofUPCN- Ow- Five behind. It is not much of a surprise having your friends pushing their luck in a different country, after all they are nurses and they are Filipinos.
But yes, we are all bound to be health exports.
While I was silently pondering and staring on a Nursing review ad( while in a pungent seat in an SM Fairview air-conditioned bus besides an equally-pungent manong), I am troubled by this tiny thought: Why is it that it is easier to enumerate the motives on why we choose to be in abroad than specifying the almost negligible reasons of choosing to stay? Even I could not elaborate my own reasons of staying (especially to my mother). In my heart, it is boldly spelled out: that maybe I'll stay FOR NOW.
When I was younger, not once did I dream of becoming a nurse. In fact, I have dreamt of being a Marine Biologist, Bank Teller, Archaeologist, Journalist, Lead Singer, Nun, Doctor, Teacher, Fashion Designer but not even a Nurse. Actually, I had formed this scary mental image of a nurse as some lady clad in a skimpy white dress, speckless stockings and a weird cap who had no other life purpose than sticking injections. Honestly, taking up a nursing course was not my idea, it was my mother's.
I remembered her coming home from Manila one night with two college applications ( UPCAT and USTET) and a bag of pancit canton calamansi. She was excited to fill up the application herself and brutally arguing with my grandparents on what course should I take. Since I had no personal disposition that time, I agreed to their every whim.
UPCAT
Campus (first choice): UP Manila
Course
First Choice: Nursing
Second Choice: Physical Therapy
Campus (second choice): UP Diliman
Course
First Choice: Tourism (They had once considered that I will grow tall when I reach college)
Second Choice: Journalism
USTET
Course
First Choice: Nursing
Second Choice: Pharmacy
When I was experiencing the long queue in UP Health Service for admission check-up , I was still very clueless. I was young and innocent when I started my nursing course and had my lessons on osmolality, Mary Leakey, id , ego and superego and self-care theory. Like my grade conscious classmates, taking up Nursing was nothing but a competition. I had never contemplated the weight of the basics of nursing until I started "feeling" the profession.
It was a bittersweet realization of falling in love with "Nursing" (bitter: because I do not want to be identified as a doctor's yaya; and sweet having to realize that finally I had a purpose). While almost one- fourth of our class was considering it as a pre-med course, I, on the other hand, was looking at my nursing duties in a different spectrum. I weirdly found myself sleepless planning for my patient care and not trying too much to understand the pathophysiology. I always caught myself daydreaming not in a skimpy white dress, stockings and cap but as someone who could put a hurting baby to sleep or comfort a teenager in his post-op.
When I was assigned to Gideon Sumaway during my Head Nursing in Ward 2, I was determined that I wanted to be a Pediatric Nurse someday ( aside from the obvious height reasons). He had treated me as her big sister and him like my own baby brother. When he was in so much pain, I grieved for not being able to eradicate his pain totally. When he bled because of a platelet deficiency, my heart bled with his family of doing nothing to stop it. When he was in high spirits early in the morning, sleepless nights seem not to matter at all. He was my realization.
Then Liver Cirrhosis cut his life short at 17.Because of him, I strived not to be just a nurse but to be THE NURSE. The kind that patients relate to like their own family, laugh with in their children's innocent blunders, mourn with if they had nothing to provide for their kids' medications...just the nurse that cares.
Tonight, I had a great time with Gelai at KFC. We talked on our own frustrations of being left behind by our classmates. In the middle of our conversation, a thin man approached our table, briefly introduced himself and told us that I had once cared for their daughter while they were in PGH. I was quite embarassed of not recognizing him in spite of having a good memory with faces and names. In my entire three years and so as a pedia nurse in Ward Eleven, I treated my patients not as BED NUMBERS but as somebody's child, brother, sister or grandchild, that's why I memorize their names and faces.
Bottomline is: I choose to stay because this is Nursing's true reward, being "the nurse".
(Aside from all the santol, mangga, toblerone, goldilocks that they gave me- hehehe)
