When Andrew Rainbow isn’t conducting, arranging, playing piano, or directing the pit orchestra for the Erie Playhouse, Andrew Rainbow is a nurse – for a team of cardiologists. Decades running, Barb McCall, who raised two, strapping drummers, has been a nurse – in a hospital burn unit. My sister in law, Linda Barnes Scanzillo, mother to five wonderful sons and, herself raised in Nairobi the child of a missionary to Kenya, is a nurse – on a church campground. Jean Claar Bassett, wife to a mitochondrial disease researcher, is a nurse. My student, Allisandra, percussionist and budding cellist, is a nurse – in a hospital ICU. Nadine’s father, Jay Sherman, is a nurse – in critical cardio care. Marian’s husband, Kerry Byard, is a nurse. My boyfriend, who shall remain anonymous, is a nurse – in dialysis and ICU. These are RNs – registered, trained, and committed people.
Throughout my life, I have been known to challenge nurses, to make their lives difficult – asking obscure medical questions, behaving in an arrogant and sometimes defiant manner, me with my “patient-centered” approach to my own healthcare. When mom was dying, there were nurses assigned to her care who did not know how to operate the chemo infusion machines. These were those who, overworked and understaffed, challenged me – as I sat bedside for seven, 24 hour days with her.
There were also nurses, on my mother’s floor, who were assigned to run the entire wing alone – and, who still had time to talk with me and answer questions. There were nurses in the ER who monitored me during near-anaphylaxis allergic reactions. And, there were nurses who cared for my father in a loving and dedicated way, those who came to the house, and those who served him in both hospital and nursing home who, even with their mound of paperwork, had time to spend bedside. And, there were nurses who worked for Hospice, who traveled all the way into town from the outlying county to treat mom in the middle of the night.
For the past twenty five years in Erie County, PA there has been a shortage of nurses, particularly for bedside care. If you know anybody training to be one, currently working, or retired from the profession, please honor these this week. The medical profession, especially surgeons, would be nowhere and nothing without them, and sick people need them every day.
NATIONAL NURSES WEEK — MAY 6 – 13.
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