renaissance

I have  left this blog alone and lonely  for way too long!

The closer I get to possible retirement from my main gig in PICU, the more I realize that:
a) I am addicted to critical care ..the intellectual challenge of working with sick kids, the fun of working with people who are at the top of their games, the emotional rewards of helping others in extremis...I still love it.

and b) DAMN!I've been doing this for decades now, and I actually don't like working twelve hour shifts.I'd rather go home in daylight, do a little gardening, play with the dogs..

and c)what the heck else can I do with my life that gives me so much satisfaction?

and d) can I actually afford to retire at 62 anyway?

Well to work from the bottom up:
d) The answer is no, not really , unless I end up writing something that makes me a best seller. Not so likely.

c) Can't imagine,still, else I'd have done it already. Critical care nursing is pretty amazing.

b) Well..at least I work days, now :)

a) I have thought for years that I will end up like the wonderful jazz singer Alberta Hunter, working as a nurse into her early 80's before she was rediscovered . (Of course I'll have to simply be discovered, rather than rediscovered.) I will simply get shorter and shorter, more and more pithy.

All joking aside, I think there is a place for nurses to write meaningful, intellectually rigorous things about our experiences.It's a genre that has been largely ignored and/or sensitionalized.