On the one side, you have Trump and his narcissistic minions.
On the other, you have nurses.
I align myself with nurses. They are on the front lines of the fight against coronavirus. They run toward the danger and, thanks to the Trump administration's incompetence, lack the necessary PPE to keep COVID-19 at bay.
Today is Nurse Appreciation Day and it launches National Nurses Week which ends on Florence Nightingale's birthday on May 12. They should be celebrated everywhere and every time. Mostly nurses are taken for granted until we are gasping for breath with COVID-19 or, in my case, from a heart attack.
I lie in the hospital bed in the ER. I am hooked up to oxygen and poked and prodded by doctors and nurses and techs. Chris is with me so she holds my hand when she can. When she can't and the nurses are tending to me, I feel a strange sense of calm.
I see my mother's face in theirs. She was a nurse from 21 to her early death at 59. Tomorrow, May 7, is her birthday. Happy 95th birthday, Mom. She took care of strangers and she nursed her family. I was born in December of 1950 at Denver's Mercy Hospital. Mom trained there at the tail end of the war thanks to the U.S. Navy and the Sisters of Mercy. She worked there when I was born. Later she joked that she was working the night I was born and took off a few minutes to deliver me and then was back at her job. The truth is that Mom took a week off to chill in the hospital after each birth. It was important the first time out with me. It was even more crucial in the 1960s when she had 5-6 kids at home and needed a break as the new ones arrived.
She could have been the poster child for nurses' week. We came to her for our miseries. As a nursing supervisor at a Florida hospital, staff members came to her to unburden themselves. For awhile, I was both -- son and employee. A university dropout with a low draft lottery number, I figured that I would surf and work as I waited for the inevitable. I worked an as orderly or nursing assistant, now known as Certified Nurse Assistants (CNA). People actually go to school for this now and I'm glad of it. Me and my coworkers got OJT. The nurses were patient and, at times, stern. There were a couple nurses we didn't challenge. We didn't mess with Mom, either, although her management style was more encouragement than stern lectures.
I do admit here and now that sometimes, taking temps and inserting catheters, I was a bit stoned. When my coworkers Jim and Sharon picked me up at 6:45 a.m., a smoke cloud greeted me when I opened the car door. When we abandoned the car for work ten minutes later, the cloud followed us inside. It's a wonder we never were caught. We tried to cover up our shenanigans with after-shave and perfume. One day I heard a nurse proclaim that she always liked Jim to work at her station because he always smelled so good. A blend of Jamaican herb and Hai Karate. I can still smell it 49 years later.
My youthful indiscretions faded at my next job as orderly. I worked the graveyard shift at Shriners' Burns Institute in Boston. It was a serious place. All patients were children under 18 who had sustained bad burns. House fires, electrocutions, accidents, and, yes, child abuse. The staff of nurses and nursing assistants were all young and energetic even at 3 a.m. Some of the NAs were enrolled in nursing school. My girlfriend Sharon (the same Sharon) was making plans to return to school, this time for a nursing degree. I was thrilled when the nursing supervisor brought me into her office one day and offered me a nursing school scholarship paid for by the hospital. I was doing good work, she said. I thanked her and said I would think about it. It felt good to be noticed. I talked about it with Sharon and on long-distance calls with Mom from the corner pizza parlor (we didn't have a phone). But I already knew my answer. My practical side urged me to do it. But I was just beginning to explore my creative side.
I blame it on the Boston Phoenix and The Real Paper. Both were distributed weekly on Boston streets I always snagged both of them and read them from cover to cover before I settled into my daytime sleep. The writing, at turns, was spectacular and sloppy. The subjects tended to revolve around the counterculture which is where I placed myself. Music, books, politics, wacko cults and conspiracy theories. I also liked reading Boston's daily papers. They were in their heyday in 1972 and 1973. Dynamic political coverage and great sports sections. But they ignored most of the topics the Phoenix reveled in.
The alternative press ruined me. I wanted to be a writer. Nursing was a great calling and would provide a steady income. Maybe my girlfriend and I could attend the same nursing school and work at the same Boston hospital..
But I wanted something else. I quit my job, returned to Florida, and went back to school as an English major. Write and teach, teach and write. That was what I wanted to do and that is mainly what I did.
Mom is just one generation of nurses in the family. My grandmother, Florence Green Shay, was an army nurse in World War I and two of my sisters are nurses. Another sister works at a Florida hospice center. I am so glad that nurses are getting their due during this plague. Let's keep them safe and pay them what they deserve. .
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