Why I Love Nursing
Remembering Miss McBride
by Marynell Wallace
Journal of Christian Nursing, Spring 2000
For as long as I can remember, I have been called "Nurse Nell." I'm not sure when it started. Perhaps it was when I created my first hospital with my dolls or whatever cat or other small animal I could cajole into being wrapped in doll clothes. Maybe it was when I received a Golden book titled Nancy Nurse , complete with Band-Aids. One Christmas I was given the traditional nurse kit that little girls got back then. Whenever someone would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would always reply, "I'm going to be a nurse." The only time I wavered from that decision was when I thought being a girl was bad enough and that I needed a boy career such as cowboy or train engineer!
A real influence on my career decision came when I was ten. I had been take to the hospital late one spring afternoon and, subsequently, my appendix was removed. During my convalescence, a wonderful student nurse, Heidi, took care of me. She was pretty, bright and fun. But in the dark of night I met Miss McBride, the evening nurse, who, in my child's minds, was pretty strict. She insisted I go to bed earlier than I wanted.
I remember her as thin and old-looking
One night I had a bad stomachache. Miss McBride called the intern, who prescribed some pills. But it was the cool hand of Miss McBride resting gently on my brow, and her kind words of "Lie back, rest and let Jesus take care of you" that sent me off to sleep. That seem the best medicine of all.
Seven years later, I again met Miss McBride, still the evening nurse on the same unit. Only now I had been assigned there as a nurse's aide. I told her my childhood memory of her, and she smiled. She had taken care of so many children, I'm sure she didn't remember me. But when I talked about going to nursing school, she gave me a small figurine of a nurse holding a baby and a card that admonished me to "Walk in service, and you will walk in honor and love. And you will walk with God."
I don't know if I listened long enough to God to know that he called me into nursing, but I know that he has called me to stay in nursing and to do that nursing in the hospice setting. I love nursing, not so much because of what I do, but more for how, through the dying, I learn how to live. Through my coworkers, my patients and their families, I have learned the genuine meaning of being a nurse.
I particularly have been blessed by coworkers who have become friends and support me, in my work and personally. Many have a "walking faith," a faith that is quietly present, undergirding them and providing support for others. Several of us often share and pray together to help each other through the storms, times of loss or feelings of helplessness. Knowing that support is there to receive and to be able to give makes working worthwhile.
It is difficult, if not impossible, for me to separate my faith in Christ from nursing, especially in my work with clients facing death and thinking about a life beyond, which is incomprehensible to our finite minds. Early in my hospice career, Ginny, a special patient, shared with me about her faith. She said, "It isn't the faith in living that is important. It is living in faith that gets one through." Ginny died peacefully, knowing that life was not over, just changed.
Families, too, can express love in ways that teach me about the joy of Christ in their lives. Nothing came through more clearly than the lessons I learned from my terminally ill father. As we both learned to accept his dying, he told me how he felt about the purpose for life. He believed that he continued to awaken on this earth each day because God still needed him to be a blessing to someone. His unfailing sense of humor, hugs and honesty in expressing his feelings always made the day special for the hospice caregivers and me. He was always proud to announce, "This is my daughter; she is a registered nurse. I have the best nurse God could give me." That blessing helps me to continue to love nursing.
Why do I love nursing? Difficult to put into words, it is something that must be felt and experienced. The card Miss McBride gave me with the figurine years ago best sums up my affirmation of why I became a nurse and why I stay in nursing: "Walk in service, and you will walk in honor and love. And you will walk with God."
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