New old nurse

I turned fifty the day I began my second year in nursing school.  I was not the oldest in my class.  I had obtained a BS in community mental health administration at twenty-one and returned much later to get a degree in registered nursing.

It was difficult to go back to college, especially in the field I chose.  I had received much other training, but obtaining the prerequisite classes for nursing school forced me to face decades of old fears; those of chemistry, microbiology, and math.  I remember being shocked at an artist's rendition of the interior of a cell.  The last time I studied a cell, you could count the known parts on one hand!  No joke!  I went into the prereq classes with a perception of myself as unable to grasp these subjects, a product of an old educational system that steered girls away from the hard sciences.  I emerged with a perception of myself as possessing a scientific mind.  I even helped my high school and college kids with their science studies.

As I went out into the work world as a nurse, I encountered an unexpected prejudice.  That of others having expectations of me far beyond my training.  Because I present a life-experienced face, I am not considered in need of mentoring, of guidance, of help.  I remember crying once, shocked at how I had been treated when I confessed I had never done a procedure assigned to me.  Another nurse, in trying to explain our coworker's unfair behavior, said, "You don't look like you need help".  Wow.  Ageism at work.  Because I am middle aged, I am robbed of the opportunity to be a novice.

I wonder how I might be different as a nurse if I had become one earlier.  I wonder how my practice might be different, or if I would have more energy at the end of a long day.  Then I share experiences with my younger coworkers and think, no. this is the best time for me to have become a nurse.  I raised my children first so I could more fully concentrate on the academic challenges, I had the financial and emotional support of a long term marriage, and I was more personally secure.

Definitely easier than the first time through college, single, broke, working full time, and still trying to develop emotionally.

I also feel that I bring a rich history of experience to my practice.  I have been through many difficult times in my life and emerged stronger.  I can listen with empathy to my patients and remember how it felt to hurt, to be afraid or apprehensive, to be alone.  I think they can feel that.  I am not afraid to touch my patients, more than I would have when I was younger, because I have raised babies and cared for sick and aging relatives.  I have seen and held death.  I think my patients can feel the connection to the life cycle in my hands and in my eyes.  I have come to honor the end of life as profoundly as the beginning.

I am a better nurse now at fifty-four than I would have been at twenty-four or even thirty-four.  Even as a novice.