The Making of a Nurse

Abstract

Shelly Kuhns was an intensive care unit, emergency department, and flight nurse. She is currently a student at McKendree College, Lebanon, Ill. I shudder for those who enter healthcare, as near to a foreign country as can be experienced within miles of your home, without someone knowledgeable beside them. Hello?... Yes, I am Mrs. Arnold... Yes, Ethel is my daughter and Gene is my son-in-law... I understand... We’ll be there as quickly as possible... Thank you.” The above words are only one side of a phone conversation heard by a 6-year-old girl. It is incredible how that one moment in time set me on a direction that has remained steadfast for more than 29 years. My interest in the nursing profession began in early childhood and has been reinforced frequently throughout my life. My initial plunge into the environment of healthcare came early and dramatically. From the day of that call my life was never the same. In that one moment it took the car in which they were riding to careen over an embankment, all the lives of my family members were sent into new irreversible directions. Initially, my parents were just absent. My brother and I made the rounds of friends’ and family members’ homes. We had a few visits with my Dad in our local hospital; and one with my Mom when she was transferred there after 2 weeks in St. Louis. As were the rules in 1975, I was not allowed into the hospital room to visit them. My aunts and uncles lifted me to the first floor window of my Dad’s room so I could see him there in traction and talk awkwardly through the screen. Formal home care did not exist then. What I experienced were the desperate efforts of my maternal grandmother to rehabilitate her 28year-old once beautiful and articulate, now headinjured and horribly disfigured, daughter in her home. Looking back, I am amazed what shear grit was able to accomplish without the benefit of home health nurses and physical therapy visits. Midway through my Dad’s 3-month hospital stay my first profound interaction with a nurse occurred. One late fall evening, as I stood on the lawn just outside my Dad’s room, a male nurse came out to me. I recognized Mike as the son of my pastor, but was shocked to learn he was a nurse. He smiled broadly and hoisted me onto his shoulders. I learned later that he broke rules and was outspoken about the inappropriateness of not allowing children into their parents’ hospital rooms. As a result of the accident, my brother and I received a new mother. The one we knew was lost to us with the profound head injury she had received. She not only had a new personality, but also a new badly scarred face. Her balance was poor for more than a year, requiring her to lean on us at times to steady her gait. Needless to say, we were involved in her care. Dad came home 3 months after the accident in a body cast. Already a polio survivor, the additional insult of a femur fracture to his “good leg” made mobility a Herculean struggle. Within a few years of the accident, the toll of his and my mother’s physical challenges began to play out in