Teaching And Nursing Made Me a Better Person

Many of you know that after teaching high school English at Bloom Township HS, I went back to school and became an RN. In college, I had majored in English/minored in Education, and after graduation secured a position at Bloom, a school in Chicago’s southern suburbs. I loved teaching. My student population was challenging, echoing the problems of Chicago’s inner city schools. During my interview, the superintendent asked me what I would do if a student came at me with a knife. Innocent me said I would deal with the situation. It was a turbulent time, and we did have riots, thus one day an angry kid came toward me in the library with a knife..but the principal was right behind him, and I was fine. I did have to sit before a police board, tell my story. But I understood the student’s complaints and angers and bottom line, I loved teaching.

Then after the births of my children, I went back to school, earning my RN degree, hoping to work in maternity. The head nurse at St. James, where I did my practicums, said right out that I would not find a position in Labor and Delivery or even postpartum. Never discouraged, I found a listing in a nursing journal: Mercy Hospital in downtown Chicago was hiring Labor and Delivery RNs. I applied, was interviewed and hired!

Being a newbie at my age demanded I be organized, alert and eager. After passing my nursing boards, a friend and I drove into the city for two weeks to go through orientation. I was then assigned to Labor and Delivery, 3-11 shift, with only a preceptor to guide me. I was on my own. It was challenging, my son in pre-school, our eldest daughter in college, and my younger daughter finishing high school. She was incredibly helpful. Time management, creating a schedule was the first thing I thought about each morning when the alarm went off. I worked part-time which gave me days to prepare meals, do laundry, and paint! We had just moved and were still completing some house projects. CHANGE was the word during that time period. I sometimes look back on those days wondering how we all managed it.

NURSING AND ITS DEMANDS

Nursing helped me become a better person. It was helpful that I had already worked with teens while teaching. Many of my patients were young, scared  primiparae: they had never given birth. My patience as a teacher helped me, making it my goal to explain the birthing process, teach and encourage breathing skills, and tamp down fears. There were good outcomes when my teaching did some good; and there were times when gripped with pain they forgot everything I had told them. That’s human, that’s okay.

During my time working with pregnant teens I learned to go slowly, to provide information only when it was absolutely necessary or they asked me questions. Post-partum was often a time when I could bond with my patient, so much so that they began asking me how to raise their children, how to talk to them so they would be smart. Thus, I signed up to work with an organization of women in the south suburbs whose primary purpose was to support and help single young  women who were about to give birth. I actually held classes at Bloom High School. With the help of this dedicated group of women, we taught pregnant high school girls good nutrition, how to care for an infant, and did what we could to prepare them for labor and birth.

My WORK AT MERCY HOSPITAL BENEFITED ME

I became a confident RN, able to handle emergencies, deal with interns and doctors, and not hesitate when having to give postpartum instruction to the father, because the mother did not speak English. “Nothing in the vagina for six weeks…” and the husband, the father of the infant would just look at me. So I repeated it, “No sex.” Often I worried about the mother, tired, in pain, soon to be running a household again, with a new baby and other children. WOMEN, they can be so strong. I knew this as I listened to them talking in post-partum, the topic often about money, this new baby and how would that work out when they already had three children. Thus, even though Mercy was a Catholic Hospital, I quietly talked with my patients about birth control. It got tricky to do so when the mother didn’t speak English. I had to rely on the husband or father of the baby to translate. Those were the times I wished I spoke Spanish! On discharge, I went over post-partum care again, hoping that mother and child would do well. I did receive a few phone calls from teen mothers thanking me for my help, they being thrilled when their babies did well, and especially when they began to talk!

I will be always grateful for the positions I had at Bloom and Mercy. I loved my work; both careers made me a better person.

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