It took about nine months for me to push my first book out of the birth canal and into the world. Even if, like me, you are old enough to be retired, I’m sure the gestational time frame is not lost on you.
In the lull of the post-partum phase, regular calls from a still-working nurse friend kept things lively. My friend is a big-city DON. He’d regale me with cliffhanger tales of tough hires, VIP patient drama, and graveyard shift rounding.
‘You bored yet?’ he’d ask occasionally. He wasn’t asking about his stories. He was asking about my nurse-retirement.
My reply was always a perfectly honest “not yet”. It’s more whoredom than boredom when you’re hot on the social media all the time, trying to sell your baby–I mean your book. Still, at about the new-mommy point when the episiotomy stitches come out and they OK you for sex, I realized that I missed nursing.
I didn’t want to throw the baby–I mean the book–out with the bathwater. Surely, there was a way to fit both nursing and writing into my life. I found it at about the point where the baby is sleeping through the night and the pre-pregnancy jeans fit, more or less, once again.
In my new job, I review medical records for an attorney who specializes in disability law. I enjoy the work and my new office-mates have been kind and welcoming. Most days I feel just like a million-dollar baby.
I should mention that I am the only writer in the office, and the only nurse. So in spite of the camaraderie in my new workplace, it’s not like it’s all ‘mommy and me’.
Did I mention that my big-city nurse buddy runs a labor and delivery unit?
stillanurse 