on nursing and Becoming
Read unforgettable stories of love and loss, and dive into the behind-the-scenes politics and short-comings in one of the most prominent academic hospitals in the US.
This memoir chronicles a new nurse starting her career in a neuroscience critical care unit where she encounters a wide spectrum of situations ranging from the sacred to the obscene. Written in casual prose with a unique Buddhist perspective, she encourages readers to contemplate the impermanence of all things, the nature of suffering, and the psychological dangers of attachment.
Reflecting on her first few shifts:
Of all the things, of all the medical conditions, of all the diseases, of all the curiosities, of all the parts of the body…that I would end up working in a unit which deals with the one piece of anatomy that I find the most sacred: the human brain.
It is the most horrifying, heart-breaking, and beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced…and all at the same time. I’ve learned a thousand new things on my first three shifts. Seneca once said it takes a lifetime to learn how to live. Maybe it takes just one nurse’s shift in an ICU.
Later in her career she moves to a burn ICU and encounters a patient who has been assaulted and deliberately set on fire:
How do we humans come up with such ways to hurt each other? …
Seems I have just traded one human tragedy for another: bullets for burns.
Selected Excerpts
Enter the intensive care unit through vivid depiction of human emotion and tragedy. Wrought with poignancy and philosophy, it is an exploratory book for healthcare workers and anyone who has ever wondered about the patients who straddle the thin line between life and death.
on nursing and Becoming: A Memoir 