TO BE OF USE - A NURSE'S STORY is my Story of my entire work life...because I'm still a Registered Nurse - an RN - and have always been active and licensed, first in Illinois - and then, here in California...I've actually been working in some way or another in Nursing since I was fifteen years old...so, that's well over fifty years...along with being a teacher, nursing is what I do....

TO BE OF USE: A NURSE'S STORY


I went 'Into Nursing', as is said, by an odd default....I had a tiny scholarship To Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, for Creative Writing...Because I had worked a few years as a volunteer "Candy Stripe-er" at Delnor Hospital in St. Charles, Illinois, I was given an ample scholarship to go to St. Francis Hospital School of Nursing...also in Evanston, Illinois...my parents had no money for either....so, Nursing School won out. My thought was, I'll become a Registered Nurse, an RN, and earn my own way into Northwestern to become a writer!...
O, how the young plan and dream...how could I know that I would work endlessly as an RN, mainly full time, for twenty five years....that I would still work on as a Teacher, but also as the School Nurse for another seventeen years and counting...
I've had that RN license, renewed with thirty hours of nursing education, every two years, since 1966...forty-six years as an RN....and counting....

St Francis Nursing School was a Diploma School...each student had the equivalent of two years of university: classes from Loyola University, and a year that was like an internship...the whole program was remarkably intensely hard work....University classes six hours a day, three days a week. Clinical Training and Practice in the Hospital and three hours of university classes on the other two days...
then I would work as a Nurses Aid one of the weekend days. Play a bit on Saturday nights...lots of homework. back to school on Monday...or, I'd go home for the weekend and teach my sisters how to play the piano, for pay by mom, and hang out a bit with friends in the Chicago area....or, I'd sing in Pipers Alley in Chicago with casual Folk Singing Friends, to make money...I had to make money every weekend, since my sister started college, and my parents only had enough money to pay for one of our college funds...I offered to pay my own way. and, I did.

I really loved 'Nursing School' though. The work was incredibly adult and difficult for such a young person. I had just turned eighteen when I began to become an RN, and just twenty when I graduated with my diploma...there are so many stories from those years....
I was at my first Death Beds....they are hard places to be for a young person...I felt quite somber in the presence of the quiet, true agony of death. No one takes death the same way....but all of it is very serious to a young person as I was, wanting to live so intensely!
I was at my first Births...these are Miracle Places for any one to be present at....I spent the rest of my Nursing Days getting around Births, as much as I could...including grand kids....always intense and wonderful, tho not always happy....
I saw more of human bottoms and peeing equipment than a young woman should ever have to see...human waste is a messy thing...dealing with it is a messy thing. enough said.
I learned about how to be an intellectual heathen. Our science teacher was one of the smartest profs I ever had. And, she was the first non-religious teacher I ever had. I really loved learning from her. She took a shine to my roommate Judy and me...we were her brightest stars, so she pushed us to do more...we got to dissect things that no one else got to...and to drink liqueurs in her apartment and to talk about the meaning of life...we felt very grown up!
I learned all about human anatomy and physiology in great, great detail...including autopsies...all of which I recall....
I learned how to have fun as a young adult...I danced and dated and fooled around and went out to play as much as possible.....
I learned how to be one of the best wound care/dressing changes/treatment RN in the world. These skills I still have to this day...
I learned to give the least painful shots ever....never got as good at drawing blood tho...due to my tremors....
I learned about what sort of women I would love best as good friends: they were mainly my room mates: tough, man-lovin', hard-working, bright, independent ladies....Marge Glorso, Mexican Joan Baez sing-alike with a huge body and heart. Fran Fracaro, Italian party-animal who was always in love and beat me at numbers of orgasms (long story here...). Nancy O. (?), little Polish Fireball, who introduced my to my first adult beau, John Stannish, who respected me too much to ever get me to marry him...; Diane Groya, who was my dancing friend with class, who introduced me to the guy who took my virginity....
Conversely, I learned about human sorrow as a young adult. I learned to live with two losses in my life: of my grandmother, and of my First Love. I learned how to live with sorrow, for life. What you do to bear it.
I learned that working at 7 AM is truly horrible. as is the night shift. I was asleep from 7 to 9 AM and most of the night shift. I was dreaming with my eyes open. pretty scary stuff, for my patients, who did not know that I was a zombie....
I learned how to alleviate human suffering the kind way. how to give all you have for a stranger in distress and pain. how not to lose your own self while you do that, over and over and over and over.
I learned how to live without having a casual youth. how to be an adult too fast.
I learned to love jazz, because of the young doctors who loved jazz at the hospital. they saved me lots of times, by being friends. Medical Students...especially Jewish ones were horny boys. exciting. but not wonderful grown-ups like doctors.....
I saw my first and last abortion. I learned that I was Pro-Choice. But, my choice would always be Life. Birth. and Life.
I learned that I wasn't a Catholic anymore. That I had no name for my spiritual life. but that I did feel most alive in the natural world.
I learned to leave my past behind. my parents. even my sisters. to try to go on and to make my own way. I could, because I could always get a job. I was an RN.
I learned that The Young Christian Nurses, held in the home of Dorothy and John Drish, was the most exciting intellectual activity I had...and was a great way to get out of the dorm legally. that there were Catholics who were true humans and humanists...but I still didn't want to stay one...my best friend for life: Barbara Anne Burns took me there...she and they changed so many of my perceptions of life and living...all for the better....
I learned that Psychiatric Patients were interesting Folks. that the Navy Guys at the Base near the Psychiatric Hospital were....ummmm....interesting Folks....
I learned that hospital food was and always would be the worst, the very worst, food on the planet....
I learned that I could never be a Northwestern College Student. Just as in high school, I was not like other kids. I was a one-of-a-kind, like my First Love was. I was always going to be a loner inside, and that was going to have to be OK.
I learned that I was really, really good at nursing: That I could teach people to be independent about their own care. That I could really give them a gift that way. over and over and over...
I learned that I could really die easily, as I almost did with a dose of Penicillin...I learned that dying is easy. It's living that is quite difficult to figure out and handle....

So, now I was an all-grown-up RN....I was going to have Work. I was going to support myself....what I didn't know then, was that I was going to 'always' be the top bread-winner in every household and relationship I'd be in up to this day. That this would be work that I could always walk away from when it got too crazy or hard or tiring - that I could always walk into another RN position the very next day. This was going to be good work for life...but not easy. never, never easy....

So, my first job. The Emergency Room. St. Francis Hospital...ok, not too adventuresome here...but, I thought that I needed more experience in this area...happened to pick some really, really busy days and nights in the ER...so, lots and lots of exhausting practice, all right...one day, I even got to try to help pick up the pieces of a little family destroyed in a car accident...

Then, Barbara Burns, my good friend, asked me if I'd like to try for the job as the Head Nurse at the Chicago State Hospital for the Mentally Ill for the one hundred and forty five bed Acute Male Unit. Sure! I was crazy, after all! And, they would be interesting Folks, with their bodies actually intact!
About this time, I had met some good loves, Robert, who I would marry, and his best friend, Tio Rico, who I would not - but should have...I got married. got pregnant right away. got the job as the Head Nurse. This was '67/'68....

Back and forth I would go on the bus, eating crackers and stopping to puke every AM, to take charge of the Acute Male Unit...or, more honestly, for it to take charge of me....it was fun. it was terrible. I was learning Real Nursing...
my favorite story: the resident in charge of the Unit was a very savvy guy. He finally sat me down and told me that I was too bright to be spinning my wheels over bureaucratic stuff. He told me to go get what I wanted. I told him that I wanted shoes for the guys. I had ordered shoes, and I couldn't get them to deliver them. It was starting to get cold and wet. a lot of them were wearing paper slippers to walk the grounds to the dining hall and stuff. He said, then, let's go get the shoes. We took the red wagon I used to cart supplies around the big ward, and went to the Supplies Building. The guy there tried to stop us, but we went up and down the rows with our lists, and we got our shoes...back to the ward. distributed. the end....everybody happy....but then....Hyde Pomp's limo showed up...the Administrator of the whole Hospital! He came in like the Majesty of All. My Resident and I stood tall. He berated us for our actions. We listened politely. Then I said, The men needed shoes.
Then I saw, for the first time in my life, a Hero do what it is Heros do. The Resident stood tall and said, Dr. Pomp. If you want to make an issue of this, I have a friend at the Chicago Sun, who would be glad to interview us all about how sixty men were walking this campus in the rain with cloth slippers in the mud and wet, while their shoes sat on shelves a block away. That's the kind of story that sells....Dr. Pomp clamped his mouth shut, turned on his heel and left. Nothing else ever came of it. But, I sure learned what to do to take care of business! My Hero!

About this time, all the RNs in the Mental Health Systems in Chicago were priming for the emptying of the Institutions of all the Patients who might be able to live on the 'outside', into Group Homes in the Community. We were all sent straight-away to Adler Psychiatric Institute In Chicago for Outpatient Psychiatric Team Training, which I continued classes and workshops in through 1971. This was my first exposure to university-educated professionals, and I found that I could hold my own with them, and well...that was fun to experience! I loved the good minds among them, and learned to dislike the show-offs, the repressed, and the snobs....my favorite courses there were those about human development and sexuality...the research was so interesting and so advanced for its time, that everything I learned there still is very new today!

Next job was taking care of my husband's three kids and our new born daughter... did get a small job at a local nursing home in Wisconsin, where we lived...nice people, easy work...then, a second daughter....a mere eleven months later! and, a farm to take care of as well!
During that time, I held diverse part-time nursing positions in Charge and Float-team nursing positions in Wisconsin and Illinois, in children's and adult medicine. allergy. extended care (geriatric) nursing. and, mental health (adult Groups....)

for three-months-of-summers from '68 through '71, I worked as a Public Health Nurse in the Mexican Migrant Camps in Cambria, Wisconsin. There, I developed nurse advocacy, worker advocacy/health care systems. equipped and worked in an Emergency Care Trailer in the camp. organized immunization and health-teaching services. delivered and taught home-health care. for 300 Spanish-speaking migrant Families! I also did all the counseling and mental health groups for women and families in transition....that was officially what I did...

What I did with those warm and wonderful folks was another story! I learned Mexican American cooking in tiny trailer kitchens. I learned to speak "kitchen Spanish"...never got good at the language tho. I pronounce very well...but the rest of the conversation is a mystery to me! I played with and taught the little kids their ESL classes. I helped the ladies wash and hang up their clothes, and became clothes-line capable....I still love to put my 'wash' out on clothes lines in the sun!...I sat with the women when they mourned the death of a baby who had fallen off the middle bunk of a bunk bed onto the concrete floor...I advocated for the women and the children in the clinic with the nice Filipino doctor. I learned to move past tolerance to respect to love of a different people's ways and custom and lives. I danced at the fiestas!....

Living back in Chicago again, I worked '71 and '72 in an unusual job....I was hired by a Nursing Home mogul to develop and implement an entire Home Health Nursing Agency...a Visiting Nurse Association. More experienced persons had not been willing to take on the position. (I didn't know why...Beginners Mind, here....)
It would involve a lot of writing, to get the new Agency to be approved by Medicare for Home Nursing Services. There were only two other Home Care Nursing Medicare -approved Agencies in the entire Chicago area: one was the Community Chest Agency...the other was...the Sisters of Alverno! how would we match up? With the help of a trusty totally drugged-out redheaded darling named Darlene, and the Nursing Director being a blond ditsy society do-gooder wonder named Claire, that's how! Our great and glorious leader, Mr. W, kept the money dribbling in at a steady rate. We had a tiny office, and a few devoted patients, so far....

I was responsible for writing and administering all nursing procedures. supervision. hiring. firing. Inservices. field practice by ten RNs and Nurses Aids. scheduling. In the rest of the time allotted me, I was responsible for the entire office management. billing. books/accounting. payroll, and supervision of my crazy but brilliant secretary/bookkeeper...Then I had to implement and maintain records of all Medicare billing and accounting procedures for the agency. be responsible for all community relations and advertising programs. Quality Control. community accessibility. proof of diversity of program. nursing program development. staff development...
as the mother of three little kids under five and step-mom to three older kids on weekends and summers, the work was exhausting! But, it paid very, very well!
We 'passed' the very first time. The US government Medicare Officials could find not one single thing wrong in our little program. not one 'i' to dot. not one 't' to cross. We received government approval to be the third Visiting Nurse Association in the City of Chicago, called Home Aide Nursing Services...this was a happy ending, yes?

Well, not entirely...it turns out that I had just made legal an Agency for the Syndicate that ran all the Nursing Homes in the City. Yep. I was a Syndicate Enabler! This was one of the biggest shocks of my born days! I was furious! Mr. W. found it impossible to convince me that his great lie to me was OK...and I wasn't too pleased to find out that Claire and Darlene knew that we were working for the Syndicate all along! I decided to quit, on account of I had principles and so on....actually, I was just scared of being part of the Syndicate.....so, I quit.
Mr. W. was mad at me! He had expected me to stay and work to keep his business in business legally....he actually called to remind me that we owed him four hundred dollars we had borrowed from him...I told him that I was keeping that four hundred as bonus pay for having legitimized a mob business. To my surprise, he actually shut up. He never bothered me again...
I heard the agency had a fleet of mob cars, mob uniforms for the nurses...all kinds of business....I heard the agency lasted a few years, then faded away, and never became the Franchise (!) it had expected to become....
what an adventure that had been! I got lots of new clothes that his wife had bought me too...and good pay...o well....

'72 and 73', I worked as a Family Therapist/Health Advocate, and RN for the Home Visiting Team for the, hold on to your hat: Chicago School and Workshop for the Mentally Retarded/ Edgewater-Uptown community Mental health Center! Whoa!... I worked with a great Psychologist and a Clinical Social Worker, Kathy and Pat (really!)...The team fell apart, tho, due to the genuine insanity of the Clinical Supervisor of the Mental Health Center...she was the opposite of my team leader, Kathy, who was totally sane and very intelligent and loaded with moxie...Kathy decided we'd have to leave the Center, because this woman was that toxic....they finally fired her a year later...when half of the Center's Professionals quit because of her manipulative ways....mental health is such a fragile field...lots of crazies work in it!

For about four months then, I worked as a Staff nurse on the Psychiatric Unit of Evanston Hospital, while I prepared to leave Chicago for California....for, I was getting a divorce from the kid's dad, who was manic-depressive and very crazy himself at the time...I felt I needed a complete break from the Midwest...and leave so many dreams undone and failed and left behind...perhaps California would be a new start...
It would mean leaving behind my Family. my old loves. my step children...but so many people I knew where moving there!

For over a year I'd been working one evening a week in one of the Free Health Clinics in Chicago. My friend Barbara Burns had introduced me to this wonderful volunteer army of health care professionals, working in over twenty really for-free clinics to serve the poorer populations in Chicago who couldn't pay the fees for even Public Health Clinic care...the point of the clinics was to force the Public Health System to acknowledge that it was failing the public in many ways, among them, high fees...it became one of the few Social Justice Movements that I ever knew of, that actually accomplished their goals!
I had made good acquaintances there, among them, my "brother" Bill, who has been a steady part of my life since those early '70s...and a handsome, charismatic doctor named Rick, who was intriguing to me....he was a friend of our friend, Judy, who was also in the 'movement'. These were exciting times, being an RN involved in something so worthwhile!
He was going to move...to California, to be part of the Alternative Health options for work out there on the West Coast!....So...

The kids and I traveled with our new Doctor live-in-boyfriend, Rick, out to Oakland, to make a new start...my first job was as an RN of the Float Team in Children's Hospital, a part-time and on-call position, two to three shifts a week. At the same time, I was learning Nurse Practitioner training under his care, to become a Nurse Midwife. We were delivering babies about twice a week, at home...I had three sitters available to watch the kids at night, if we were working then...I was very tired, but happy with this work...
I also held a Woman's Adult Group Therapy session once a week, in a small private practice/share position....

California was wonderful...all my loses and problems in the Chicago Area and in Wisconsin, seemed far, far away...

Then Rick, and in fact, every one else who had moved out to California with so many idealistic dreams and hopes, left the Bay Area. He left us to move up North and be part of rural medicine, he said, but, also...it was time for us to part company.....
I was now going to be on my own raising the kids. Time to get a serious full-time job again, that would actually pay enough to keep us afloat....

So, for three years I was the Supervisor/Head Nurse for the Psychiatric Unit at Providence Hospital in Oakland. Let's see...I was very, very responsible now....for all the Therapeutic Program Development and Supervision. for staffing all three shifts. hiring. firing. disciplining. Inservices. Quality Control. the Unit Budget (which I always kept in the Black...the only Unit in the hospital to do so!). development of entire policy and procedure manual for accreditation purposed in '76/'77. staff evaluations. ordering all supplies. repairs. the medical-surgical health care delivery system for the Unit...for an eighteen patient, Voluntary ("open"), Unit in an acute hospital milieu....I supervised twenty-five nursing personnel, one Occupational Therapist. One Social Worker. and! was the Adult Group Therapist Leader on the Unit.
Doesn't that all sound very responsible and serious? Well, it was...and trying to have any fun was very hard...especially as I rarely spent time away from my kids....they were Number One!....

Still...I was dating. I was flirting with Doctors. I was blond and bright and kind. I had three kids every one seemed to love. I was friends with my staff people. I was earning just enough to get by. I had a good roommate who was helpful and fun...the kids and I were camping a lot and doing fine in California. I was not lonely. but, I was alone.
Also, psychiatric care was getting to me. I was very tired of being in charge all of the time of crazy people and some crazy staff people as well. Friendships with a couple of the Psychiatrists were nice...but no body was really giving me anything interesting to do!.. I needed a change of pace....I had also just completed, with years of night course work, my BA in Public Health Services Administration, from St. Mary's College in Moraga, California....I thought I needed a degree to make more money for my kids...it didn't quite work out that way...o well!....

About this time, a friend of mine called to tell me that she needed help, and fast...we're talking '78 here...
She was the Director of an Extended and Skilled Nursing Care Facility, (fancy name for a Nursing Home...) right in Oakland, within walking distance of my home. What she needed was an Assistant Director who would help her to straighten out the mess the place was in...it sounded like something different to do, and it would be out of my usual work options of Psychiatric/Medical/Surgical/Hospital Care - a change I really needed... and, it paid well, at a time when the kids were getting older and needing more lessons, schooling, clothing, everything!

Here's how official this job was: I was Quality Care Coordinator with participation with concurrent audit studies on a regular basis. Infection Control Nurse for both the Acute and the Skilled Nursing Facility programs. Clinical Care Coordinator for all three shifts. Day shift Charge Nurse. Procedures Committee Director, responsible for initiating sixteen separate policies, procedure and new forms during my administration. Director of Staff Development. and, Relief for the Director of Nurses whenever she was absent....

During that same time, I worked two nights a week at Cathexix Institute, a Transactional Analysis out-patient Mental Health Center, as a therapist-in-training in Transactional Analysis techniques. I loved this work, and learned a great deal from the people involved...and, between the two jobs, the kids and I were doing OK...we had enough!

I remarried...Michael was working as a potter at the time, with an MA from Cal Berkeley....I still needed to work and plenty! So '80/'81, I worked as the Utilization Review Coordinator at Peralta Hospital in Oakland (where I met John Wayne registered as Marion R. Morrison) (!), as the big excitement of the job....! ) I was responsible for Quality Control programs and Utilization Review. I was the relief Infection Control Nurse. I was not happy doing these administrative positions very much....not much contact with patients! I was also back in school taking classes towards obtaining a California Public Health Certificate, to become a Home Health Nurse...No more hospital or administrative work for me!

Into Home Care I went! Goodness I loved Home Care! The work was always, always very, very hard. but, always very, very rewarding as well! I was happy, back to being a person of use. a nurse who could make a real difference for people in need....I was called a Case Coordinator, which meant I was responsible for all the care needed for a case-load of twenty five patients....delivering skilled nursing care: procedures, teaching, supervising, monitoring, and nurse diagnostics and assessment...I was involved in the training and inservices for the Nurses Aids team...I developed the first Psychiatric Skilled Nursing Care Program with an MSRN,ever established in the State of California - including joint writing of all policies and procedures; and then, case management for the psychiatric nursing home-care patients...

In '85, I was hired by a friend to set up and manage her home care division...I decided to help her get on her feet with her agency...
the title was Home Care Coordinator, Alameda County Nursing Cooperative...I developed her program. wrote and implemented policies and procedures. marketed the Home Care Program. Hired, Fired, Trained. and field-supervised seven LVNs and thirty Home Health Aides and Homemakers. I developed the LVN Home Program and maintained the HHA Program for attendant and respite care for the California State Regional Center for the Developmentally Disabled...
But, due to financial mismanagement, the Agency closed it's doors by fall of the same year....

so, back to direct care...for awhile, I worked for the City of Oakland, covering for a Pregnancy Leave...I'm sorry to say that I learned a lot about Federal Government and City Government work....compared to the private agencies I worked for, the work was actually very easy and almost boring....and the staff complained that they had too many very difficult responsibilities....an enormous difference in perspective about what work is all about!....lesson learned....

My last full-time job in Nursing was '86 through '91...I worked for Home Call Nursing Service at the Merritt-Peralta Institute. I was the Psychiatric Clinical Coordinator for the psychiatric home-visiting-nurse program serving Merritt, Peralta and Providence Hospitals in Oakland. I developed the program, including expansion into a hospital-outreach program in '89. I was the Case Manager for the psychiatric patients in all three hospitals. I also case-managed a PHN caseload of medical-surgical patients in the economically-depressed West Oakland region...
This was a happy, healthy, and extremely busy job! I made good friends there, and was making a big difference in a lot of lives, which felt especially great!

Suddenly, as I look back on it, I was ready for another change...this time, I realized that I wanted to leave Nursing completely....
I wanted to go back to school, and learn something other than nursing...and,
I wanted to be a teacher, to teach kids...probably older kids....

My husband and I, who were separating, agreed that he would have the house and our savings for retirement, in return for my going back to school for three years...to become a teacher...that of course, is a different story...

I've never given up my RN Licence. Every two years, I take a thirty hour course to keep my California Licence renewed....in the seventeen years that I've been a school teacher, I've worked as the School Nurse for the two school programs I've worked in...it's been rewarding to be needed, and to do well with a different population...young people, instead of older folks and psychiatric clients....

Love is what I do. Nursing, like Teaching, is for me, a kind of Loving.

It's important to me for me to be of use. I have felt human fully, because my work has been useful. because it has given me a way to be good for and with people.

I have loved my work. I have been lucky to have had work I could love.

I have been lucky

to be of use....