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'A CAREER CHOICE MADE EASY, THE HARD WAY!'

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‘A CAREER CHOICE MADE EASY, THE HARD WAY!’ “So, what now?” I asked the pretty high school graduate, as she stood beside her mother, watching the school gym slowly emptying. The Graduation Ceremonies were over, and it was time for the ‘rite of passage’ graduation dance. “Oh, I don’t know really, maybe take a year off to think about it!”she said. Her mother looked at me and shrugged, and I could only say ‘Well, sometimes it takes them awhile to choose I guess.” Her mother expressed her disappointment that her honor roll daughter had not made any plans for furthering her education and seemed content to ‘go with the flow’ as she put it. She went on to say that there was nothing in our small community to offer the young people and her daughter should be using this time to do something toward building a future. I had nothing more to offer the conversation, and I could empathize to a degree, but not totally. This was mainly because making a career choice was never something I had to think about. I know the decision is a difficult and complex one in today’s world, and maybe it always was that way for some but for me my career choice was made and engraved on my heart when I was six years old. And that was it, I always knew it, and geared myself toward it. How could that be you ask? How could a child so young make such a major life decision? The story of why and how is different, needless to say, but it is true. I steered my life, my courses, my ship, in the direction of becoming a Registered Nurse. Finally, at the age of twenty-one I was what I wanted to be, a fully qualified, real, honest-to-heaven Registered Nurse. When I walked away from the Grace General Hospital School of Nursing that September day in 1969 I realized how much the decision of that little girl in a hospital ward in Twillingate, Newfoundland, so many years before had shaped my life, and my future. It all started for me in the middle of the night in a darkened hospital room in Twillingate, Newfoundland. I was six years old and my father was posted in Twillingate with the RCMP. It was in the Mid 1950s’. I clearly remember as if it were yesterday, waking up, surrounded by those metal edged hospital screens, and through the gap in the screens seeing a lighted room in the distance. I could hear soft voices in conversation, and I cried out to them. What I said I do not know, probably a cry of a frightened child, calling for ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’. Where was I? What had happened to me? Soon the light came on and the room filled with people, all dressed in white, and I remember the terror I felt. Apparently I had been incommunicative for some time. I don’t know for how long. I only know that it caused quite a stir and hustle and bustle when I woke up that night. Prior to this waking the last thing I remembered was lying on the couch in the house in Robin’s Cove, suffering from an earache, and feeling very sick. Then I vaguely recalled my parents being alarmed, saying something about a hospital, doctors and so on. After that there was nothing but blackness. A long illness followed that earache. I had developed Bacterial Meningitis. Many others were sick with it as well. After I awoke I sure had memory; memories of injections, of being very weak, discovering that all my clothes were too big, as I had lost so much weight for a child. I had difficultly walking, and all the other things that accompany a long bout of sickness. I ate meals lying or standing, my hips too sore to sit from all the injections, injections that saved my life. It is an old wive’s’ tale that meningitis ‘leaves you with something or takes something away’. It left me with a burning desire to become a nurse. I suppose part of it was the memories of the nurses who cared for me, cuddled me after each painful procedure, and generally and gradually brought me back to health. But most of all there is the crystal clear memory of one special young nurse, a young lady whose name I never did know. She was pretty, with dark eyes and dark hair, and she had a special touch that accompanied her bounty of kindness. She would drop by the ward to visit me in the evenings after she was off duty and read me stories, she knew my love for books. I dearly loved that kind and beautiful young nurse and wanted to be like her someday. The decision of my life was made in that hospital at the age of six and it never changed. One evening in particular she scurried into the ward, wearing the most beautiful black chiffon dress, lovely shiny high heeled shoes and she was a vision to behold. The wonderful fragrance of her perfume shut out the hospital smells, as she made her quick visit, said she was late for her party and rushed off blowing a kiss as she went. This young nurse was the epitome of kindness, charm and unconditional love, wrapped in a beautiful package. She would never know the impact she had on one little six-year-old girl. And so it went. I grew up, geared myself toward the goal of being a nurse and finally achieved it. No year off for me, I was in a big hurry, and at twenty-one I had made it. Now 33 years later I have to let go of my nursing career, the structured part of it anyway. Once a nurse, always a nurse they say-and I am a nurse. But the time has come to move on to other things, other interests-a very difficult decision for me to make. It is not for me to decide if I touched lives in a special way. I hope I did. Only my patients can determine that. In the Operating Room, behind a cap and mask, I always tried to make eye contact with the worried patient. Then so many times after their surgery, somebody would walk up to me and say, “I know your voice, and your eyes, but I don’t know why!” And finally they would figure it out. It was proof that they remembered some sort of connection during their difficult time. The last five years before retiring I spent working with Palliative and Cardiac Care patients. I was always referred to as the ‘Newfoundland Nurse’-I couldn’t and wouldn’t hide my accent! I just hope any life I touched knew that I cared, and cared very much for their well-being. So the decision of many years ago became my life’s work, and I loved it. The memory of my special young nurse, on any particularly difficult day, still encouraged me. I could escape by closing my eyes and see the wisp of black chiffon and smell the most wonderful perfume of a young woman from so many years ago! Illness, perfume and black chiffon shaped my life, and I enjoyed the long, demanding career of nursing, knowing I was doing exactly what I was meant to do. The motto of my nursing school was ‘Enter to learn, go forth to serve’, and that is what I did for over thirty years and I can honestly say I have no regrets. How very fortunate I am to have done my life’s work with passion, and how blessed I am to have had a goal to work towards all my life. I truly believe I was given a gift. Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe, RN. Rtd.