'I’ve had to explain to friends and family members—and, sometimes, even myself—that if I was in the army and there was a war, I’d have to go fight. I’m a nurse, and I’m being called to duty, so I have to go and help people.'
In 2001, I was working as a trader on the American Stock Exchange when 9/11 happened and our firm fell apart. I decided to do some career testing, because the finance industry was in a shambles, and the number-one thing it said I would be good at was nursing.
And so, at the age of 48, I graduated and passed the boards on the first time around and found myself looking for a position at a hospital. The only jobs I could find were at a nursing home, which provided virtually no training—and I’d be completely on my own, with huge numbers of patients requiring a full range of services.
All night long, you hear rapid-response codes and cardiac arrest codes being called; it’s pretty unnerving, and it wears on you. Lately they’ve started playing snippets of Alicia Keys singing “New York State of Mind” when somebody’s being released from the hospital after recovering, and it’s a very welcome change in the soundtrack.
But the person that this has taken the biggest toll on is my wife. Two or three days into this, I called my cousin who’s a doctor and asked him, “Am I being heroic, or am I being foolish?” Basically, “Is it worth it?” And he walked me through how scared he was when he was a new physician, and how this was a natural feeling, and how he didn’t feel I was being foolish at all as long as I continued to be vigilant about my PPE and washed my hands like crazy.I have a whole routine when I come home.
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