Well it’s been almost two years since I published these essays…
Looking back, writing and sharing these experiences here allowed me to build a healthier relationship to the CVICU. But time helped, too. The longer I worked there the shock started to wear off.
I developed strong friendships with my coworkers, a better self-care awareness, and a more comprehensive understanding of the heart than I could have ever imagined. I got trained to manage equipment like CRRT (continuous renal replacement therapy) and Ventricular Assist Devices and sometimes worked as the “buffer nurse,” supporting my fellow nurses.
Slowly, I began to recognize when the sadness started to pile up and I needed to take a moment or have someone pick up my shift so I could process and/or grieve.
There were lots of happy moments, too, like patient’s birthdays, mini milestones, holiday celebrations, and visits from patients who got long awaited heart transplants. So many children moved on from our unit, graduating out of the CVICU.
The good outweighed the bad.
For two summers, I volunteered as a med nurse at a week-long camp for children with congenital heart disease. Seeing these cardiac kids running, kayaking, and showing off their scars was incredibly gratifying.
This is why we do this, I thought. Being at the bedside for twelve hours a day, I was always so focused on the intricateness of my patient– their medications, monitors and hourly management, that it had taken me a long time to see the big picture.
But I still got headaches from work, internalized the stress, and had intense work dreams. And no matter how long I sat out on the lawn chair outside post shift, processing and waiting to come out of my head, wrote about my experiences, and strived to create a healthy relationship to this work, it was never enough. I sought emotional support with my family and friends but I always felt like I carried such weight around.
Around the time I finished the UCSF Palliative Care program, I had a realization:
Just because I can be a good CVICU nurse, doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for me.
This was difficult to admit. I had worked so hard to be a strong, smart, and safe CVICU nurse but it was affecting me too much physically, emotionally, and somatically. I felt unhealthy. It was hard to give up the title. Being a Pediatric CVICU nurse is incredibly badass and I will always respect and commend those who continue to work at the bedside in the field. But maybe this wasn’t my place.
Then, two years in, I decreased my shift commitment, moved states and found myself in a very transitional phase, trying to figure out where my life was headed. My job became just a job.
Before going per diem, I had never had more than two weeks off from work. Now during the six months that I flew down for my four shifts in a row once a schedule, I spent my time and energy outside of work facing realities and possibilities I couldn’t have seen while living in the Bay Area (and retaking statistics for hypothetical grad school…). In fact, I clung to the CVICU as a lifeline to who I used to be. It was a place I returned to once a month, something familiar during this time of uncertainty.
After some difficult decisions, a break up and a move home, I quit my CVICU job in March 2019, packed up my things, took my statistics final, and took off on a five month trip to nine countries.
I left my CVICU nurse identity behind.
And besides my coworkers, I missed nothing. This role had consumed so much of my life those past almost three years but the farther I travelled from home, the less I thought of it.
I felt sad yet strangely relieved. It was okay that I had left.
How reaffirming.
Now, over a year later I am so grateful for the time I spent as a CVICU nurse. Nearly every shift I use my cardiac knowledge and still find myself looking up a patient’s complex heart anatomy, teaching my coworkers, and connecting with families about their experience in a CVICU unit.
I miss the people and some of the critical thinking and every now and then I get a patient with an arterial line and get wayyyy too excited. But I don’t miss the headaches or the heaviness I carried.
I now have a healthier relationship to my job.
So, where did I end up? What did I realize about nursing on my trip? Stay tuned!