My name is Estelle Patterson, and I\u2019m sixty-six years old. For forty-two years, I\u2019ve been a nurse\u2014not because it pays well or because it\u2019s glamorous, but because somewhere deep in my bones, I believe that caring for people matters. That showing up when you\u2019re exhausted matters. That holding someone\u2019s hand during their worst moment can be the difference between despair and hope. I\u2019ve worked double shifts when we\u2019re understaffed. I\u2019ve held babies whose mothers couldn\u2019t. I\u2019ve closed the eyes of patients who died alone, whispering prayers I\u2019m not sure I believe in because they deserved something sacred in that final moment.<\/p>\n
At sixty-six, most of my friends are retired or cutting back to part-time. They\u2019re traveling, taking up hobbies, spending time with grandchildren. I\u2019m still working fifty-hour weeks because retirement isn\u2019t a luxury I can afford yet. The pension from forty-two years of nursing will help, but Social Security alone won\u2019t cover my modest life. So I work. I show up. I do what needs doing.<\/p>\n
And I thought I was doing the right thing when I let my son and his new wife move into my house six months ago.<\/p>\n
That November evening started like any other grueling shift. I\u2019d been at the hospital for twenty-six hours straight\u2014a marathon that began Friday morning and bled into Saturday night. We were catastrophically understaffed, running on fumes and adrenaline, managing more patients than safety protocols recommend. I\u2019d held the hand of an elderly woman dying of sepsis, her children scattered across the country and unable to arrive in time. I\u2019d assisted in emergency surgery when a car accident victim came in with internal bleeding. I\u2019d cleaned up more bodily fluids than I care to remember and smiled through it all because that\u2019s what nurses do. We smile. We reassure. We pretend we\u2019re not also falling apart.<\/p>\n
By the time I finally clocked out at nearly eleven PM, every muscle in my body screamed. My feet, even in my comfortable nursing shoes, throbbed with each step. My lower back sent sharp protests up my spine\u2014the price of years spent bending over hospital beds. My head ached with that peculiar exhaustion that comes from making life-or-death decisions while running on three hours of sleep and vending machine coffee.
\nAll I wanted was to get home, drink a glass of water, maybe eat something if I had the energy, and collapse into bed for the ten hours before my next shift. Simple desires. Reasonable expectations after twenty-six hours of keeping other people alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My name is Estelle Patterson, and I\u2019m sixty-six years old. For forty-two years, I\u2019ve been a nurse\u2014not because it pays well or because it\u2019s glamorous, but because… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n