The bittersweet life of a UK-based nurse

On the twenty first summer of my life, I officially became a nurse. Armed with idealism but lacking the wisdom from experience, I embarked on a journey of blood, sweat and tears. I graduated from a nursing college of a posh hospital and I was fully convinced that equality in healthcare is a myth. I told my ambitious self that ‘those who have less in life should have more in healthcare,’ and if this is not possible in a national scale, at least it can start from within. Defying my parents’ wishes, I decided to work in a tertiary hospital which caters to indigent patients. There, I discovered myself.

"I walked the road to disenchantment"

Once, I had 15 patients, one just had a neck surgery, another patient had an abdominal surgery and had severe bleeding in the operating room; both of these patients were freshly out of the recovery room. Another patient just had a lumbar puncture a few hours back, I had two patients on four hourly tube feedings and on top of these were six dengue patients with their anxious parents tirelessly asking me, “What is the latest platelet count of my baby?" Unfortunately, one of my patients had a cardiac arrest at 10 pm, 30 minutes before my shift ended officially. I went out of the ward, exhausted at 2 am and had a sumptuous meal at Jollibee with another colleague, both of us suffering from low blood sugar and mild dehydration. They say that challenges diminish small passions and increase the great ones as the wind blows out a candle and blows up the bonfire. That morning, I laid my head on a pillow and had a peaceful sleep, at 11 am, I lifted my aching legs off the bed and went to the battlefield they call ‘hospital’ at 12 pm. This was the gruelling schedule I had for two years but on my third year as a nurse, I walked the road to disenchantment.

"This will not happen to me!"

I had this patient with chronic kidney disease whose blood pressure was way up the mountain. She can’t afford to rent a machine to regulate her condition so we ended up doing the job manually with hurting eyes. Days passed and we all had to contribute for her drugs. I was not surprised when I read the doctor’s entry in the patient’s chart, saying that the family has given up due to financial constraints and that the patient was just awaiting demise. No, it’s not that I can’t deal with death; it was the patient’s daughter.

Coming from a family struggling to make both ends meet, I imagined myself in her place. The pain was too real. This will never happen to me! I will not watch a loved one suffer just because I don’t have the financial means. My passion for helping the indigent dwindled. My work in such an environment was like an exercise in heartbreak. I started losing my idealism as I learned more. Exhaustion was taking its toll on me. La Place law states that tension is directly proportional to difference in pressure; the higher the pressure difference, the greater the tension. The greater the tension, the more one will stretch himself. Perhaps, my job is pulling me in different directions that I became too resilient; I was spreading myself too thinly. Voltaire once said that no one is so wise as to learn from the experience of others. I had enough of this so-called experience. It was the source of my power actually. Experience molded my fastidious mind and my fastidious mind was silently breaking my heart.

Greener pastures

Now, I’m on the fifth year of my career as a nurse and I’m living my dreams. Gone were the days when I have to lend a bag of intravenous fluid from another patient because my patient can’t afford it. Now, I don’t have to shell out my own money to buy a medication for my patient. I no longer find myself in a difficult situation of explaining why a patient’s watcher should go out in the middle of the night because we don’t have this laboratory exam. Here, we don’t wait for days or even sometimes a week to have a computed tomography scan done and it will take only five minutes to have the result of a routine urinalysis right at hand. I opened the medication cupboard of my new ward and found it teeming with supplies, ‘if only,’ I muttered to myself.

At the end of each month, I have the pleasure of seeing my family smile because of the financial benefits this job brought us. Last month, my sister was hospitalized and thankfully, my fear of seeing a loved one being deprived of treatment due to financial limitations did not come true.

Each day, I lay my head on a pillow and find not the satisfaction I once had after a long day in the hospital. Now, the practice of treating the vital signs machine and the heart monitor (not the patient), is deeply inculcated in me. Every nurse-patient contact is so casual, as casual as a handshake, nothing more and nothing less. What ever happened? Am I too cold to feel? Am I that volatile?

Five years seemed to have passed by too quickly; I sometimes close my eyes and then try to have the feel of yesterday when it was the twenty-first summer of my life, when I was too passionate that I ended up spreading myself too thinly. Now, I am fighting my own tendencies to be complacent, apathetic and lethargic. However, I’m still hopeful that God will send the wind to blow up my bonfire again and when it happens, I will not be afraid if it will take me here or there.

Vanessa Austral, 26, worked as a nurse for three years at the Philippine General Hospital before landing a job at the United Kingdom.