Me, a Nurse?

A career in nursing has never, ever appealed to me. Don’t get me wrong, I really admire and respect those who are nurses, but infections, blood, needles, injections? Nope, those were things I knew I definitely wanted to avoid. I remember way back when I was in third grade, my teacher (my Dad) gave us an assignment to write an essay about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Almost every single girl in the class wrote an essay about wanting to be a nurse. I guess it was kind of the equivalent of a little boy wanting to be a firefighter, but not me. What did I write about? I wanted to be a forest ranger like one of my older brothers. I remember even drawing these little men and one little women, dressed in green, tracking bears through a forest! Well as it turns out, ironically, I am in the forest, also known as jungle, but am I tracking bears or protecting the trees? Nope, I’m doing the one thing I was sure I never wanted to do! Nursing! It started like this. A work team was here and when they were leaving decided to give me their leftover first aid supplies. It included a large amount of band-aids, antibacterial wipes and Neosporin. I didn’t want to say no, but I had no idea how I could possibly use all that stuff. Jayden had the occasional small scrape, but this many bandages, antibacterial wipes and Neosporin? He probably wouldn’t use that much in a life time, much less in the three months we would be in here in Pignon. Another team that had been here previously had left a box of surgical gloves in a bathroom cupboard, I saw no use for those either, but little did I know.
Remember several weeks ago when I wrote about Mona and washing her hair and giving her my shirt? Well, I used the extra water to wash her arms and legs and noticed several infected sores on her knee. I really don’t like looking at infected things, but I couldn’t just leave it the way it was, so I dug out a pair of surgical gloves, a bag of antibacterial wipes, bandages and Neosporin and got to work on her leg. Examining it closer I could see that it had started out as a several minor wounds, probably her just falling on some rocks, but they had become badly infected. Her dark skin was turning black and… okay, enough! You can probably imagine what an infected leg looks like. It grosses me out even writing about it. Anyway she didn’t complain when I cleaned out her wounds or when I put on the cream on her bloodied tender skin. She even smiled bravely and excitedly pointed to her band-aid. Well, the band-aid didn’t last long, but at least the wound was cleaned. Well, that was only the beginning. The next day she came again and I cleaned it all over again and once again applied the antibacterial ointment. The next day she came again, but this time she brought some friends who also had all types of infected wounds all over their body. “Mina, Mina, they would call during our Creole lessons, so finally I told them I would help them but they had to come at a set time. Everyday right after lunch I would pull on my gloves, line up the every growing number of kids and get to work. Well, the antibacterial wipes, that would have lasted Jayden a lifetime soon dwindled. What am I going to do when my supply is gone? I wondered. Well the next team came and guess what they gave me? A giant bag of alcohol prep pads! So, I had no excuse to stop. And you know what? After seeing the results, I couldn’t stop anyway. Mona’s knees are completely healed, I’ve manage to treat the infection on Mali’s elbows and I got to Djempsky’s cuts before they became infected. I still don’t like blood, wounds or infections, but treating the wounds, cuts and sores of these children is making a difference, so I have to do it. I can’t stop.