Adapt Move or Die: The Origins of NurseTravels.Blog

My legs moved robotically through the automatic hospital doors. I was so tired I couldn’t feel them. The sun was behind the western mountains, and a grey twilight surrounded everything. Streetlights were turning on. The city looked the same as it had when I started my day. When I got dropped off this morning, the sun was coming over the eastern mountains, and the street lights were turning off. From dawn until dusk, I spent an entire day in the hospital. It didn’t feel like it. Time went by too fast and too slow. Coming through the doors, I felt energetic, enthusiastic, and hopeful. As the doors closed behind me, I felt fatigue, frustration, and despair, but mostly defeat.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I said, getting into the car after another demoralizing and dehumanizing twelve-hour shift on the Med/Surg floor. “I’m done, Samuel. I’m done.”

“Are you alright?” asked my husband from the driver’s seat.

“No,” I mumbled, clicking my seatbelt. I looked in the back.

Our young daughter was reading a book, oblivious to the overburden pressing down on me. She looked up and said, “I love you, Mommy.”

“I love you too,” I said.

Samuel looked over from the steering wheel. “You look sick. You’re pale. I can feel the stress coming off you. What happened in there?”

I stared into the encroaching night. No words came.

“Uh…Kris. You’re shaking. You’re turning white. Say something. Please.”

My eyes darted back and forth, thousands of images, words, and emotions (none of them pleasant) flashing behind them. “Terrible. It was terrible in there. Today was a bad day,” is all I could say.

“How so?” asked Samuel.

We were already driving. I didn’t notice. The hospital shrank in the side mirror. The ground moved under me, but I didn’t feel it. I slumped into the seat. My feet hurt, and my back was sore. The landscaping islands couldn’t pass by quickly enough.

Staring out the window, I muttered, “Nothing went right today. I couldn’t do anything right. There wasn’t enough time to get anything done for my patients.”

“That bad.”

“Yep.”

“Worse than before becoming a traveler.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I want to quit. I can’t go back. Not after today.”

“Really? This is new. Four and a half years in, you’ve never been this upset. Was it worse than the Guard? Worse than deployment?”

“Easily. I couldn’t do my job. Everyone was yelling. I was yelling. I screamed at a patient.”

“Really?”

My shaking hands clutched my head. It was hard to breathe. The words spewed out, “Discharges, admits, meds, meals, cleaning people up on and on and on. It never stopped today. I didn’t have time to eat. No lunch. No breaks. I give up. I’m done. I can’t go back.”

Samuel stared ahead. His eyebrows furrowed. “Don’t go back if you don’t want to. We’ll be alright for a while. Take a break.”

“No. We can’t afford that.”

Samuel stopped at the hospital exit and said, “Well. If you’ve hit a wall. If things are intolerable. You have some choices. You can quit and start a new assignment at a new hospital. You can quit nursing for good. Or, you can find some way to cope, to adapt to your current situation.”

I didn’t respond. I’ve never been a quitter. And I couldn’t quit even if I wanted to.

Samuel worked the blinker and checked for traffic before pulling out. “It’s like Dr. Hill always used to say in Biology. When animals are faced with changing circumstances, with environments they can’t survive in, they have three choices. They can either move, adapt, or die. As a nurse, a human animal, you are no different.”

“I don’t know what to do. How am I supposed to cope?”

Samuel sarcastically smirked. “Practice that self-care we always hear so much about.”

“Yeah. Right. Self-care.” We both smiled a little.

We stopped at a red light. Samuel looked over and said, “Maybe you should start that blog we’ve been talking about. And you should finish your book. Writing, creating, might help.”

“I can’t. When would I have time? How?”

“We’ll make time. If you can’t move on, you must find a way to adapt.” Samuel looked in the rearview mirror at our young daughter. “We have to adapt with you. You need something, an outlet for all this. If you continue like this, getting off work in complete shock, you’ll break. And then you’ll be done for good. Your career as a nurse and a caregiver will be dead. Maybe it will be for the best.”

I stared into the traffic into the city landscape. “I can’t quit nursing. It’s the only job I’ve ever had that can support us.”

“Then move on. Turn in your two weeks and start a new assignment.”

“We can’t move on, not right now, anyway. We still have a three-month lease on a $3,500-a-month house.”

“Turn in your two weeks and try to get on at a new hospital in this area.”

“I already checked. None of the other hospitals in this area have travel jobs right now. It wouldn’t matter. All the hospitals are pretty much the same. We’re stuck.”

“Then you have to find a way to take this stress off of you. Writing has worked for a lot of people.”

“I’ve tried to adapt to cope, to deal with the stress. Self-care isn’t working. And I don’t want to die, to quit being a nurse. I can’t write anything worth reading.”

We stopped again at another red light. Samuel put his hand on my shoulder. “This assignment, the traveler lifestyle. It’s the hardest thing we’ve ever done. And it’s the only way we’re surviving. I can never know what it’s truly like in there, but I know you. You’re kind, dedicated, and work harder than anyone I’ve ever met.”

The light changed, and we started moving again. Samuel glanced at me and said, “You can write. I read your stories from your first year in college. They were really good. You have a story to tell. I’ll help you edit. You can help other nurses, and in doing so, you can help yourself.”

I looked out the window and stared into the encroaching night. What other choice did I have? Exercise, meditation, mindfulness, and getting enough sleep weren’t cutting it. They couldn’t counteract a day like today.

I thought to myself, “Maybe Samuel is right. Writing and creating might be the way I can adapt.”

“Okay,” I said. “I will start writing.”

There you have it. A day so bad it broke my will to go on led me to create Nurse Travels. Like many of you, I can’t just walk away from nursing, from a commitment, from patients. I can’t just abandon the paycheck that feeds, houses, and clothes my family. I started this blog because I needed something, a way to keep going, and I hope it helps you, too.

To my fellow nurses and caregivers, the connection we share through our experiences is profound. Remember, you are not alone in this journey. We are in this together. Through shared stories and collective resilience, we can find strength and solace. Thank you for reading.