On Nursing and Becoming:
Buddhist reflections on Living and Dying by an ICU NURSe
A memoir of an ICU nurse starting her career in a neuroscience critical care unit where she encounters patients with debilitating strokes, traumatic brain injuries from accidents or gunshot wounds, and other devastating neurological conditions. Written in epistolary style with a unique Buddhist perspective, readers will enter a world-class hospital where many critically-ill patients are alive but not living, misery and suffering abound, and the human will to endure is tested.
Reflecting on her first few shifts:
Of all the things, of all the medical conditions, of all the diseases, of all the curiosities, of all the parts of the body … that I would end up working in a unit which deals with the one piece of anatomy that I find the most sacred: the human brain.
It is the most horrifying, heart-breaking, and beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced … and all at the same time. I’ve learned a thousand new things on my first three shifts. Seneca once said it takes a lifetime to learn how to live. Maybe it takes just one nurse’s shift in an ICU.
Later in her career she transfers to a burn intensive care unit (ICU) and encounters a patient who has been assaulted, bound, gagged, and deliberately set on fire. She wonders:
How do we humans come up with such ways to hurt each other? … Seems I have just traded one human tragedy for another: bullets for burns.
Selected Excerpts
Read unforgettable portrayals of love and loss, and dive into the behind-the-scenes politics and short-comings in one of the most prominent academic hospitals in the U.S.
On Nursing and Becoming: A Memoir 