Caring: That's What We're Here For

摘要

When I was less than a year old, my mother Virginia was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and given 6 months to live. As a young girl, I watched the nurse in our neighborhood come each morning and care for my mother who was bedridden with bone metastases. As I watched her ministrations to my mother's wasted and fragile physical body, my mother's buoyant spirit struggling to deal with severe pain, I resolved that I would become a nurse. The rest is history. It was during my clinical rotation in maternal/ newborn nursing as a student nurse that got me hooked: I loved caring for childbearing and childrearing women and their families. And-once a nurse, always a nurse! Now in my 70th year, serving a faith-based mission in the Ukraine, I have the opportunity to make presentations to Ukrainian physicians and nurses on maternalewborn health topics.