Welcome to the friends and family who have gathered to celebrate our graduation, and to those who are with us in spirit. I am honored to have been selected to speak today.
Three years ago, I rented a car, made a mix CD called “Yale Mix” and braved a blizzard to drive from Montreal to my interview at the Yale School of Nursing. Never did I imagine that the snowy, slippery trip would change the course of my life and transform me into the person who stands before you today. That summer, I moved to New Haven. Inspired by the strong, independent thinkers that were to be my classmates in the Fall, I broke up with my boyfriend and threw my heart and soul into nursing.
Becoming a nurse felt awkward and confusing, but exactly right. While I received word that friends from college were buying condos and getting married, I was buying scrubs, and getting delusional from lack of sleep. Some friends from my previous life joined the Peace Corps and learned new languages and a new way of life. I learned that the absence of language, but just presence, can sometimes communicate more powerfully than words. We also learned a new language, that of electrolytes, cytokines, and the names for parts of our body we didn’t know existed.
Slowly, we began our transformation. It started with small things. Like when talking with friends after clinical at Rudy’s, our favorite place for beer and french-fry debriefing, things would come out of our mouths like “it looked more like a venous ulcer than an arterial one”, and “what they thought was pyloric stenosis, ended up being esophageal atresia!” Who were we becoming? I would catch glimpses of myself in the mirror over the sink in patients’ rooms and not recognize myself. Who is this person in scrubs? I grew into her over the course of my time at YSN. I remember the day that projectile vomit, ceased to make me gag and run out of the room but that I felt incredible compassion for the person experiencing it. I remember holding her hair, stroking her head with a cool cloth, and whispering, “It’s okay, just get through this. It’s okay.”
That nurse, the stranger in the mirror, came with me as the transformation continued into nurse midwife. Oh how we almost died that second year! I thought the first year would be the toughest but then we were slammed with advanced pathophysiology (which now seems like nothing more than a bad dream) and more pharmacology (I’ve got to say, I am really amazed at how my brain retained information about a zillion drugs that I can’t even pronounce…for the first 10 minutes of class. After the quiz, I promptly forgot them). These classes were combined with learning new intimidating skills like pelvic exams, making slides to look at under the microscope, and seeing patients in clinical in the provider role while looking barely older than 18 myself.
It was during my final year that I learned to listen. A young pregnant woman came into the hospital complaining of abdominal pain. As she spoke, my mind raced: “Okay," I thought, “this could be a gastroenteritis, it could also be a urinary tract infection, a pelvic infection, a chorioamnionitis… Let’s see, I’ll do a urinalysis, CBC, cultures, wet prep. What meds, could I use?” While the conversation continued in my head, the patient finished her story. I presented my plan and differential diagnoses to Heather Reyolds, the midwife on-call with me that evening. “Before doing any of that,” she said, “Let’s go in and talk to her together.” Heather took the young woman’s hands in hers, looked in her eyes, really looked, and said “What is really going on here?” The patient proceeded to tell us of an abusive relationship at home, fear, sadness, and that she had no where else to go, was hungry, and came into the hospital. I looked down at my list of labs and diagnoses and felt awful. Heather and I got her some graham crackers and apple juice, and the next part made me uncomfortable at first but I realized it was the appropriate thing to do: We prayed with her. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life.
Today we walk this stage as Yale Nurses. I don’t think I’ve fully comprehended what this means just yet. Am I scared of life as a new nurse midwife? Absolutely. But I know that when I’m rubbing the back of a laboring woman in the blue hours of dawn, when I’m scared in the rare event that a birth becomes complicated, I know the nurse in the mirror, and the anxious student learning to listen are with me. Congratulations to each member of the Class of 2009 who sacrificed, suffered, and in the process, grew, in order to stand on this stage today as a Yale Nurse.
