Last Week

This week has been crazy.  So much to do, so many people to see for the last time in awhile.  Not knowing when I’ll, or even if, I’ll see people again makes these hugs and kisses more difficult than usual.  Goodbyes are not my forte—ask anyone I’ve dated. 

As of Sunday night, everything in my beautiful little apartment was neatly packed, ready to go in the morning.  Mom came over Monday and we loaded one and a half truckloads out of my little one-bedroom and into a 10 x 10 storage unit in the rain.  The rest of the day was spent running around town and taking apart the monster bookshelf.  I had been dreading taking the thing apart since I put it together, the first night I spent in my own little place.  It took me four hours to assemble and forty-five minutes to take apart. 

Monday night was the third of four parties that people have been nice enough to a) put together and b) show up to in the past few weeks.  I’ve told a few people that I really didn’t think anyone would care that much that I was leaving.  I had no clue that they would take time out of their lives to not only show up to a party, but write notes and letters and buy me gas cards for the road.  It blows my mind.  Everyone has been so encouraging and in such support of this huge life decision I’m making right now.  I need that encouragement right now, because this week has not had a whole lot of “happy” moments; rather, many goodbyes and letting go moments.  As previously stated, I am not good at letting go, so I need to move on to the adventure part of this saga before I start thinking too much about what I’ve lost.

Tuesday was the day I officially moved out of my first place.  That was not fun in any way, shape, or form.  I loved living there and had so many good memories.  Putting that damn bookshelf together, assembling my little table and chairs, studying for NCLEX, keeping my own little place clean—reconnecting with friends that I’d missed for many years, many good conversations and even more glasses of wine .  Having a silent sanctuary when I’d been in a loud, obnoxious ER all night, a place to stay in when God decided four solid inches of ice was what Indy needed this past February.  I cooked for friends and cried by myself and paid bills and wrote letters and kept myself company for a year, and I loved it.  I am so grateful for the time I spent in Apt 304.  It was really, really hard to hand over the keys and drive away.

After another great party thrown by awesome people, today came with final goodbyes to the last of the friends, and the first of the very close family.  Grandma and I went out today for lunch and spent a couple of hours talking together for the last time in awhile.  She did a really good job of not crying until the last minute.  I hate to see her cry. 

I spent the afternoon on paperwork: getting the rest of my travel nurse paperwork together for Cross Country, completing every step besides the fingerprinting for my California license endorsement, and sending off the rest of the bills.  Dinner with the fam, a last minute drug screen (seriously?), and now I’m sitting in the living room typing, as everyone else is in their own space or asleep.

It’s my last night at 728 feet; the next time I sleep in a bed, I’ll be in Portland, Oregon. 

Last Day

June 24, 2011.  3:44 AM. 

I’m clocked out and walking out of the ER.   I’m exhausted; it wasn’t a smart choice to pick a solitary night for my last night.  Better to have been done with everything last week.  Then again, I spent all night in triage.  I think the managers scheduled me out there because they knew I’d just be over being there and that way I’d get in less trouble.  It’s hard to screw up triage when you’ve been out there for four years.   Either someone can wait, or they can’t, and if they can’t, they go to the back.  Otherwise they sit out there and wait for their name to be called and grumble about the person who came in after them getting a room before them.  It’s the nature of the ER waiting room.

Before I leave, I take a walk through the halls where I’ve spent countless hours.  I take in the smell of the department; the smell of the Emergency Department is comforting to me now.  I walk past rooms where I’ve seen people die; I walk by rooms that have some very special memories to me.  My very first code was in SR2.  My very first IV, room 19.  Gale and the ear wax irrigation that turned into a 9 month memory, room 5.  The first time I got to feel like I was the primary nurse as a student, room 18.  I’ve cried, laughed, hugged, and kissed in that department.  I’ve done a lot of patient care, and I’ve wiped a lot of ass.  I hope that I have made an impression on a few of the people I’ve taken care of in this place.  “As you do to one of the least of these My brothers, You do to me.”  I’ve not been the best or the most compassionate or the most competent nurse, but I’ve tried.

I try to realize, to understand the gravity and reality of the situation: these are my last hours of feeling welcome in this ER.  ERs are not static; they are dynamic, and in a year, half of the staff will not know who I am or that I was just a little girl when I started working there.  How I have grown and changed since my very first day on the floor.  It’s hard to bring emotion to leaving; inside, I feel that I am ready to leave.  My heart does not feel attached any more.  It is time.

Now the curtain is drawing on this northside hospital.  The chapter that is the CHN Emergency Department is closed, and a new page is starting, to tell the next part of my story.  Judging from how blessed I have been here, I have no reason to believe that the upcoming pages will hold anything but another set of learning experiences, a new crop of friendships, and a hard but ever-so-worth it mountain to climb. 

Reactions

When I tell people that I’m leaving my current life for Oregon, they generally say something along the lines of, “OREGON? Why?”  I explain to them my love for my family, the landscape, the endless outdoor opportunities, how God always seems about a million miles closer when the biggest interstate around is I-5 and Mt. Hood is hovering in the nearby distance.

The reactions from my coworkers have been all over the place.  Most of them are very supportive, citing the obvious: I’ve been talking about leaving for Oregon for the past four years.  I am young, childless, and in no position to settle down, get married, or settle for the life that is normal here in Indiana: marriage, kids, live your whole life in one zip code, and never really do anything worth writing home about.  Unless, of course, you visit Gatlinburg.  [I HATE Gatlinburg.  Gatlinburg is one giant pool of “we settled,” in my humble opinion.] But I digress.

My family has a little bit of a different opinion on the whole ordeal.  When I say, “I’m leaving Indianapolis for the Pacific Northwest,” my grandma and parents automatically experience a heavy dose of déjà vu—my aunt and uncle packing up their lives, driving to Washington, and changing the sense of family that the aforementioned loved ones previously knew.  As far as I can tell as an outsider, this comes with a wave of emotional scab-ripping.  Abandonment.  Broken relationships.  Broken hearts.  Saying goodbye to someone you love and care about, not knowing when or if you will see them again, because it’s a rough business getting two adults and two small children across the 2000 mile stretch that spans the distance between Seattle and Indianapolis.  Clearly, my announcement that I was actually going to leave caused some tears.  That’s probably an understatement.  I’m giving my parents major props for only taking two weeks to stop being mad at me and start asking questions about my impending move.

I had a peer at work tell me today that she is worried about me—a new nurse going all by myself to a place where I don’t know anyone, and I may not know what to do.  I could choose to be slightly offended by this statement, or I could try to understand the origins of her concern.  I know she didn’t mean to say that I’m a worthless nurse.  She has a point, though.  In this new ER, with staff that doesn’t know me, hasn’t brought me up in their ways, and could be openly hostile to new people, I am going to have to work my ass off.   I’m going to have to get it together, learn as much as I possibly can, and remember everything all in the span of a couple of weeks.  I no longer have a reputation that gives me any kind of benefit of a doubt.  I’m no longer favored by management.  I’m now the new girl.  I have something to prove: that I am an asset to this organization.  That I’m a competent nurse.   Hell, that I can keep up.

The point I’m trying to make is that this move is not sponsored by the opinions of others.  Everything that happens from here on out is between God and me.  And, I am responsible for the outcome of this great adventure.  You hear it all the time: “You get what you give.”  That is so true.  To leave everything I know and move 2000 miles away to a town where I know a grand total of four people, start a new job that will no doubt prove to be a challenge (I haven’t been new for almost four years!), and on top of that, to drive to this location by myself—this is a gamble.  It’s scary.  It’s a major risk.  It’s not approved by the people whose opinions I respect more than most.  But the payoff—oh, the payoff.   Even if, in three months, I find myself back in the Hoosier state because I miss my family (and those puppies!) too much to be away, I will be able to say that I did this.  Regardless of what anyone else thought or said about it, I put myself out there.  I existed outside of my comfort zone, because I knew that I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t follow my dreams.  And to me, this “most excellent adventure” is infinitely worth it.

Beginnings...the story of this Most Excellent Adventure

This great adventure has a beginning on a family roadtrip involving a flight to Portland, Oregon and a long drive home.  

Fourteen year old me didn’t know about Mt. Hood, or Don Miller, or Voodoo Donut; all I knew was that Aunt Sherri and Uncle Tom lived out west and we were going to fly out to visit them first and drive back, seeing a big portion of the United States on the way.  I was excited at the prospect of seeing the country, a little nervous about sharing the back seat with my two siblings, ages twelve and eight.  (At fourteen, your little brother is still annoying and your sister is so immature.  To make matters worse, at fourteen, you don’t know how to keep your mouth shut.  At least, I didn’t!)

Tom and Sherri lived in a small town three hours away from Portland.  After spending a night in a hotel near Portland International, we piled into the black Denali and headed east through the Cascade Mountain range, stopping along the way to take a walk along the Detroit Dam.  Fourteen year old me raved about the Dam in my journal: “WOW! Is this what heaven looks like?”  If heaven has turquoise mountain reservoirs and pine trees reaching up towards the sky (is there a sky in heaven), maybe heaven does. 

A little farther along, passing Mount Washington and a lot of forest fire on the right, we drove down through Sisters and into Bend.  The air at that time was thick with smoke from the forest fires; Black Butte Ranch was evacuated that week as fires claimed several homes.  The sun was shining a little bit brown in July 2002.

In Bend, my family climbed to the top of Pilot Butte, where Uncle Tom pointed out the names of all the mountains we could see—the Three Sisters, Mount Jefferson, Mount Washington were on the list.  I’m sure there were more.  We went rafting on the Deschutes river, where I saw desert canyons and crystal clear river water for the first time in my life.  I spent hours on my family’s back porch, and in the few days that I was there, I fell in love with Bend.

Since the great cross country roadtrip, I’ve fallen in love with not only Bend, but also Oregon in general.  Over the past nine years, Portland, where the majority of my family eventually settled, went from an every two year visit to an annual destination.  Family trips dwindled into my solo adventures.  Apart from loving the mountains, rivers, lakes, and culture of Oregon, I valued my relationships with my aunt, uncle, and cousins.  It killed me to leave, knowing that each of the little ones would be another year older the next time I saw them, and probably wouldn’t remember me next year.  On top of that, my Uncle Tom began a heavy battle with cancer three years ago, and every time I said goodbye, it was with the knowledge that this time might be the last time. 

Ironically, it was at Tom’s memorial service, a month ago, where I ran into some family friends that invited me out to their home in Bend for a day.  Knowing that my aunt and her siblings were planning on solo family time together that day, I took them up on their offer, and headed south and east, on the same route taken nine years ago in the backseat of the Denali.  The weather was wet and cloudy, typical of spring in Portland.  However, as I rounded the corner at the top of Santiam Pass, the clouds parted and Mount Washington stood up, snowcapped and tall to my right.  I literally screamed and clapped my hands—“thank You, thank You, thank You!”  Think kid on Christmas morning.  As I descended down the mountain road into Sisters, I thought, I can’t not live here.  Grammatically incorrect, yes.  But that drive started up all of the emotions that rang in fourteen year old me, the person who wrote down, “I wish I could bring back the feeling.”

To make a long story short, upon return to Portland, I applied for two jobs at a local hospital, not thinking that I would ever get an interview (I did), much less a phone interview (again, I did).  I needed to be in Indy until the end of June (orientation starts July 8), and I needed a place to stay (found it).  Every request I’ve made of God has been answered; slowly, methodically, and in His way, but answered, with a solution to every problem.  I repeated over and over, “Your will be done,” between the day I applied and the day I heard from HR.   I am on a temporary contract that will last until fall, and then I’ll move somewhere warm, Lord willing. The next step is up to Him as well.

2002

“It’s late afternoon, so the sun is hanging in the western sky, casting its golden glow over the beautiful desert town of Bend.  The juniper trees, green and brown stand stately among fields of lava rock, sand, and golden grasses.  It’s all hilly; hills made of lava rock from ages old volcanoes.  Here and there are wildflowers; to the back of me is a single poppy.  A soft, warm breeze is keeping the hot desert air moving and comfortable.  It’s so beautiful….I love this place.  It has such a mysterious, if not gorgeous, vibe—for lack of a better word.”

I find it ironic that fourteen year old me wrote those words in a journal depicting a whimsical ocean scene, complete with sailboat, lighthouse, and sunshine, with the line, “Let your dreams set sail” scrawled across the top.  Sitting on the back deck of my family’s house in Bend, I watched the sun go down, smelled the smoke and pine and sage, and fell in love with the place.