Too Old to Start Something New?

Six months ago our family returned to the US and started a new phase of our lives. It has been trying at times, but one of those things you just do because you have to, like breathing. As part of our new life, it has become necessary for me to go back to "work" as a nurse in the US, at the age of 44. I have been working as a nurse in Africa, but it had been over 13 year since I had worked in the US. There was a lot to catch up on, but I'm slowly getting up to speed. For four months now I have been working in the Emergency Room of a small rural hospital.

Funny that I ended up working in the ER. I never thought I would want to - always thought that would be too stressful, and after 15+ years of striving to survive, let alone thrive, in the African continent amidst disease, cultural challenges, language barriers, horrible roads, corruption, evil, unending logistical hassles, sometimes living in fear and trying not to, not to mention bullets occasionally flying and racial tensions mounting, caring for the burned, the sick with tropical diseases, the insane, and those severely wounded from a war and strife filled region, and trying to live something of a normal life for me, my husband and four children, you think I would run as far away as I could from Emergency room care. I thought I would. Crazy enough, each time I applied for a job after returning to the US, the ER was what was available and what I was "suitably matched" to do. Hmmm. Well, I stopped fighting it and was hired in an ER. It has not been that bad. I thought I would struggle more with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ironically the ER has been thus far rather mild compared to some of what I witnessed in Africa, and I am thriving in the atmosphere of a team, where I am not alone in deciding the fate of the individual, if there is any deciding at all, where there is access to the best of medical care and hope is not completely lost, and where most people come in for less than emergencies.

It is a far cry from Africa. There is nothing more grim and disheartening to bear witness and feel deeply the grief of those doomed to their lot in life without hope in the "Dark Continent", those whose bodies are eaten away day by day by the grotesque tumors that are slowly claiming their bodies without any hope of escaping them, those whose only water source is poluted with countless microbes that kill them daily, those who live and fear daily the autrocities of evil war lords who terrorize without accountability, giving into fatalism and accepting it as normal and unavoidable.

Yet the contrasts in what people fight against to survive is astounding. I come from 15+ years of working in a country whose mothers lose half their children on the average before the children reach adulthood, some of whom have died right before my eyes. I come from a world where men, women and children die daily from tetanus, rabies, bacteria, malaria, amebas, typhoid, Schisto, Hemorrhagic and Yellow Fever, to name a few, of the diseases resulting from the war of man against nature and microbes, where people fear what they cannot see that can really kill them, where natural selection has left only the strongest to survive (no, I don't believe in Evolution, by the way), where no hospital has ever seen a neurosurgeon or heart surgeon, and where the average life expectancy is 42. Most people don't live long enough to ever experience heart disease, lung disease or the miriad of other co-morbid conditions experienced by the vast majority of Americans today resulting from indulgence, addictions, sedentary lifestyles and poor health habits. In the US the strong and the weak alike have the privelege to survive and escape the onslaught of most microbes through the invention of vaccines, antibiotics and eradication programs, yet end up killing themselves by overeating, underexercising, and indulging in everything from food to drugs and alcohol. Even sadder, the youth of this nation who should have the greatest potential of ever realizing their hopes and dreams more than any other generation or culture end up committing suicide, lost and misguided without God. All too often ER's around the country see people suffering from anxiety, mental illness and out of control. It begs the question, have we done any better? Has all that we have achieved in this country made a difference?

I believe the answer is no, not without God. God's presence in a person's life is the only person that can help them make sense, wherever they are in the world. We are all going to die, the only difference is how we die and when, and whether we have hope or not for something beyond this meaningless life. Having that hope while still living on this earth is the only thing I believe that can really allow us to truly thrive. I have been all too close to death myself, and to losing my own mind from witnessing and experiencing some of the atrocities, desperation and evil that exists across the Atlantic. Only by God's grace was I pulled up from that darkness and given something to grasp a hold of, something to find hope in.

I noticed that there weren't too many other nurses older than me working in the ER. One colleague commented that most ER nurses burn out at 45. Hmm, I just got started at 44. The stress is certainly there, but it is a change from where I have been, a merciful change, and God willing, I will endure whatever comes my way during this next phase of my life.