Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

If, in order to succeed in an enterprise, I were obliged to choose between fifty deer commanded by a lion, and fifty lions commanded by a deer, I should consider myself more certain of success with the first group than with the second.

When I started Nursing school the first thing we were taught was how to take Vital Signs. Signs that are vital. Temperature, Pulse or Heart Rate, Respiratory Rate and Blood Pressure. Then Breathe Sounds and Physical Assessments. Not too hard.

At our first Clinical we were taught how to give a bed bath. It does take some coordination carrying a plastic container of hot water across a slippery hospital floor while trying to balance that big flying nun cap on my head and some skill to soap up and rinse a whole entire body without wetting the bed. I thought I'd be able to skip this part but NOOOOOO ...we all HAD to do it to pass. My friend Nancy walked out never to return (she wanted to be a nurse all her girly life). A little old lady or a comatose man wasn't too challenging. I was totally distressed and meek and am sure I left many patients with either soapy skin or a layer of sweat and bacteria.

Then I started working as a nurses aide. Traveling about the corridors on the coat tails of an experienced nurse or other veteran aide was how I got my gumption to really scrub. Some of those nurses meant business and took the idea of bedside care very seriously. I learned why.

I got over the modesty. I learn to bath while maintaining dignity and respect to the patient moving the towel to drape the area completed and in turn allowing the person a moment of refreshment.

Then I had to bath a black man. I thought "don't the black nurses wash the black patients and the white nurses bath the white patients?"

NOOOOOO again. I could not get out of it. I was so scared I was shaking. I was just getting good at a bathing but now what? The older nurses laughed. I thought: "I'll show them!" I felt proud and strong that my container of water was dark as the river not knowing that we all shed skin and this was no real indication of a job well done. I proudly presented this patient to a veteran black aide who yelled at me for not oiling the patient. eughhhhhhhhhh! Why would I slap oil on something I just washed. Ashy is a no no in the black world. So we oiled my patient from head to toe and inch by inch ran a comb through his head of short hair. He was as shiny as a new car and I was certain I would win the best bath prize. Of course, there was no best bath prize.

Now nurses seem too busy or concerned with important things like charting and medications and I.V.'s but a good bath and back rub and an expert bed change to a person who cannot move that well is just good care. Black, white, or purple. And if we don't do it, who will?

Whenever I think I should have been a writer instead of a nurse I think again.

I would certainly love to travel and visit and involve myself with other cultures and then write about it. Well, that is exactly what I do. I do not travel far and wide geographically but emotionally.

Illness and Sickness are a part of life; one convincing reason to join the millions of other caretakers in the world. I coerced myself with: "I'd learn about life". Little did I really know what scope that statement would reach. I think about what I'd be like if I worked in an office all day and never involved myself with the outside world, the people living around me but not really seen. As much as I love to people watch and integrate my psyche with my surroundings I do not think I'd come to appreciate the vast majority of differences around me.

We are all the same when we are sick. We just want to get better. We want to be comfortable. We want to get back to being different. Sickness is non-discriminatory, it is non-denominational, it is not sexist, or youth seeking, it is not kind or lovable or empathetic.
Walking through the doors of the homes of Blacks and Asians and Whites such as Italians and Irish and German and Jewish I get a sneak peek of how their culture works, what food means to them, how their family and friends help or disappear, how little it matters how much money they have or the level of education they've accomplished or what company they started or ran or worked for or invested. In other words I get to see the organic nature of human beings; all that outer coating peeled away....like getting right to the middle of the cannoli(life's habits are transferable to all areas). The only elements I get a full disclosure of are personalities and idiosyncrasies. Those little bits of differences between humans strike me as amazing. I do not think I'd get that load of glimpses if the illness was absent.

So I nurse and write. I think that I should start to write about a million other things but nothing is really as intriguing to me. I read and cook and exercise and love my family. I am grateful for the stories that come out of my work. I am appreciative of the interaction and care I am able to share. This makes for a better story and a better, fuller career. Writer or Nurse.

I have to ask a favor. This blog gets about 1000 hits a month...that has to be 25-50 people reading. Someone I know can use the power of quantity here.

A little boy in my neighborhood, just 14 months old, has cancer. He just completed chemotherapy to shrink a tumor that was too big for surgery. On Friday he will undergo a surgery that offers no guarantee for a future.

This is another situation where we can ask, "Why"? If God is trying to bring us closer by allowing a small child and his family to suffer then I think we should snuggle up. If we all say a few prayers for a few days God will here us. If we believe it, this family may enjoy a respite. If this child is spared how many of us will really believe God heard us? How many will continue to pray and give thanks? I certainly will and so will his family.

Please Help. He is dying before he has a chance to live and his family has to endure it. He has lived his whole small existence in hospitals and doctor offices. He doesn't even know that his life is harder than it would be if he were not sick.

Remember him this week and especially on Friday. And ask God to show us he hears us. Again.

I do not like to ask for favors. This time I am asking.