Mom the Nurse

Mom was a nurse and spent a lot of time working in her profession. It looks like, in this photograph, that she is getting crowned for having achieved a certain level or something like that. I remember many evenings, sitting around the dinner table with Mom talking about all the different things she had done during the day while working as a nurse. She spent a lot of time working in the intensive care unit at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital. She also worked in the emergency room for a while and also in the cardiac care unit. I remember when she started working in the cardiac unit that she would come to me to learn the ekg patterns because I had picked up on them while working as a messenger at the hospital. I had extra time during my rounds and would stop there for a little bit and ask questions about the patterns.

For a while, it was kind of tough when Mom was put on the swing shift because she would be asleep when I got in the morning to go to school and then gone to work when I came home. I remember once that I hadn't seen her in about three weeks so just before going to school, I popped my head in her room just to make sure she was still there. Of course, either Nanny cooked our meals or I learned how to make my them myself.

I guess, because she had worked in the emergency room and seen a lot of things (like me when I was a paramedic), she was pretty calm about the little injuries that we would get. Once I fell down and cracked my head open on something and I was bleeding all over the place. Of course, I thought I was going to die but Mom just comes out and puts something over it and says to me, "come on, get in the car and we'll get it fixed." It was just like it was nothing. I've pretty much gotten to be the same way.

Mom worked as a nurse for as long as she could before the effects of her disease prevented her doing so. She was a good nurse and it seems like everyone at the hospital knew and liked her.