Latest Voices

 

My friend Joy was an indomitable trauma nurse. She never minded taking on the most challenging patients. She and I worked together in the ER for six years, and no amount of blood or guts could scare her off. When EMTs brought in a gory-looking accident victim, Joy was always the first one in the room, cutting off the patient’s clothes, taking vital signs, starting IV fluids, connecting monitors, noting injuries… The only thing Joy hated was paperwork.

 

I retired last October. After forty years in a cardiovascular ICU, I left the profession I loved. I left, in part, because of the paperwork.

There are three kinds of paperwork in my office.

The first kind of paperwork, the one the phrase evokes, is really mostly computer work. Although my shifts often run late, I don’t mind the time actually spent in the exam room with patients. The exhaustion hits as I finish a four-hour sprint only to realize that I have another one to two hours of documentation work. Then add on answering messages, dealing with lab results and filling out forms (some of which are on actual paper), and I can feel the joy of my job leaking away into

In March 2017, my son died of a heroin overdose. He was twenty-five years old.

It began with his use of recreational drugs in his early teens. Before long, he was addicted to prescription opioids. And, finally, heroin.

Watching my beloved child slowly destroy himself was a heart-wrenching experience, almost as devastating as facing the finality of his death.