So about that midlife career change...

Six weeks of nursing school down, a bunch more to go.

Six weeks ago, at age 40, I started nursing school.

The choice is not unprecedented: I’ve always been interested in the medical field (though I couldn’t always handle blood), and my grandmother was a midlife nursing school graduate. I’ve gone down three paths: my own, with writing and editing; then I emulated my Nanny, as at at-home caregiver to children; and now I’m emulating Paca, my paternal grandma, the nurse. Other women I love and respect, even consider mentors, have been or have become nurses. Somehow, it makes sense.

Really, though, the impetus was Debbie, my mother-in-law, who died of metastatic breast cancer nearly 9 years ago. Since Debbie’s passing, I’ve been able to help care for two dying grandparents—one with dementia, one with cancer—and my disabled uncle, who died in 2022. Though my involvement in their care was never as intense as with Debbie.

I find writing about these things difficult. Not because I get too emotional—though the emotions are certainly there—but because there’s just so much to say. And I want to say it right. The three obituaries I’ve written are meaningful, but so very…incomplete. How does one convey a life?

The fabric of my experience also includes the little lives I’ve nurtured: the three within my own body; the foster baby we had for just a week; the nieces and nephews and children of friends and my goddaughter, whose parents entrusted into my care. How does one convey the significance, the privilege, the frustration and fear, of witnessing a person come to be?

Anyway, all of these experiences are at the forefront of my mind, here at the start of my nursing career.

What I feel is raw. For 17 years I’ve been a professional writer and editor, or a stay-home parent, or a weekday caregiver to a dozen children over the years, or some combination of the three. I’ve built up an armor of competence and confidence. That has been stripped away in this new world of clinical reasoning and judgment. I’m learning a new frame of reference, trying to fit my preexisting competencies into this new shape. It’s hard. It’s exhausting.

And right there, always at the surface, is Debbie.

She was the first person to believe in my abilities and capabilities. She asked me to bathe her, when bathing was something she could no longer do for herself. She asked me to learn to catheterize her, when she could no longer leave the bed. She trusted me with her overwhelming sadness about dying, about leaving us behind.

The program is hard. Exasperating. Painful. It’s like learning a new language by immersion, reshaping how I think. But I won’t give up. My foundation is solid: it’s the family who have needed me, the friends who have trusted me, the babies who have depended on me. I’ve got this.