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"I personally found it difficult to stay in the bed. I just wanted to get up and go home, and felt that I should," Benoit said. "I felt like I also had to be the best patient … I don't know if I can explain why I had that expectation of myself, but I did."

Dot Mundy, MSN, RN, also was self-conscious when she was admitted to Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore for her acute, adult-onset asthma. She was worried more about burdening the staff than getting well. "I didn't want to be a bother," Mundy said. "I'm thinking they must have some [other] really sick patients to take care of. But they told me, 'You need to be the patient now,' and that was difficult for me."

Loss of control

Control is an important feature of the profession that many nurses said they find unsettling to lose. Bonnie Krueger, MHA, RN, manager of adult critical care units at Medical City Hospital in Dallas, recalled with mild embarrassment her actions as a young nurse hospitalized with a blood clot in 1971. Krueger refused to let any staff nurses or health care staff administer shots or handle her medications.

"You talk about a lack of trust … I had to give all my own injections, I had to start my own IV, I had to look to the IV bags to make sure everything was copacetic," Krueger said. "Everything had to be by the book and by the procedure, very much as a novice would do. Reflecting back, you have to let some of that control go. I would never give my own injections today."

Krueger came full circle in 1995, when she was hospitalized for five days with a pulmonary embolism in Oklahoma City. A few weeks after fracturing her foot, Krueger was suffering chest pains and shortness of breath at the end of her shift at Integris Baptist Medical Center. She fainted in the locker room and was rushed to the ER by her team members.

Being unconscious, she had no choice but to submit fully to the treatment and guidance of doctors and staff. But this time, she allowed her colleagues to do their jobs, she said.

"The staff that took care of me understood that [control] need, and not once did they assume I had knowledge of what was going on, or didn't need support or comfort," Krueger said. "Every hour, someone would come in and say, 'Is there anything we can do or is there anything we can explain to you?'

"A lot of people assume that you know, so they don't tell you, and they don't offer the comfort they would other people. But a nurse as a patient requires even more."

Only one time did she ignore her doctors' wishes. Before her discharge April 19, Krueger got out of bed to help prepare the hospital for possible victims when they learned of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building 10 miles away. No victims were transported to Integris, Krueger said, but she was ready to assist even though she was still wearing her patient wristband.

Blessing or curse?

Krueger and other nurses may battle the urge to control their situations as patients largely because they know all too well the risks and conditions not apparent to lay patients.

Phoenix triage nurse Rita Fair, RN, who was diagnosed with lupus more than 20 years ago, knew what kinds of questions to ask about her condition when she became pregnant. She had so many, Fair said, her perinatologist had to schedule several off-hour phone sessions to address Fair's concerns.

Jill Bokern, RN, knew full well what she was facing last fall when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. As nurse coordinator at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Bokern counseled patients daily on topics of risk factors, recovery issues and family impact. Her nursing knowledge gave her optimism about her prognosis.

"It was very treatable, since mine was in early detection," Bokern said. Her job made both herself and her family aware of how often women defeat breast cancer. When her disease appeared, the shock was cushioned because they knew 80 percent of breast cancer victims are women with no known symptoms (like Bokern).

Bokern was confident about her recovery, but this made room for smaller worries that perhaps only a nurse would go through. As a longtime employee of Barnes-Jewish, and now as a patient, she had to choose among a pool of highly qualified surgeons who would perform her mastectomy. Most were also close friends, and Bokern was concerned that choosing one would hurt the feelings of the other surgeons. "That was probably the toughest decision for me ... I felt they were all good," Bokern said. " 'Who do I choose, one or the other?' That's not a bad place to be in."