Tomorrow, I'll go to work at the grocery store, or maybe the postcard shop. Or become an interior designer or a personal shopper. Anything but nursing. Nursing means feeling people's pain. Nursing means being confronted every day with the evidence that life isn't fair. Nursing means extending yourself further than an old Stretch Armstrong action figure and being more flexible than Silly Putty. Nursing means being creative enough to make everyone else think it was "their idea." Nursing means tired feet, a full bladder, an aching heart and a brain signaling "Disk full." So, tomorrow, I'll find something better.

But maybe for today, I'll stay.

Why?

Because, of course, I'm needed. Needed by the young deaf girl in surgical admitting and her scared mother. Mom asks me, "Does she understand that she's having surgery? Does she understand what you're saying to her in sign language? We're not sure she's smart enough to know what's going on."

The mother and daughter cannot communicate with each other, and my heart hurts for them. The little girl's eyes open wide to drink in everything I'm saying to her in sign. She tells me about her school and her family. She is beautiful and bright and animated.

The Child Life worker and I explain what will happen today. Even better, we show her what she will see and feel. She shows me that she understands and accepts. She is smiling. Her mother is reassured. The little girl signs, "Thank you."

I am needed.

Needed by my father as he is dying. Lung cancer-terrible predator that it is-has tiptoed in and quietly established a deadly outpost in my father's brain. Brilliant and funny and always in command, now with an immobile right side and barely understandable speech, he's suddenly in desperate condition.

When I arrive, a neurosurgeon is planning a procedure with great risk and small chance of success. People enter his room and ignore him or talk to him as if his IQ is lower than his hemoglobin. I can't save my father's life, but I try to save his dignity, his personhood, and spare him needless suffering.

People listen, not because I am my father's daughter, but because I am a nurse. I tease my father about whether the investment in my nursing education paid off. I see the chuckle in his eyes. Then he grips my hand with his one strong hand and tries to tell me, with his eyes, everything he's always wanted me to know. He tells me he loves me not only because I'm his daughter, but because I am a nurse.

I am needed.

In just a moment's reflection, I recall many vignettes like these. With each, I'm reminded that I am needed because I can make a difference.

Because I've received more, measure for measure, than I could ever give back. I receive gifts every day. Some are objects that evoke memories: the mug I keep my pencils in, with its design that says "KIDS" drawn by a lovely girl whose young life was stolen by leukemia, the tiny Christmas stocking given to me one July by a young man who survived his brain tumor.

Most of the gifts, though, are intangible. The privilege of seeing people find the strength to deal with life's most difficult challenges and greatest sorrows.

The honor of working with nursing colleagues who care more and do more for patients and their families at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles than anywhere else on earth. The trust of a nursing student who believes I am worthy of being a role model.

The tribute of gratitude for imparting bad news gently. The joy of sharing riotous laughter with a colleague. The pleasure of constantly learning in such a dynamic specialty area and in a place where everyone so generously teaches. The satisfaction of seeing novice nurses grow, develop skills and realize potential that sometimes even they didn't know they had.

Above all, patients and families, survivors, nurses and other team members give me the most precious gift of all: knowing what matters in life.

Because I am never bored. People think it's a compliment to tell a nurse, "You're smart enough-you could have become a doctor." What they don't know is that nurses choose to be nurses not because they're not smart enough to do something else, but because they want to do what nurses do. And nurses do it all: forensic nursing, epidemiology, scholarly research, industrial health, international health, symptom management consultation, executive leadership, journal editing, writing, entrepreneurial nursing, politics, crisis management, legal consultation and more.

There is a vast range of choices not only within the nursing discipline, but often within a single nursing role. None of my days is exactly like another; each presents interesting challenges and draws on my emotional, intellectual and creative reserves.

The common thread is that nursing is meaningful work. Perhaps that's why I'm meeting more and more people who've spent their early career years in the business world and now are moving into nursing because they feel the need for greater meaning in their lives.

Because I can help create change. Never, ever did I envision-when I was wasting away my summer vacations reading Cherry Ames and Sue Barton books-what I would be doing in the 21st century. Nor did I expect when I was hired for a three-year research study that I would still be at Childrens Hospital almost 30 years later.

Now, I know that being a nurse grants us the privilege to care for individuals and families one at a time, or to have a whole population as our "patient."

Either way, what we say and do can change lives. We change lives through the respect we give a frightened mother as she's learning central line care and begins to believe she is indeed a capable mom. We change lives when a new horizon opens to a disadvantaged child with cancer who realizes she wants to be a nurse because of the phenomenal nurses who cared for her. We change lives by the simple comfort of being present and sharing the extraordinary pain of a child's death.

Being a nurse also may mean being "at the table," as more and more nurses I know are leaders in health care, in national and international organizations and in the state and federal government. In these roles, what we say and do can change policies, regulations and the public perception of nursing.

Because nursing has made me who I am. Nursing and nurses have taught me, inspired me and sustained me.

Being a nurse has made me a better mother and a strong advocate for my son's special needs. Being a nurse has made me a realist and shown me just how precious life is. Being a nurse has given me a guest pass into the most vulnerable times in people's lives, and shown me the best that human beings are capable of.

Being a nurse has made me appreciate the humor in even the blackest moments. Being a nurse has brought me into worlds I never would have known and introduced me to people I never will forget. If it's true that we bring all we are into everything we do, then I'd choose nursing all over again because it has made me who I am.

So just for today, I'll stay.

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