Once a Nurse...
RN finds enjoyment in retirement, but says she will always be tied to the profession

By Phil McPeck
July 28, 2003

Each position in the long and varied hospital career of Mary Lou Santos, RN, prepared her for a next step. Until the final step, that is.

From part-time staff nurse when her children were young to float nurse and then a hospital home in obstetrics, Santos' career was a logical progression of bedside practice and administration. She became childbirth educator, creating a program from scratch over five years before making the leap to risk manager for 10 years. And then the final step, the big one that no amount of success, satisfaction or work experience could prepare her for: retirement.

"I can't really explain how it felt," said Santos, 64, of Bristol, R.I., of her retirement just before Christmas 2002. "It was a sense of inertia. I almost felt as though I really couldn't do anything. I'm not a TV watcher, but I found myself watching TV. I'm a reader, but I couldn't concentrate on reading. I wasn't sleeping well, and I really wasn't tying it up with loss, although
I think that's really what it was," she said of not working. "It's not the kind of loss you feel when you grieve over losing a loved one, but there was a definite void."

She said she lived for months with the unsettling sense that there was someplace she had to be or something she had to be doing. "If I did go shopping, I'd feel like I needed to be in a hurry, which is how it was when I was working," Santos said.

That was despite some smart pre-retirement moves.

Santos said her advice to young and middle age nurses, acknowledging that "middle age" occurs later than it used to, is this: "Pay attention to your finances early on."

"When you're young and bulletproof and you're trying to meet everyday expenses -- thinking about putting your kids through college -- you're not really thinking about planning for financial security in retirement. That is so far into the future. I don't think that I paid enough attention to it when I was younger. But when I got, I would say, in my 50s, I began to pay much more attention," Santos said.

Santos had hoped to retire at age 62, but was caught up in her community hospital's merger with a conglomerate, which eliminated a benefit that paid for health insurance coverage from early retirement to age 65. "So I stayed until 64," she said, and even then retiring "probably was the hardest decision I had to make because I could have stayed and had my medical paid 'til 65."

Also at 62, the stock market was diving from it's meteoric rise of the '90s, taking with it a portion of the funds Santos had invested in her 403B, the IRS's version of the 401K retirement savings program for non-profits.

Among Santos pre-retirement strategies was to test the waters by cutting back to four days a week in her final year and closely monitoring finances to see whether she would be OK with less income and more free time. The work remained about the same, though, because she found herself taking it home.

"I'm not a rich lady, but I'm not uncomfortable in any way," said Santos, who considers herself fortunate that her home is paid for. "I hate driving in the snow up here in the winter," she said, but she traded in what she described as a gas-guzzler SUV for a more-efficient four-wheel-drive vehicle. Furthermore, she worked hard to eliminate credit card debt so that she now has just one card for emergencies and travel.

It was time and travel that ultimately brought Santos out of the shock of retirement.

She said that in April she visited a brother in Spain and when she returned, the uneasy feeling of being out of place was gone. "And now I'm really enjoying my time," visiting four children, two of whom live out of state, and pursuing her favorite music passion: jazz at the Newport Jazz Festival and other festivals in the Berkshire Mountains.

"I haven't been back to the hospital . . . I just haven't wanted to do that," Santos said, but she stays in touch with former colleagues by occasionally going out to dinner or theater. "Sometimes we'll just go for tea," Santos said.

As she retired, there were flattering offers to work part time in other hospital departments, and "I've also been called by a number of headhunters since I've retired. They're offering me temporary positions or consultation options," she said.

At a retirement party, Santos said the vice president of nursing told her "I'm going to give you a year and you'll be back." It hasn't been a year, but "At the moment, I'm quite happy." A summer full of plans include a trip to Ireland and an extended stay in Florida.

Santos said a sister introduces her to others, saying "She used to be a nurse." "And I say 'No, I am a nurse, but I'm retired.' I think nurses are always nurses. I will always be a nurse."