This week is Nurses’ Week. It’s also Hospital Week, or, if you work at my office, Health Care Week, because we want to be inclusive of our friends in ambulatory and post-acute. And at L and G’s daycare and preschool, it’s Teacher/Nurse Appreciation Week. They celebrate this particular combo observance because they attend a school founded by a pediatric nurse that includes a room for children with all sorts of medical complexities, staffed by nurses; it’s only fair to celebrate both teachers and nurses in the same week, since at this school those roles overlap to such an extent.

It strikes me, as we prepare our cards and treats for Teacher/Nurse Appreciation Week, what a fitting observance this really is.

In the first days and weeks, as we began to wrap our heads around new diagnoses and devices and tests results, it was our nurses who gently helped us expand our vocabulary and patiently repeated and explained again and again until we began to enter conversations with confidence.

Nurses taught us to navigate the basics of parenting in a setting that seemed so hostile to normalcy. It was a nurse who helped me learn how to hold my child, who seemed so fragile at the time I was afraid I would break him. It was a nurse who helped me learn how to change a diaper around tubes and leads and a surgical incision and an ostomy bag, and who taught me how to change the ostomy bag as well, and, later, how to change a sterile dressing, all of which became routine baby care for our family.

Nurses, too, taught us how to fiercely preserve our normalcy despite a setting that seemed so hostile to it. It was a nurse who fought for permission to take our son for walks in the courtyard, and took the time to play photographer in an impromptu family photo shoot while we were outside. It was a nurse who encouraged us to bring in a playmat and a swing, and to establish a bedtime routine before we had even left the NICU, and stepped in to read L his bedtime story when severe storms prevented us from coming to the hospital one night.  

Those same nurses taught us how to transition home, and continued to offer listening ears and guidance off the clock as we learned to navigate difficult medical relationships and how to advocate for our child.

As parents of a child with a long medical history, we are deeply indebted for the incredible healthcare we have received from a countless string of nurses; L would not be here without them. But alongside that, every step of the way and especially in those early weeks and months, we are equally indebted to our nurses for the role they have played as our teachers. We are grateful, this week and every week, to the nurses who have equipped us with the skills and confidence to become the parents L needed.

What have you learned from nurses? Leave a comment below to share how they’ve made a difference in your life!

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