A few years ago I worked at a local hospital and had the pleasure of being surrounded by an amazing team. I was a brand new nurse, fresh out of nursing school and the staff I was with took me under their wing. They encouraged me and were patient as I ventured out of the academic world and into nursing fulltime. The transition is a rough one as you only get a taste of it as a student. Once you take the instructors away and you are suddenly on your own, it is quite intimidating. I was very grateful for the support that they gave. Besides the support, they were a lot of fun. We were always pulling pranks on each other. I have good memories of my co-workers there.
After about a year Shane and I learned that Lyndan was on his way. I was already struggling with having to leave Dylan with my parents while I went to work and so I was wondering how I would handle leaving two behind. A few months in, I developed sciatica. I found work to be very challenging as I was in pain all the time. Soon after, I went off on medical leave.
I tried to stay in touch with my co-workers but I admit, I have been terrible at maintaining relationships. I am trying to get better but I rely on body language when I talk to people so emails and phone calls really are hard for me. They really aren’t my thing. I seriously hate the phone. Every time they would call about getting together to reconnect at a potluck, my kids were sick or I was sick. I thought they would think I was lying given the number of times I used that excuse, but it was the truth. Soon, we lost touch and I wished I had known what had happened to them.
One co-worker inparticular I was wondering about just recently. She had come to our home about 5 years ago for a visit and that was the last time I saw her. I wondered if I had somehow offended her. I couldn’t think of anything during that particular visit but I over-analyzed everything to try and come up with my errors. There were no more emails or phone calls after that day. I was beating myself up just last week for offending her and making her not want to contact me anymore.
Today I was visiting my nursing students in the community placements. Normally I start at the far end of the city and work my way back but today I messed up and bounced everywhere. I wasted a ton of gas. It was $94.9/L today so I filled up but that is beside the point. I ended up going to one particular placement last when normally it is first. I had no other students to see except for this final student. I pushed the button on the intercom and told the woman on the speaker I was there to visit my student and she invited me up and pushed the button upstairs to unlock the front door. I walk all the way up to the care floor to the nursing station. I say “Hello” and begin to ask where my student was when the woman looks at me with these big eyes “Cheryl! How are you?! How long has it been and where did I work with you again?”
It was her! She confessed later she only new my name because I was wearing my name tag but I knew her name and she wasn’t wearing one. Since this was the last placement I had to visit for the day, I walk into the nursing station and pull up a chair. We spent 30 minutes or so catching up on old times. She told me who left to work where (The hospital was downsizing when I left and our ward had been closed spreading our team throughout the hospital while other chose to quit to work elsewhere or retire). I found out how her family is and I told her about mine. Last she knew I had just had Lyndan and she didn’t know about our youngest two. I told her about how I’ve grown since I last saw her and that I was terrible with maintaining relationships before and I am really striving to improve in that area. I explained how I have always regretted losing touch with everyone and that I would love to exchange contact info so we can connect again. It turns out she’s on Facebook, so I hope she accepts my friend request. She said she would. She recently went out for lunch with a few of my old co-workers and says she would love to see me join them sometime.
Remember how I said that I thought I had offended her? Several, several times during our conversation she stated, out of the blue for no reason what-so-ever, that I am a good person and that I deserve to be doing so well. I finally feel like a little burden has been lifted. I was able to basically apologize for being a bad friend in not doing my part to stay in touch and I think she appreciated that. Today was a good day. I’m thankful.
