How Sweet

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/in-praise-of-nurses/?src=me&ref=health

I love and admire nurses.




Oncology nurses and ostomy nurses. Radiation nurses and post-op nurses. And those essential, always-there-when-you-need-them, round-the-clock nurses. (And though most of my experience is with female nurses, I admire male nurses, too.)



Now this isn’t some abstract infatuation, based on seeing “South Pacific” one too many times. I’ve been hospitalized six times in my life, and the medical personnel I came to know best — and like best — were the nurses.



To generalize: Nurses are warm, whereas doctors are cool. Nurses act like real people; doctors often act like aristocrats. Nurses look you in the eye; doctors stare slightly above and to the right of your shoulder. (Maybe they’re taught to do that in medical school?)

My most recent dependence on nurses came in 2008 and early 2009 as I was treated for an aggressive Stage 3 prostate cancer. But more about that later.



My first vivid nurse memory comes from the summer of 1970 at Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire. I was 12 years old — almost 13 — and a benign tumor in my right knee needed to be cut out.

Read the rest here.