Alphabet Challenge: M

I’ve signed onto The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge 2021.

The challenge is to blog the whole alphabet in April and write at least 100 words on a topic that corresponds to the letter of the day. 

Every day, excluding Sundays, I’m blogging about Places I Have Been. The last post will be on Friday, April 30 when I finally focus on the letter Z. 

 M: Medical Intensive Care

I turned down the position of head nurse at the University of Chicago Hospital. Among the nurses hired to work in the new unit, I was the most qualified. I had been the head nurse of the newly opened Coronary Care Unit run by the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry at the Newark Hospital in New Jersey and, later, I worked as a staff nurse in the CCU in Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. 

Now, I was a mother of two small children, ages two and four, and the sole wage earner because my husband was in school full time. Luckily, my upstairs neighbor in the married student building where we lived, was a teacher, had two daughters around the same ages as my kids and wanted to trade off childcare. She worked part-time days. I could work part-time nights. Our arrangement would work seamlessly. 

So, I turned down the head nurse offer. Working half-time: two nights (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.) one week and three nights the next, meant that I didn’t have the responsibility that goes into opening a new unit (been there, done that) or the aggravation of administration on top of delivering nursing care. Besides, my salary for working part-time nights was greater than that of a full-time head nurse position.

A decision I never regretted.