Nursing is defined by providing care for the sick, further defined by Florence Nightingale as utilizing our environment to provide care for the sick to aid in their recovery.  Even back in 1856, Nightingale saw the connections between environment and health, health and community, community and environment: “The health of the unity is the health […]

         Kristen dies suddenly on a Sunday night. We hear about it on Monday when her younger sister Jeannie comes in for dialysis, but Kristen doesn’t. Kristen was eight-years-old, and shared a genetic defect with Jeannie. Both girls require dialysis and need kidney transplants. Transplants are costly, even with insurance, so their […]

      Gallows humor and a healthy level of dissociation when necessary have carried me far in my career. During my nights in the ICU a decade ago I learned these as helpful tools of the trade. Death was all around us and we did our best to strip it off with our scrubs […]

Sally Helmi, 2020, I Don’t Know How Much Longer We Can Do This. “a reflection break”, 2020 the experiences that i am a part of are so intense that i often don’t know how to navigate how much space they hold in me and how long they can live in me. despite how exhausting being […]

You think it won’t happen to you because you are too smart for that. Your life, your terms. You think? “Just put me on the iceberg when I can’t clean my own ass” you say, tossing back a Manhattan, thinking that’s a pretty funny joke that we are like Eskimos. <Are we sure they even […]