Cholera

As I was becoming a nurse, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy but I was willing to set myself up for the challenge. The beginning of my nursing career was just how I expected it to be. At first, everything seemed to be very calm and slow.  I knew I would be starting off helping patients by giving them their medication or making sure they were doing okay, but I had a feeling this wasn’t going to last for long.  It’s obvious that sicknesses vary from mild to severe, but I never really took the time to actually think of how ‘severe’ things could actually get in a hospital. Chicken pox, cow pox, mumps, measles, whooping cough, polio, small pox, and influenza became the common illnesses I first started to treat. I began to get used to seeing these types of illnesses that I completely forgot about actual severe diseases until I saw a little boy being rushed in. when I first saw this innocent child I began to tear up. I never imagined I would be seeing such things. The poor boy looked weak and all I could see was his skeletal lining through his skin like a bag whose air had gotten sucked out. His eyes looked as if they were half way opened but they revealed the pain he was going through. Since he was one of our first patients with this out of the ordinary disease we didn’t know how to treat it. We all did our best to keep him alive for as long as we could but we ended up losing him weeks later. After this incident, more and more patients started coming in with similar symptoms. As soon as we found out this disease was Cholera, we began to find ways to cure it. I will always remember this young little boy who died innocently but its patients like him who make me love my job because I know I’m giving my all to try and save them.