Tag Archives: nursing
FMM 1 2 2026 Reflections
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” ~ Edith Wharton. One of the most annoying things we ask children is ‘What do you want to be when you grow up.’ I was reminded of that in a conversation with a four-year-old who, without being asked, […]
FMM 12 12 2025 Wise Women
“Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.” ~ bell hooks. I remember wearing my first pair of pants. Long pants. Warm legs on a cold winter’s day in England, probably when I was about six or seven years old. Back then, in the early 60s, shorts in the summer (not for ‘going out’ […]
FMM 10 24 25 Galluping Away!
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” ~ Unknown. My mother had a few odd sayings she would throw at me when, as a teenager, I would be obsessing about some perceived flaw (usually on my face). ‘A blind man and (or on?) a galloping horse…’ which was […]
FMM 8 29 2025 I am no Expert…
“’Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.” ~ Alice Walker. One of the first things I learned, once I began teaching nursing students, was how much I had to relearn. The temptation, especially after having been a nurse for […]
FMM 5 23 2025 Secrets and Shame
“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.” ~ Friedrick Nietzsche. One of the joys of retirement is that road trips can be the way to get to far distant events. This also means that routines are disrupted, and Friday morning messages are late! Which is the case […]
FMM 5 16 2025 ‘Don’t Stress Me!’
“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” ~ Leo Buscaglia. I migrated to the US in 1978, fresh out of nursing school in the UK (land of my birth), after growing up in Jamaica (land of my rebirth). My boyfriend had moved to Miami, and that was enough […]
FMM 4 25 2025 Inner Vision
“When you’re through changing, you’re through.” ~ Bruce Barton. I have been fortunate that in my life, very few of my encounters with the health care system have been from the point of view of the patient. It is easy to be the one in the uniform, in control of things, able to complete tasks […]
FMM 4 4 2025 Tan Tuddy!
“May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.” ~ Peter Marshall. I was a frontline nurse working in Miami when AIDS appeared, with all of the unknowns that went along with it. In the early years it seemed to be […]
FMM 3 28 2025 I Plead the First
“Why should I be afraid of the pestilence that crawleth by night?” Tony Rebel. Because I am the youngest in my family and the last to leave home, I spent my last four years in high school as an only child. That wasn’t exactly true, since we always had ‘boarders’, friends from high school who […]
FMM 3 21 2025 Imaginary Engineers
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ~ Alice Walker. I was a bedside nurse in the 1980s, a time when the way the government reimbursed hospitals for patient stays was upended completely. Prior to this time, any patient whose insurance was paid for by the […]