Buzzzzin’ with

Jan Blackburn

Mrs. B Jan Blackburn

My grandmother used to say that, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.” I spent my life trying to believe that, but in fact, sometimes words DO hurt us, often in ways we could not foresee or defend ourselves from.

Some years back, I taught some classes for a local high school. I had always thought that someday I would like to be a part of the program that piqued my interest in healthcare and gave me the career that would last a lifetime. It was my way of giving back to the people and organizations that gave to me years ago and that enabled me to go to college.

I truly loved the subject matter and felt that my years of experience would enable me to show students healthcare in a different light. In many ways I think I did that, but I did struggle with the rules and regulations and politics that seem to overwhelm the educational system of today. Nevertheless, I soldiered on and tried to make the material come to life with real life demonstrations and by bringing equipment to the classroom and helping to make the textbook learning more hands-on. I was excited to show them all that I had learned in over 40 years working at my craft.

After the second year, however, the administration felt that I lacked relevance and that I was ineffective as a teacher. I was crestfallen and crushed; I had always had the heart of a teacher and had been an instructor for many years for various classes in multiple institutions, and had always gotten good reviews.

These words really DID hurt me, and I found myself questioning everything I thought I knew about myself. The love of teaching that had always been such an integral part of my life had been stripped away, and suddenly I felt lost and afraid. I stopped teaching, and gave up the instructorships that had always been exciting and vibrant for me.

Some 10 years later, I still lack any interest in leading anything, from classes to committees. The part of me that once lead the charge and championed causes that I believed in has died, replaced by a sense of just going along and not becoming involved…like the people I used to have such disdain for.

Recently I was a patient at our local hospital, a place that I spent over 40 years believing in and fighting for. I had walked (and sometimes run) down those halls for so many years; most of us referred to it as “our home away from home.” These people were the family I chose rather than being born into.

Eventually, the rapid-fire change that has earmarked what is left of healthcare left me exhausted by all the changes and I once again found myself feeling that I was too slow and again lacked relevance. I retired in 2022, and only occasionally fill a shift in the Surgery Department; even there I struggle to keep up.

Walking the halls one sleepless night as a patient in the place I had known and loved for so long, I once again found myself feeling foreign and out of my element-almost as if I had never been there at all. I read the poster on the wall that asked people to nominate nurses for the Daisy Award, a prestigious award given to nurses who had gone above and beyond the call. The Daisy Award was initiated by the family of J. Patrick Barnes, who died in 1999 at the age of 33 from the auto-immune disease of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura (ITP). DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune SYstem.

His family wanted to honor the nurses not only in their city, but nurses across the country. I had never heard of the award, but am grateful to note that I was the first nurse at our hospital to receive such an honor. It was a shot in the arm and made me feel relevant at a time when I needed it desperately.

This past week I was participating in a garage sale, something I said I would never do again. We had gone through the house, culling through everything we no longer needed, lest we leave to our children the mess that has been left to us at times.

In a closet sat nine 3-inch folders filled with my lecture notes, activities and games played to reinforce learning, the quizzes, the tests and the finals from the classes I had taught. At first, I was just throwing away everything, but eventually I found myself stopping to read my words and tried to see if I still remembered any of the material; I was happy to see that I had still retained most of it.

Reviewing all of the hard work that had gone into preparing for those classes, and considering all the late hours, and money spent from my personal funds, it was hard for me to believe that I was ineffective or irrelevant. I am proud of the work I did, and of the students I taught. Many of them went on to enter the healthcare field-not because of me, but because a spark had been lit, and they took it the rest of the way. I am so glad that I had even just a tiny part in that.

So even though the sticks and stones thrown in an attempt to hurt me did find their mark, I have to finally see that it is not the words that hurt, but how they were received and interpreted by me. But as Eleanor Roosevelt once reminded us: “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.”

If you are feeling badly about yourself today, take a moment to look over the whole course of your life, not just the bad place you find yourself in at this time. Perhaps you will see, as I did, that each of us play a part in the grand scheme of life, no matter how big or how small. Be who you are, and don’t let the turkeys get you down!

‘Til Next Time!

Mrs. B.