Daddy's Girl!

Saturday afternoon, December 22, 2007

It is 3:00 PM, as I begin writing this perspective, and in two hours quite a crowd will begin gathering here in our home; Amy (our daughter) is hosting a party for the folk who work with her at the Coliseum Medical Center. She has been baking and cooking for several days and, finally, has everything in place—enough food to feed the Salvation Army!

To be sure, Amy has made her Daddy proud and for many reasons, not the least of which is the success she has enjoyed in her nursing career. When she graduated from High School, she immediately began her nursing school career at Georgia Baptist School of nursing in Atlanta, where she proved to others and to herself that she had chosen the right career. Interestingly, her passion has always been in the field of critical care, where emotions run as high as a kite in March and stress is as thick as molasses in December. For all these many years, she has worked in the trenches, always having the lives of several very sick people in her care.

As I write this, I can recall several occasions where her patients rewarded her with quite nice gifts, as the result of her compassion and expertise while they were in her care. I find it strange that some people really do appreciate what others do for them and make it a point to make it evident, while others, for reasons beyond me, believe their care is some kind of entitlement they deserve.

Over the years, some significant others have noticed her abilities and her professionalism and, as a result, she has quickly moved from the trenches of critical care, to being the charge nurse for the step down unit on the coronary care floor, to her present position—Clinical Coordinator.

I never will forget leaving her at Georgia Baptist Nursing School; I honestly thought I was going to have to rent Annis a room with her (she cried all the way home and for the next month!). I mean, Amy was just out of High School, young and green, and we were leaving her about six blocks from the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta! Really!

Well, you can rest assured that in spite of our concerns, she was in “hog heaven,” as we say down here in the South. I never have figured out why she spent so much time at fraternity parties at Georgia Tech, as she never did get a degree from there. Oh well, some things, one will never understand!

In spite of her rather active social life, she was soon cast in the middle of critical care nursing, even working at Grady Hospital in their critical care areas (a very good thing on her resume!), where she got more experience in five minutes that most get during their entire nursing careers.

One thing is for sure: she has NEVER had to look for a job, and from the looks of things, she never will. She has made many turns in the road of her life, but the one turn that was absolutely, positively the right turn, was her choosing to be a Registered Nurse, and not just an RN, but the best one she could possible become.

Needless to say, she has made her Daddy proud and, to be honest, I am looking forward to meeting her colleagues tonight and to watching her serve them a great big helping of compassion and care!

It is now 10:41 PM, the party is over, and it is clean-up time! It really was fun being involved and meeting the folks, all of whom seem really to love and respect my little girl!

Wow! I am blessed and very much so!