Are We Angels: A Nurse’s True Stories

Not just a book for nurses.

A nurse struggles from the start with the decision to become a nurse but the desire to make a difference wins out. This begins a long journey into the human experience. One nurse takes you with her as a fly-on-the-wall through a select collection of stories from a lengthy career in nursing. The attempts at detachment become futile as she can’t unsee or unfeel the physical and emotional struggles of her patients. A woman with a mysterious foot wound; A priest with an unusual discharge plan; A teenager who goes into cardiac arrest on the high school baseball field, and more. The general bureaucracy and lack of resources of our healthcare system in addition to the complexity of caring for the sick beg the question, Are We Angels? The author thinks no, we are human, navigating the mess that is healthcare today. Nurses take pride in making it all work. The author proposes for the infinite expectations of nurses, they have to be made of steel to be a nurse, not feathers. These stories were written before Covid-19, where the case is even more so.