A long long time ago, I wanted to save lives, help people, and generally be a hero. I became a nurse. What I found out is that sometimes it isn’t in a person’s best interest to save his/her life; that what I see as “help” is sometimes not at all what a person wants or needs; and that being a hero is vastly overrated.

However, I am still a nurse. In fact, I have been back to school enough times that I am now a nurse practitioner. I work in a rural practice in South Georgia where I have learned what I love best in my chosen profession: sewing people up.

On a typical day I may treat high blood pressure, innumerable runny noses, and explain to a diabetic that even though he eats no sugar at all, the gallons of sweet tea he is DRINKING affects his blood sugar adversely. I have had to discuss the possible source of a sexually transmitted disease with a woman who is having sex with only one man. (“He doesn’t have sex with anyone else either -- except his wife...”) I have had to deny a prescription for vicodin to an angry teen who wants the narcotic for the headaches he gets whenever he has to go to school, and doesn’t understand why he can’t have it. I have struggled to get a parent to understand that her smoking in the house in her child’s presence has a direct and causative effect on the child’s asthma attacks.

Then one of the medical assistants tells me I have a laceration in the treatment room. Oh joy! A gaping wound, bleeding, pain with an observable, obvious cause! Something I can actually fix!

I sew well. My sutures are neat and evenly spaced. My knots are a thing of art. My scars are minimal and inoffensive. This is satisfaction. There are no cross-purposes to deal with. I want to sew, and the person with an open wound almost invariably wants it sewn up. The years and years of education, experience, practice -- these have made it possible for me to do this one simple thing I love -- sewing people up.