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By the following March, I headed over to Tampa General Hospital, and baby in arms, applied for a job. I was looking for a part time position and was elated when I was hired for the night shift in the Cardiac Surgery Unit. It took another full year before I began to feel like I knew what I was doing. But one thing I knew for sure; the longer I worked there, the more I loved it. When I first started working in the Cardiac Surgery Unit, we did seven to eight heart surgeries a day during the week and three to four a day on the weekend. Every day was a challenge, a learning experience; every day was exciting and fun. Most of all, I loved taking care of my patients, especially after their heart surgery. I’d work with my fellow staff to get them stabilized, extubated, and hear their first words post extubation. Of course, some days were more challenging and difficult than others, but for me, this area of nursing was like finding the “love of my life”. More radical changes were in store for me however, because after a few more years, with an eighteen month old and a two and a half year old, I was divorced and entered the harried world of a single parent. The next four years proved to be the most challenging and thoroughly stressful years of my entire life. Soon after our divorce, my children’s dad moved away, and save for one weekend a month, their child care was completely mine. I struggled, to stay in my home, so when my children were with their dad, I worked double shifts. I often thanked God for being a nurse, and having the ability to work as many hours as my body and mind could handle. Of course, for my children, their mom went from working part time to over time, and day care did not suit them well. They were sick almost non-stop for the first five months, and during that time, I used up all my vacation and sick days for the entire year. Due to my baby sitter’s request, my manager switched my shift to 7A-7P; something that in most careers, would be impossible. Right about the time that my children were both in school, I noticed a position available for Nurse Epidemiologist in our Infection Control Department. I had always loved Microbiology and even took extra classes in Immunology and Virology in college. Certainly, another attraction was that the hours were Monday through Friday, eight to four thirty, no weekends or holidays. The thought of regaining some normalcy in my family was tantalizing. After several interviews, I landed the position. It was 1987, and America was just waking up to the reality of a strange and harsh epidemic; HIV/AIDS. In the coming year, all hospitals were given the mandate of educating first the licensed, then the unlicensed personnel with four hours of HIV/AIDS education. I joined forces with our manager of employee health, one of our microbiologists, and another educator to handle this task. I’ll never forget the first few classes that I taught. Our hospital CEO came to my second class, all smiles and eager to learn and ask questions. I was so nervous that I had to hold on to the table underneath because my hands were shaking. He actually sent me a thank you note after the class and congratulated me on a job well done. It was in this endeavor that I realized my next passion; teaching. I remember, after two years of doing AIDS education, with some times seven classes a week, our department coordinator coming up to me and saying “now Mary Ellen remember, no more projects”! Later that afternoon, a Meade Johnson representative called me up and said he had just talked with our Employee Health director. He continued with “I hear your expertise is Torch Syndrome”? I held the phone out, stared at it for a few moments and stammered; “well, it could be”. So in a clandestine manner, I scurried off to the medical library. Two weeks later, equipped with slides and knowledge galore, gave my first presentation on TORCH syndrome to a group of labor and delivery nurses. All was going very well. My life was just what I wanted it to be. I was president of our local chapter of American Practitioner’s in Infection Control, and a soprano on our church choir, as well as a “local yokel” in the racing community from 5ks to marathons. Life as a single parent had become a cinch, not to mention a lot of fun. Both of my children were very active in sports, and I got to relive my years as a cheerleader on the sidelines. But cupid wasn’t done with me yet. I fell in love again, and this time there was nothing insidious about it. My neighbor across the street, asked me out one day at one of our habitual soft ball games, and after the second date, we both fell like “lead balloons.” Six months latter we were married, and like lightning, I was pregnant. My husband worked during the day, and with a baby on the way, I decided to leave Infection Control, and return to the Cardiac Surgery Unit to work part time on the night shift. I had continued to work there about one shift a month, while in Infection Control, so there wasn’t much of a transition to be made. I had our last baby at the ripe old age of forty six, and five years later, we were on the move again. We had fallen in love with the Smoky mountains while on vacations with our children, and my two oldest were both in college. So, after much deliberation, we made the move to beautiful Wears Valley Tennessee. I secured a job at Baptist Hospital in Knoxville in the Intensive Care Unit. This was like a Coronary Care, Intensive Care, and Cardiac Surgery unit all in one, as we had quite a variety in our patient population. I was immersed in that famous southern twang, and I have to say that I met some of the most interesting and genuinely sincere people in my entire life. I became a grandmother when my oldest daughter had a baby three weeks early. Great, I had already asked off for the second week in June, and here it was May 20th, and my daughter calls me to say she’s in labor. I ran excitedly into my manager’s office to make the announcement, she just looked at me, sighed, then smiled and said “You gotta go”. I torn out of there, drove home, packed, and headed off to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. There was my new grandson, a beautiful baby, who quite unknowingly, reached out at that first second, grabbed my heart, and has never let it go.
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