My jobs over the years have hardly been life-saving work; that is until 2020. Mowing and contributing to the farm-work was fulfilling for me in various ways as a mower, driver and chef among other so-called titles. My first job outside of my mowing was being a cashier. This experience was educational, I learned customer service, how to work a cash register and began to converse with different people.
Then I worked for a Nursing Home for only a month during Covid. I was being paid for hazardous duty. The week I started work an outbreak was confirmed after a year of having no outbreaks at all. Then all of a sudden there were 6 rooms needing to be fully cleaned with bleach; it seems like I volunteered for the duty, someone had to-so why not me. I wasn’t scared of the virus I was healthy and hadn’t had it. One of my co-workers said she was too mean to contract the virus and I’m not sure I liked the idea of being too mean, but God gave me a buffer somehow.
For some reason being in this situation, I wasn’t scared, this was by far what some would say was scary. Yet two things were going through my mind at that time. My grandma had just died and I felt my foot was mostly healed from my injuries I needed a purpose and a paycheck. Plus I have a tender heart for the elderly, after watching several family members in nursing homes, knowing how grandma would almost always light up when she saw us come in. Visitors to the residence were very strictly restricted and I remembered grandma’s last days without us were hard enough for us I couldn’t imagine how she felt that last long week without us. Although, our prayer was that God would be enough when we couldn’t be there.
Pain shot through my hand a different pain with a knot slowly forming on my wrist. Never did I think two massive surgeries would come from that distinctive pain in my right wrist. Then the real amazing job of being Patient Care Technician working at Dialysis Clinics was an even larger eye-opening experience of saving lives. Also completing the circle of being the patient’s family observing my uncle and his treatments.
Now I was sticking needles into peoples arms and setting up the machines to clean their blood. I remember thinking often they are letting me do this. Yes I was trained, but there is a difference in knowing what to do and hands on experience. Sometimes it was overwhelming to comprehend the cleaning and the toll the treatment took on the patient. The look on my uncle’s face after a treatment was difficult to observe on those three days each week. I didn’t understand as I do now the toll of the UFR, ultra filtration rate. All of the water in a dialysis patient’s body needs to be removed to get as much of the trash out of their bodies. Obviously, that doesn’t always happen the ultra vacuum is simply too harsh on their vulnerable bodies.
This job truly has allowed me to appreciate the knowledge I have when I think of how naive I was when he was going through it right before me and our family. This job was more than just a paycheck for me it was so much more.
Do you take a job due to the levels of duties to just get by with a check? Or do you pick a job that challenges you? Or perhaps your job doesn’t even feel like a job, because it’s your passion, your labor of love?
Jewells of Thought 
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