A dear friend and former classmate of mine, Sarah “Uppie” Updegraff, recently began working the night shift as a nurse at the NICU, the Tucson hospital where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is in intensive care.
Today, Uppie sent me a link to a blog she recently created to post her personal reflections on life as she makes the transition from nursing school to a career in health care. Just days after she began writing, she found herself processing not only what it’s like to be up all night caring for patients, but doing so in a highly charged atmosphere and media zoo that’s been thrust into the center of a national tragedy. I thought I’d share some excerpts, which offer a real-life, on-the-ground glimpse into what it’s like to be in Tucson in the wake of this horrific incident.
Here are a few of the thoughts and reflections from her blog, “The Uppie Update.”
From an entry titled, Sad Times in Tucson, City that I Love …
“Of course, then there are politics. Our liberal wild-west gun laws. The overall culture of dislike for Sarah Palin (with a comparable vigor to any liberal small college town), and my beloved NPR, blaming Republicans as usual. Usually I find it consoling to listen to news that agrees with me, but I’ve been rolling my eyes all morning, exhausted and unsatisfied.
“And then I think about this young man’s parents. And this little girl’s parents. How terrible. It’s hard for me to understand these actions, to make sense of anything, other than to believe this boy must have had some psychological issues which compelled him. I can’t believe that a ‘regular’ person could just wake up one day and decide to shoot some people they have decided not to like. … I want to know more about this boy. What systems have failed? I’ve been obsessively listening to the news, as though I’ll find an answer there. Instead, I find just more politics.”
Here’s more, from an entry titled, My First Week of Night Shift Amidst Tragedy.
“I just move through it, making too much eye contact or none – waiting in line to have multiple security people check my badge on my way to my floor. The Obama hospital parade – a pensive fanfare.
“They show the little girl, smiling with her milk-carton-worthy optimism, making me notice feeling nauseous.
“In my time off, I’m unable to focus on anything requiring attention. I find myself, wandering Target alone, watching people, eavesdropping. Listening to chatter, chatter about groceries, children, and shootings woven by many mouths – so strange. Is Target always this strange and solemn, or is it just me, in a disconnected haze of exhaustion? And of course everyone knew someone, everyone’s comparing notes on who they knew and how – as they do in newsworthy tragedies like these. Tucson is so small. I haven’t met anyone yet who had no connection to the people killed or shot. Droning punctuated by sentences that seem to lift out of the shoppers around me: ‘It could have happened here, it could have happened anywhere.’ ‘I had just been at that Safeway the day before.’ ‘My brother works there.’ conversations laced in and out. This is my community after all, even at Target in the middle of the day/night. It feels lonely and connected at the same time.”