My Vocation: The Journey Has Just Begun By Ikechukwu Ogbu RN

The difference between a vocation and a profession is found in the inherent passion, selfless love that exists in the former. The latter is just but a complement of the former. Well, this is the belief, the perception of an exuberant and enthusiastic male nurse who is combat ready to nurse a falling and fallen humanity with rare love. When you see a just-graduated nurse from Nursing school jumping as to reach the height of the heavens in great euphoria, my dear friends, it is not because his dream is stunt but because his determination and God’s divine providence of calling him into the vocation have all paid off. More so, if one had gone to School of Nursing, Mkar in Benue State and faced the shackles of accreditation and the concomitant Machiavellian political hullabaloo without bending a virtue of determination, he deserves a chair before the green bottles in a benevolent beer palour.

This is the very vocation in which man works in partnership with God in His divine works of creation and recreation. If to nurse stems from love, as nursing is caring and we care for the person whom we love. And we know that God is Love; we can therefore, succinctly say that Nurses are demigods or some mystical angels who share in the creative power of healing, a healing that is as wholistic as it holistic, as sympathetic as it is empathetic.

Nursing school is however, different from the university! And this is where Florence Nightingale directly encounters her protégés to educate and discipline before subsequently validating them in the secular university. One who has missed this basic and fundamental training is indeed, half-baked! Quote me anywhere! Daily experiences abound.

Personally, this is where my passion hits the highest score. I do not mince words when I call it, my “Vocare,” my vocation, my Call. By providence, I am assured that what I could not make in the priesthood via the seminary is given another chance in this career. I will navigate all angle and sail through all seas to achieve this- to make the sick humanity well again. I have achieved the basic desideratum needed to wear this whimsical boots. I have gotten the values and the personal dispositions. Further studies, before the full time practice is only complementary tools to make me fully worthy to, like Jesus, tell the dead, “Come to life again.” I’m ever disposed to die alongside Jesus in the care of even enemies. So, every diabolic spell and evil propagation, is only but a stepping stone to this ethereal death. There’s no accident for a dead man! This is where I’m irrevocably committed. I pray for the necessary ingredients to harness and reshape this Call to an eternal standstill in the society and hereafter.

Indeed, the journey has just begun and I thank my classmates (Set 36, SON, Mkar): we recorded 100% success. My parents, especially my mother, my heroine in the very Nursing profession: Mrs. Eucharia Ogbu (Deputy Director Nursing Services , Enugu State). To my father, Mr. Micheal Ogbu, you know, the glory of a son is his father. To all my friends, especially my best friends: Ogbonnaya Jr Abuguja and Idokoja Onyebuchukwu Levi, I am indebted. My relatives are also appreciated, as well as all the people of goodwill who made this dream a reality.

We swagger on to the fore, despite the foes!

SURGITE EAMUS HINC