The conference host began the symposium thanking the 300 attendees for attending the conference and giving up a bright sunny Saturday of leisure. I felt a sense of dedication as he praised our commitment to the profession. Beaming with pride, I didn’t feel the blow coming until it was too late.    

The host asked everyone to stand up and began the countdown. “If you have been a nurse for five years or less please sit down. Ten years or less, please sit down.” As you can imagine the countdown continued by five year increments as everyone began to take their seats. I, of course remained standing. When the host reached over thirty years, I nervously shifted my weight from one foot to another, as I glanced around at the ten other women standing in the room.  “Look around everyone, these are your pioneers, let’s give them a round of applause,” the host loudly announced.

Pioneer, pioneer, my mind kept repeating the word as I gratefully took my seat after having to announce my “historical,” thirty two year record of employment. A pioneer isn’t one of those old women who traveled by wagon through the dust bowl, or even Florence Nightingale working for hours during the Crimean War.

Pioneers are inventors, innovators, people who explore new territory. That’s not me, I’m not a pioneer. I’m still a rock’n nurse.

As the speakers droned on, my mind began to drift back, am I really that old? It seems like just yesterday I was an excited eighteen year old young woman. I traveled to Los Angeles with my grandparents for the interview into a prestigious nursing program.

Two old nurses skewered and grilled me, in my first interview. “Young lady, you are far too young and innocent to know you want to be a nurse,” they lectured. “More than likely you will get married and have babies, so it would be a waste of our time to admit you into class.” I cried all the way home.

Three years later I was an RN. Granted, I had to prove myself every step of the way—but I made it and held on.    

For years physicians would enter the ICU and talk directly to the LPN or the CNA working with me. These were older women—so naturally, the blonde “girl”  was inconsequential and didn’t deserve their time or attention. At 21, I was a spunky, rockin' nurse who wasn’t afraid to speak up and inform the physician I was the primary RN in charge of patient care for his patients in the ICU. For the next two decades I could out walk, out smart and out last most of the nurses working along side me. Physicians and nursing colleagues soon realized I was confident, quick and unafraid.

So now I’m a pioneer? I will live with the title if I must, but I refuse to be viewed as an ancestor who pioneered nursing tradition. It’s not as if I was around when they discovered penicillin, advocated leeching and dismissed the notion of hand washing.

This pioneer is not ready to be glorified in a history book, just yet. This "nursing pioneer" intends to dominate her profession for at least another decade or two.