Down South

Driving south along the Florida Turnpike on our way to the Miami airport we contemplated the former North Miami hospital, now a derelict ruin, a stack of concrete with bombed out windows, not far south of the county line. Yes, that pile of concrete was long ago the place where Rachel Balius did her candy striper duties during her high school years. Back in those days there was a fairly severe shortage of nurses which helped to motivate Rachel and also my sister to train as nurses. So that's nice. Nurses will always be in demand, obviously, as long as sickness, disease, and injury are problems in this sinful world. Nurses certainly do deserve lots of money for what they have to do. Nevertheless, we know now that in the 1990s there was the surplus of hospital beds and the health department shuttered quite a few hospitals and many nurses were sent to work in clinics or at home care agencies. So nursing is not what it used to be. For those nurses who got in years ago continued employment will probably not be a significant problem. But there would be no reason for someone like me to try to start now. It is would just be too late for me to start medical training, just a lengthy and expensive ordeal with little if any return on investment. It would not make very much sense, not even cents. Besides, I would hate studying medicine. Science always bored me so much.