For those of you that don’t know, Nurses Week 2016 runs from Friday May 6 through Thursday May 12, ending on Florence Nightingale’s birthday. And for those of you that don’t know, Florence Nightingale was the first nurse. With all this being said, I have compiled a list of 11 different ways to tell if either of your parents are nurses, hey, maybe even both of them may be nurses! But either way, Happy Nurses Week to all the wonderful nurses out there that have tons of “patients” (get it?) and work their butts off to keep others safe. You truly are angels in disguise.

They tell you over and over again that Google cannot tell you what’s wrong with you, because inevitably the end result of whatever you have is death.

They were always able to give you your flu shots. After all, it is much better to be stuck with a needle in the comfort of your own home

They can always tell when you’re not feeling well, usually just by a look, or knowing you have a temperature just by feeling your forehead. How the heck did they do this anyway?

The cure to throwing up was to drink plenty of fluids - gatorade especially because apparently when you throw up you lose electrolytes.

Doctors were only visited on a mandatory basis, because after all, nurses know more than doctors do (or at least that’s what everyone tells you).

They can assess the validity of nurse shows on television (i.e. Nurse Jackie, my mom’s newest obsession) and explain how certain events just could not happen in “real life.

Everyone comes to her with questions as well as showing things on their bodies that may seem abnormal just to get a second opinion.

They find humor in EVERY nurse related meme out there - especially those that nobody outside of the medical field would ever understand

When watching tv, or a movie, or basically anything for that matter - they diagnose what’s wrong with the person and wait for the diagnosis on the screen to confirm their thoughts (which, nine out of ten times are probably correct)

They find ways to relate everything back to what happened at work or what they say (for example: "don’t do that! a patient at work came in and did the same thing and you should only see what happened to them!!”) This is very good incentive to NOT do what you were going to do, by the way, and I believe this is why they tell us these horror stories.

Nothing grosses them out, whether it be talking about blood or bowl movements at the dinner table, nothing is out of bounds when there is a nurse around!

So in conclusion, you guys are the most compassionate, understanding and weirdest (for lack of better words) individual for being able to take care of people regardless of what’s going on with them…and to the best nurse in the whole world, my mom, thanks for all you do for me and for my brother and all the patients you’ve taken care of. I look up to you and hope to be like you someday, minus the blood and body parts of course because truthfully, I could never do what you do.