Mike Holy, MS, RN

Nurse Emeritus

VA Maryland Health Care System, Baltimore, Maryland

NOVA Chapter 218

So, my wife, Miriam Rogers Holy, MSN, RN, ACM, runs for Director on the NOVA Board, gets elected, and I am tasked to write an article on retirement as a nurse and a Nurse Emeritus of NOVA.  Ok, you asked for it, but be forewarned, it may not be pretty!

Shortly after I retired from the Baltimore VA in 2014, a few months before Miriam and I finally took the plunge, I began driving for the Red Cross one day per week, delivering blood products in the Baltimore metro area. About two years later, when hurricane Matthew hit North Carolina, I was directed to drive a 24-foot straight job (non-truck driving lingo – a “box truck”) to the Tar Heels State, drop it off, and come back the next day in a chaser van which was to follow me. Given I had spent two weeks with a VA disaster team in 2004 in Florida, and the following year, again with a VA team, outside of New Orleans, post Katrina, I stayed down in NC working that Red Cross Disaster for fourteen days. A few years later, I look back and see I have been to numerous hurricanes or floods (Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, North Carolina again, and South Carolina ) two California Wildfires (Paradise Fire in 2018, and the Wine Country Fires in 2019, Kincaid Sonoma County) along with one Mass Shooting deployment to Virginia Beach, Virginia, sandwiched in between May – June, 2019.   

Oh, yeah, … the “underpants” in the title …. while delivering blood products for the Red Cross, my dispatcher one day called me and asked, “Mike, would it be ok if I changed your route around a little bit this week?”   I told him, “No problem” … thinking instead of north Baltimore, he was sending me south, or perhaps out to the Eastern Shore … and then I followed up by telling him, “I told you, you have me on Tuesdays; I don’t care where you send me!” His reply …. “Ok, grab two pairs of underpants, and get into the office by noon!”  When I got in, underpants in a backpack … I asked … “Ok, what’s what?” He told me, I was to take one of two trucks down to NC and drop it off, and come back in the “chaser van” the next day. When I mentioned that I had done Katrina with the VA, and asked if he thought they may need some extra nurses down in NC … he did not miss a beat!  His response to me …. “Ok, go home, and grab eight more pairs of underpants!”   

To this day, I measure my deployments, by how many pairs of underpants I leave the house with at the start of any deployment! (I warned you guys it would not be pretty!)

So…there’s more …. a lot more, actually! No, none of it entails any articles of clothing, but … included are … pandemic activities, politics, a presidential position for a National Veterans’ Political Organization, and a nearly four-month travel nurse position/deployment last year, fighting COVID-19.  However, as I was advised by my better half that there was a limit to how long this will go …. catch up with me in Las Vegas at convention in October 2021 buy me a beer (or two) … and I will gladly fill ya in! Retirement? Yeah…sorta!