on a very negative basis" (324), and that she had to deal with these problems from twelve to fifteen hours per day, twelve to fifteen days in a row, a very rigorous schedule. Further emotional damage was incurred by the severity of the injuries that the nurses had to deal with. Nurses described situations such as little boys with their intestines hanging out, men with half their faces blown off, men missing their legs from a grenade explosion, paraplegics, quadriplegics, and in one case pulling someones shoe off and having the foot come with it. In addition, the soldiers they were treating were only eighteen or nineteen. As Ms. Mishkel said, "They were young, healthy, good-looking men that couldve been my brothers or my boyfriends or my husband, and they were dying" (124). Women in the Vietnam War had a lot of trying emotional stress that they had to deal with. All of these emotional traumas that women had to experience day after day had a notable impact upon the womens moral concept of the value of human life. Ms. Miller mad a very interesting statement, saying, "I am a professional committed to the concept that before anyone can administer to the health needs of an individual, one must recognize the dignity of human life" (322). One could believe that upon first being sent to Vietnam, nurses, being Americans, had a profound respect for the value of human life. Nurses such as Sara McVicker "had a hard time accepting that we couldnt keep everybody alive and bring everybody back" (144). In the early days of her service, Ms. Mishkel said that she cried often, and that she thought the other nurses were "totally insensitive" (124). However, after day after day of experiences like Ms. McVickers, where there just simply werent the resources necessary to tend to everybody, where cases with low chances of survival had to be dropped to make room for others; Ms. Mishkel soon became as apathetic as everybody else. Many nurses, such as Ms. Sandecki...
