Constable: Nurses star in Arcada's free 'Salute to Heroes' ABBA show

Friday night's show at the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles started the way owner Ron Onesti begins every show.

"I always bring out the American flag, play the national anthem and honor veterans, first-responders, and, in particular, nurses and teachers as unsung heroes of our community," Onesti says.

The 900 nurses Onesti treated to Friday night's free ABBA tribute show have 900 stories about why they chose that career.

For nurse Sharon Seaman, who has worked the past 48 years at Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin, that story begins when she was a 10-year-old girl growing up in Carpentersville.

"Back in the day, when kids rode bikes in the summer, my girlfriend and I would ride to the library, get our books, and hole up and read - a lot," Seaman says. "I read these books about nurse Cherry Ames."

The title character did solve mysteries and bring bad guys to justice, but her career path started with "Cherry Ames, Student Nurse" and included stints as "Rest Home Nurse," "Staff Nurse," "Senior Nurse" and even "Jungle Nurse."

As soon as Seaman got her driver's license, she would drive her mom's 1968 apple-green Mustang to a weekend job as a nurse's aide for older people living in what was then called Americana Nursing Home in Elgin.

"You are bathing them, changing their diapers and feeding people," remembers Seaman, who made $1.75 an hour.

"I think I have a nurturing, empathetic feeling," Seaman says. "I like taking care of people. I always have."

In the first class to go all four years to the new Irving Crown High School in Carpentersville, Seaman graduated in 1973. She got a job paying $2.50 an hour at Sherman Hospital in January 1974 and never left.

"You know how nurses get burned out? I never have," says Seaman, who admits that she is pondering retirement with her 67th birthday coming in March and her son, Shane, and granddaughter Rayah, 5, having moved to Florida earlier this month. "I've always felt blessed."

Her son is a surgical technician, and the pair got to work to together for a time at Sherman, which is more than a workplace for Seaman.

"This is my home. I grew up here. I had braces on my teeth when I started," Seaman says with a chuckle.

Nurses, as do police officers and firefighters, experience tragedies in their careers that still haunt them.

"Hold on. You hit a nerve," Seaman says, sobbing softly for a moment. "I'm much more emotional since COVID."

One of her patients, a 37-year-old husband and father, came into the hospital for surgery after a grim diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Pandemic restrictions meant he was alone, with only Seaman to care for him.

"His wife couldn't see him. His parents couldn't see him," Seaman says, tearing up again at the memory. "That day I had to cry in the bathroom for a bit."

Outside of "an occasional tear drop," she doesn't cry on the job, even when the news hits close to home. A breast-cancer survivor for 32 years, Seaman occasionally treats patients who are told that their breast cancer has returned.

"I've heard many a person get bad news," Seaman says.

Not everybody returns her kindness and patience. Nurses, especially those working with COVID patients and all the anger and misinformation surrounding that virus, have told stories of being spat on, cursed and punched.

"We've been getting hit from the beginning of time," Seaman says, noting that she's avoided any serious injuries during her career. "You stand away from the side-rail. You say, 'Please.' You don't touch them without asking."

Gone are the days when she was a general surgical nurse and a patient getting her gallbladder removed (now an outpatient procedure) would spend a week in the hospital under her care. "You got to know your patients and their families," she says.

Even now, patients from decades ago will see her in public or come back to the hospital for another procedure and recognize her as the nurse who gave them such good care. They recognize her voice and her curly blond hair, and they remember the way she made them feel.

Since the pandemic has caused stress for everybody and led to overcrowding at hospitals, anger is more prevalent. "It's a scary time to be a nurse," says Seaman, who works to understand patients' emotions.

"They are medicated. They are in pain. They are stressed," she says. Some have mental health issues or post-traumatic stress disorder, or are frustrated that hospital visits aren't the same as they were back when the staff wasn't worried about a pandemic.

"In my head, maybe I'm swearing back at you," Seaman says. Her calm demeanor sometimes stops patients from swearing and yelling.

She came back from vacation to find a note saying one of the local families had been devastated by COVID, and a 47-year-old neighbor was in ICU with other issues. "I snuck up and saw him every day. I just opened the door," Seaman says. "The first five days, he didn't even know me."

Now she works in the recovery room, where she treats patients who are waking up from surgeries. "I'm just taking care of patients one hour earlier than I used to," she says.

Onesti, who had a relative die of the coronavirus, says people sometimes ask why he honors nurses for doing the job they get paid to do.

"This is not about what they do. This is about how they do it," Onesti says. "They do it with such compassion and in such a selfless way that they themselves feel the pain the family feels."

As a 16-year-old girl feeding cottage cheese to an old man, or a veteran nurse caring for a young woman facing a startling cancer diagnosis, Seaman's job as a nurse hasn't changed the goal.

"Making people feel comfortable. That's what it's all about," Seaman says. "It's a beautiful thing."