Written by Daniel Ramsay
When I started my nursing degree at 35, I already felt like a bit of an outsider. Most of my classmates were young, bright-eyed, and still living at home. Meanwhile, I was packing school lunches, managing meltdowns (mine and the kids’), and calculating how many sugar-free Monsters I could buy that week without completely blowing the servo budget.
I thought being older might give me a maturity advantage. Spoiler: it didn’t. What it gave me was a deeper level of exhaustion and an uncanny ability to survive on food from IGA and a suspicious chicken sandwich from the petrol station.
Then life hit harder than any clinical exam ever could.
In my second year, my dad passed away from terminal cancer and alzheimers. I tried to carry on—head down, just keep going. But then, in third year, my mum passed away too. That kind of loss knocks the wind out of you. I was grieving both parents, raising three kids, navigating a degree, and trying not to spontaneously combust under the pressure.
Because money was tight (turns out kids keep growing and need to eat every single day), I had to cram all my placements into my final year. I spent more time in hospitals than I did at home—most of it in small, rural facilities where the internet was sketchy and the staffing levels were even sketchier. It was tough. Really tough.Because I couldn’t afford to take time off work or stretch out my course, I did every single placement in my final year. Every. Single. One. Back-to-back. In rural settings, with minimal sleep, questionable Wi-Fi, and vending machines that became my primary food group. It was chaos.
Now, chuck ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder into the mix, and you’ve got the perfect cocktail of chaos and self-doubt. Some days I felt like I had 47 browser tabs open in my brain, and they were all buffering. Emotional regulation? Let’s just say dropping my servo food on the ground has never hit harder.
And yet, through all of it, I kept going. Not because I’m a hero. Not because I had it all figured out. But because I had them.
My kids. My girlfriend.
On the worst days—when I’d be one coffee away from a breakdown or ready to throw my stethoscope out the window—they grounded me. My kids reminded me why I was doing this in the first place: to build a better life for them. And my partner? She was the calm in the storm. The one who sat with me when I couldn’t speak. The one who made me laugh even when everything felt hopeless. She never let me forget who I was beyond the stress and grief.
Thankfully, Charles Sturt’s free counselling service caught me before I fell too far. I walked in carrying a mountain of grief, anxiety, burnout, and trauma—and they didn’t just listen. They helped. They reminded me that being a man doesn’t mean doing it all alone. That crying isn’t weakness. That healing is possible.
We don’t talk about men’s mental health enough—especially in nursing. We’re expected to “cope,” to “stay strong.” But the truth is, strength looks like asking for help when you’re on the brink. It looks like finishing a shift, sobbing in the car, then still showing up the next day.
I didn’t just earn a nursing degree. I survived a chapter of my life that nearly broke me—and came out the other side stronger, more self-aware, and surprisingly okay at taking blood pressure.
To anyone struggling: you are not alone. You are not too old. And you can do this.
Just maybe stock up on Monsters and servo snacks first.
Charlie blog is a SSAF funded initiative.
