Don’t you hate how it’s the most difficult days that actually teach us the most? The ones that seem to engulf you in a neverending downward spiral that both hits you rapid fire, but moves in maddeningly slow motion all at the same time?
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What is normal, anyways? Well, whatever you do … don’t ask a nurse because their view has been forever skewed. We truly have no idea anymore. And we have to not only learn to live with it, we also have to press on in spite of it.
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I’ve never been comfortable with nurses being called heroes. Yes, we’ll fight for you – even though we don’t know you. Yes, we expose ourselves to whatever you happen to bring our way – whether physical or emotional. It’s all pretty contagious, actually. And yes, as we’ve all seen plastered all over the news and internet lately … sometimes we work under some pretty grueling circumstances.
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Nurses see some pretty awful things. I love what I do, but this is the honest truth. On a daily basis we watch as the ravages of disease take hold and forever change the lives of our patients. We try to slow the ugly physiology unfolding before us, but we know that there’s only so much we can do. We know this. We do.
I was just about to begin my shift one morning when it happened. A weary-eyed night-shift friend of mine came up to me and said, “Debi, I need you to go home tonight and write something that’ll make me want to come back and do this again.”
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Right at shift change I knew that something was wrong. My gut was screaming at me to start the day by checking her first. Things just didn’t seem right. Her labs looked terrible. SHE looked terrible.
Growing Nurse Debi 