You don't get to roll over and die, not this time.

 

If my own family doesn't stress me out enough, between health issues and deaths, my patients will gladly fill in for them.  Tonight I helped take care of a lady (who was only 10 years my senior) and she was very critcal condition, to the point where I was even scared as to which direction the situation was going to go in.  This lady looked me right in the eyes, as I was leaning over her to hook up the cardiac monitor, and said, "If I die, please tell my husband and my baby that I love them." It felt like someone punched me right in the gut and knocked the wind right out of me. I didn't know what to say to her. I found myself struggling to collect some sort of words in my head that would just fall out of my face in an effort to reassure this woman that everything was going to be okay. I couldn't agree to do what this lady was asking of me so that she could just give up, roll over, and die. Not this time, not on our watch. If I'm willing to fight to save her then she has to do the same, because even in the darkest of moments, there is always hope. So how did I handle the situation? I went all Grey's Anatomy on her ass with, "No, I won't do that, because you are going to be okay and you are going to tell them yourself. They would rather hear it from you, not me."  And then I crossed my fingers and prayed that those last words I said to her, wouldn't be a lie.
When nursing school starts to overwhelm me and giving up starts to sound more and more like a better idea.. it's the moments like this that remind me of why I started this journey in the first place. I will not let fear of failure consume me. I will live out my calling.