Ivy (my healthy niece) [Canon SD800 IS] 7/7/07 (World Hoop Day) Wish I had a newer photo to post, but...

No time for much new photography lately, because, like pretty much every other nurse at my hospital, I've been working a ton of overtime lately. We've been packed to capacity non-stop since November, with a worse-than-usual respiratory viral season, and a whole slew of other very sick kids. The overall acuity of our patients is much high than usual, as is the census (this means we have more and sicker kids than usual, even for winter.) Between the tragedy of so much serious sickness (we've had some really sad losses this winter), and all of the overtime that everyone's been working, I think it's safe to say that the whole hospital is pretty emotionally and physically tapped out.

I feel blessed and lucky every day to go to work with such amazing people, people who willingly walk into other people's tragedies and hells every single day, to do work that is not only "Our Life's Work" (as our cheesy employee morale campaign likes to call it), but for many of us, our calling. We subject ourselves to other people's pain and stress, every day. We hold space for them while they grieve, we hold hope with them while there's hope, we hold their children's hands for them when they're not there, we hold a billion bits of information in our heads and put all of those pieces together to help their kids get better. We go without our own time off and without spending as much time as we'd like with our own families and friends, and without sleep when the staffing office calls us begging for nurses to work overtime. And for the most part, my peers and I put on our best attitudes and our best clinical minds, every day, and do the work that we're passionate about, that we're proud to do well.

The families don't really get it, of course. They don't understand the kinds of stress that we're under, how many sick kids touch us and effect us, how many tragedies we live through, how many of these stories and relationships follow us home and populate our dreams. In my few years as a nurse, I've already been been present at more deaths than most people ever experience in their lifetimes. I've held my breath along side so many families, unsure what the fate of their child will be, celebrating with them when good news arrives, and helping to hold the weight of their grief and mine when it doesn't.

But I get it; for the parent whose child is in the ICU, they are in the worst place they could ever be. When it's their child, the family only needs me to care for them in that moment; all of those other families that I've done the same for don't matter. It's not that they don't care, it's that they don't even know how to manage the stress and grief and hope of their own situation, much less make room for the weight of the pain of others. They often can't see past their own immediate needs and hopes, they don't know (or need to know) of the tragic stories that are all around them, they don't care (or need to care) that we, the staff, are constantly trying to balance the needs of many patients, many parents, and our peers. They don't know (or need to know) of the weight of the darkness that we cary home with us many days, how living in the land between the dead and the living that is the ICU is something that stays with us every hour of every day of every year. For them, it's those days or weeks or months that their child is there in the ICU, when their world is on hold while they wait and hope, that are as challenging as any they will ever face, and when they are in it, that is all that matters.

Eventually, every single child that is in our ICU now will be gone (mostly gone home with their families, but some gone...beyond...), but I will keep going back, day after day, and living through different versions of similar stories and families again and again. Holding other babies, holding other children's hands, holding other parent's hopes and fears, holding space and emotions for other people.

Some days the weight of my own days and the weight of other people's worries gets me down, and it's hard to get out of bed and drag myself to work. Some days, the weight of the sadness that permeates some days follows me home and darkens my non-working moments. Some days my emotional and physical exhaustion deprives those I love of my energy, energy that I already gave away to strangers. Some days, I wonder how much longer I can work in a place where I never know as I drive in to work if I'm going to live through another death or tragedy. Some days, I don't know how much more of myself I can give away to others, and I wonder how much of me will be left to share tomorrow. Some days I contemplate a career change (lately I've been fantasizing about being a barista...)

But I keep going back and doing this work, this work that I'm called to do, that I know I do well and passionately. I know that I'm not likely to get either thanks or praise on most days; in fact, I know that more often than not, I'm going to be facing unhappy people rather than happy ones. But ultimately it doesn't matter; it's not for praise or thanks that I do it. I do it because I know it matters, because someone has to do it, because I know how to do it, and because I'm good at it. I know that it's in those very darkest of moments for a family that I do my best work, and it's then that what I do really makes a difference.

And for as much as this work takes out of me, on some level, I know that it also pours so much back into me: the joy of knowing I've done well, the honor of being present at the passing of a little spirit, the privilege of sharing something deeply important with a patient or family, the great joy of watching a child climb from the edge of death back into the fullness of living, the hugs and smiles from patients and families when they visit us later, the occasional emails, letters, and pictures sent back to us to show us how a child has grown and thrived after they've left us, and the privilege of coming to work every day along side some of the best people I could ever hope to work with. And of course, the greatest lesson of all, which I am reminded of every day: life is precious, and to live, live, live.