Friendship Chocolate

i broke yesterday.

I called my dad sobbing uncontrollably and told him I didn't want to be a nurse anymore. There's too much death. Too much suffering. Too many people who treat nurses like dirt. Every day I go to work is another family's worst nightmare. It's the day their nightmares become reality. It's most often the day their lives change forever, unexpectedly. 

I was feeling especially incompetent and frustrated. My patient who was completely capable of eating and taking medications was flat out refusing to do so. I spent most of my day coaxing him to eat, making him protein shakes to get some sort of caloric intake. I spoon fed him. I tried appetite stimulants.  I explained the reality of a feeding tube if he wouldn't increase his intake. Still, he'd pocket his pills like a chipmunk and spit them out. He refused food. He refused to cooperate period. 

I just don't understand. How can someone who is so capable just not care? I have patients dying to live in the neighboring rooms. And here he is playing possum with the nurse for two hours about taking medications. Here he is refusing care. 

I felt like a failure. I felt like a waste of time. 

But today was different. Today a little girl, that I have learned to love the past 21 days, came to visit her grand dad in the hospital. Her family and I have grown close over the course of his stay. And when her face lights up, I know why I chose to be a nurse. I know why I choose to put on my scrubs and come into work day after day, even when it's sad. Even when it's hard. Even when I think I can't take it anymore. Every day I show up to work I have the chance to make someone feel loved and important.  I remember how much of a difference I felt I made in that little girl's life when she visited her grand dad for the first time. The ICU is a scary place for an 8 year old little girl. We did everything we could think of to make the hospital a pleasant place to be. Even to the smallest details. Needless to say, she took it well. She was so excited to come back and visit her favorite nurse Jessie. 

Today that little girl offered me some chocolate. There were only two left after she had shared them with every nurse on the unit. And I took one, and she took the other. Now we have friendship chocolates. And when she eats these chocolates she'll remember her friend nurse Jessie, and when I eat them I'll think of her.

I taped it to my locker door.

And when I see it I'll remember the sunshine in her soul and how much love I felt for one little person. I'm so glad I'm a nurse, because I met her.