When you decide to stop letting the stress get to you.

               Rest and digest, that’s what you learned in school right? The parasympathetic nervous system was made to help us relax and process. Yet lately I have the feeling that in nursing we tend to lean more on our sympathetic nervous system, cortisol levels up the wazoo. If its a 12 hour shift then every one of those minutes is spent in frenzie completing tasks and mentally shuffling through what needs to be done placing the most urgent at the top of the pile. And this may be an okay way to spend one work day, just make sure there’s a nice full glass of red waiting for you at home that day, am I right? But what happens when this is our everyday work routine. It’s like a cliff face that rests against the ocean. One wave makes little indentation. But the smashing of water continuously on the rock will eventually leave quite an impression. It wears the very face of the stone away. I have begun to feel a little worn away myself. One year into nursing and I thought I would feel stronger more capable and totally sure of my smarticils. However I have started to feel like these waves of emotion that have become common as a nurse are starting to erase parts of me. It’s stress that’s certain but that’s not all of it. It’s the grief you feel and the intense situations you experience. It’s these raw and powerful emotions that humans weren’t meant to wade through on a daily bases, that are dragging at my legs as I walk and threatening to swallow me. And then comes the all important question to my mind, am I the only one feeling this way? Other nurses make it out unscathed, other nurses don’t let it get to them, other nurses… well other nurses aren’t me, and I don’t know the answer. I could give up my empathy, perhaps and then feel little of these traumatic emotions. But what sort of nurse would that leave me. I could let my self keep sinking in the stress and pain. Bring it home with me. Feed it to the people around me until little by little it makes them sick too. Or instead, I could choose the harder way out. Choose to feel. Choose to process and talk about what I am going through, be honest, be open. Bu this also means choose to leave things and emotions that were not meant for me behind. To greet them and acknowledge them but not put them in my pockets and take them home with me. There are days when the stress will feel like it comes up your chin and presses on your windpipe and the unit looks like a bomb has hit it, on those days work hard and stay focused but also laugh with that coworker who is also drowning in busy work, and know you are not alone. On days when you have a patient whose life is ending far before anyones should and the family are crying on your shoulder and asking you what they should do, a question far beyond the emotional wisdom of your meager years. Well on those days be strong, and cry in your car in the way home while listening to John Denver’s “I’m leaving on a jet plane.”  Then when you get home hug your kids a little tighter that night (or you know kiss your pooch a little longer if that’s how you role). And on those shifts when you have the nastiest patient that doesn’t take care of themeless and has a truly ugly personality in every sense of the word, meet up with your friends after work and go get sushi resting in the knowledge that after 12 hours you leave the hospital. You get eat raw salmon with your besties while complaining about the waiter never bringing you enough pickled ginger (like really is that stuff made of gold bring me a whole bowl please) and that patent stays in the hospital alone and sick and probably, if we are being honest with ourselves, scared. So what do all these scenarios have in common (other than being very long winded)? Well my dear chickadee they all acknowledge  that you and I have some very wonderful things to be thankful for. Like funny co-workers and warm houses and days off and lungs that fill easily with air without us even asking and feed oxygen into our beautiful bodies. A smart man once told you, you cannot be anxious and thankful at the same time. So practice being thankful my friend. You are smart and you are gorgeous and your patients are so lucky to have nurse that cares as much as I know (and I do I really know) you do.