Isn't it strange how you prepare yourself for something, but the closer it gets the less prepared you are? The last week has been really hard. I find myself attempting to keep myself occupied for the sake of "keeping it all together." If I'm not doing something than I much rather be asleep so that I don't have to think, but when you wake up nothing has changed. Your reality is still that same reality and you lose yourself to it all over again.
The fear has set in again. As time approaches, I feel more anxious despite the fact I am ready to see my family and my grandmother. I am now going to face the reality she and they have been living for weeks since her diagnosis of cancer. I find myself fearful of this reality, that when I arrive I will not be strong enough to keep it together for her sake. I want to be strong. I need to be strong. The question still remains: Can I be? A friend I spoke to told me "sadly, there is little other choice" and he is absolutely right. As I sit here typing my thoughts, contemplating the next few days of chaos from working my last days on assignment, to packing, and spending 3+ days on the road home to Texas, I find myself thinking about that I have to do this. That I could not forgive myself if I did not.
Everyday I take care of people, whose own lives are caught in a balance and despite the fact that my days are hard, their days are just as hard. Just recently we worked for over an hour to resuscitate a patient and just when we weren't sure if the doctor was going to call it we watched her heart beat on the ultrasound machine. You could see the flicker of life and we all felt a sense of relief and accomplishment. At the end of the day a life was saved. She was a wife, a mother, a sister, and a daughter.
I thought to myself how I needed to be this courageous when I walked through the threshold of the place I call "Home." So here I am, getting ready for a difficult time in my life. I can only think to myself that the way to do this is "together" I am grateful for the large and loving family I am blessed to have. Together we will fight, together we will love, together we will live, and together we will overcome.
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, to listen to my fears, and for walking with me during this difficult time.
Your Travel Nurse
❤️️
"Nursey"
Images courtesy of Pixabay.com
