Some Nights

Some nights you wake up every hour. Not ideal when you’re on the early shift this morning with the rest of the week ahead.

Some nights some people just stick with you, and it’s visual – you can close your eyes and see their faces. See the framed photographs on the wall and the dog who kept trying to jump up on you. You see it all so clearly.

Some nights you replay something you have been told that day, something that resonates, something that evokes something in you. Something you need to remember or something that you will have no choice but to remember.

Some nights you just can’t help but think about your patients in their own homes. Are they ok? Are they awake too? You question yourself and the decisions you have made as their advocate and their nurse. Will that work for them, what is best for them, and will it make a difference? Could I have done something differently? Is there anything else I could try?

Some nights you think about families and wonder if they too are awake every hour wondering if they too are doing everything that they can for their loved one. If they are ready to face another day in their role as a carer? Am I giving them everything they need to support them through this?

Some nights you know that everything may change again tomorrow and there will be a new set of questions, new doubts, a possible diversion in the plan?

Some nights you think about the bereavement call you have to make tomorrow to the husband who lost his wife yesterday and you doubt he’s even slept at all because the house just feels emptier than it’s ever felt tonight.

Some nights are just hard. But what will follow is a new day, with new people, problems and risks to assess, new life changing stories to be a part of, and many more things to worry about!

Some nights and every day I am just human…… I am also a nurse.

Image by Lukas Baumert