Lessons from Spiderman and Luke

With great power comes great responsibility- Uncle Ben in Spiderman

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. Luke 12:48

Once again, I'm going to apologize for being very vague. Over the last week, I've had some incredible experiences. 
-I spent a day making arrangements for someone with a terminal illness to go and die in the comfort of their own home. 
-I was in the room when someone's vital signs dropped rapidly and eventually the heart stopped beating. They ended up living through it, but I don't know the extent of the damage.  
-I prayed with someone while both of us thought that their loved one was dying in front of our eyes. 
-I listened to patients tell me about losing their son in Afghanistan.
-I've learned so much about the heart. Take care of your heart people! It's kind of important!
-I encountered about one of the scariest drugs a nurse can encounter. Flolan is a medication for pulmonary hypertension (very dangerous) that has a half life of about 4 minutes (How long it lasts in the body). It is a continuous infusion (people take it constantly through an IV) and nurses hate it because if something goes wrong, you have about 4 minutes to fix it. 

Overall, this past week has been pretty exhausting emotionally and physically.  There have been multiple times when I get back to my house, cry, and then take a nap. I don't think this will ever stop. And I hope that it doesn't. 

I have been given much. With that, much is expected of me. I get to be with people during the most vulnerable points in their lives. I have the opportunity to listen, encourage, pray with, pray for, empathize, cry with, and give hope to people on a daily basis.

I hope that I never lose sight of the magnitude of this privilege. I hope that in 20 or 30 years that I can still cry. I hope that in 20 or 30 years, I will still recognize that I have a responsibility. The responsibility part doesn't just come from being a nurse. My responsibility to care for people comes from loving God. Nursing is just an excellent way to make it a career. 

I thought that having a real job would be so much easier than being in school. When you're in school, you have to study and do homework even after a long day in class or in clinicals. I thought that in the real world, you'd go to work, come home, then be done. I was wrong. I'm taking it home with me too. 

And in a weird, distorted way, I love it.