I’m Still Here: Greetings from the Bottom of the Mountain

It’s been over a year of full time bedside pediatric nursing, and I haven’t shared much with this keyboard because I wasn’t sure what I’d say. I’ve been on the frontlines of the FTL mission for child health.

I’ve learned so much. I’ve seen so much. I’ve found myself. I’ve also somehow lost parts of myself.

The front lines are enough to drown you. I was drowning.

I never thought burnout would happen to me.

It only took about 7 months.

The work that I’ve done as a pediatric nurse so far has been the most fun I’ve ever had. I’ve had the best patients ever. They’ve been kind, funny, intelligent, strange, and loud – in all of the best ways. Pediatric nursing has also saddled me with the most desperate exhaustion, painful sadness, and burning anger that I’ve ever felt. I’m not sure how I felt so much love and joy, and somehow was still wrecked by it all. They coexist, the good and bad, and not necessarily in a balance.

I could fill a book with tales from the first year. There was a great escape, a few long term residents, a genuine miracle, and a variety of wacky diagnoses. I’ve started some absolutely killer IV’s, advocated for my kiddos, and been there on a family’s worst and best days.

There were bell ringings at the end of treatment. There were hugs and tears at discharge. There were scratches, bites, screams.

I’ve cried in the car, in the treatment room, and on the walk downstairs. The day I realized I was lost to it all, I was told by a parent that the blood of their child was on my hands.

You can’t make some of it up, the things that cut the most. It’s tears welling up in your eyes as you beg a child to stop hurting themselves. It’s children alone, more than staff can comfort and hold, crying into the hallways desperate for human touch and kindness. It’s holding a hand as the relapse is relayed: the cancer is back and we’re just sorry. It’s your favorite kiddo spending Christmas in the hospital when all he wanted was to be home for it.

You know how people say to take care of yourself first? I didn’t. They say don’t take it home. I did. I brought it home, I took it to lunch, I showered with it, and I dreamed of it.

I worked extra, I bought toys every Target trip, I covered early and late, I volunteered to float, I took a fifth patient – hell, I took a seventh once. I loved it so much that I gave all of myself to it, then I was wounded when it gave nothing back.

Burning out.

But still I’m filling prayers so heavy I fall asleep with my mouth still full of the words I mean to say.

I still love it. I still love them.

Now for the good part. The climb begins – hopefully.

I left. Now, for year two, I’m trying something different. I chose something bigger this time. Something that may not need to take all of me. Here, there are so many people and processes, support systems, and structures – I might be able to lay low and recover.

So far, that’s harder. I was good at being a jack-of-all-trades float nurse, running from floor to floor to hold, stick, find, grab, help. Now, I’m a hematology-oncology nurse in a land full of them. Working like a madwoman took so much out of me, but it became a part of me – a part I’m not sure how to shake.

So, here’s the climb. Here’s me hoping that the challenge and the change might be enough to bring me back from the burnout. The burnout that’s affected everything, including my “to be read” pile and this little home on the internet.

I’m still here.

I’ll do my best to be here more often and fan the flame that’s the passion still here, the heart still beating. Hope is still alive here, maybe more than it’s been in a little while, and I’ll walk in it in this space if y’all will have me.

FTL might look like a turtle race for a little while, but you know I’d never leave my spreadsheets alone for too long.

I still love you pediatrics, more than many other things in my life. I just wish you didn’t kick my tail so hard.

Here’s to the gallery of good things in the darkness and the good things to come out of it.