Oh, we nurses; we're just like everybody else in thier miserable jobs. So often, we sit around and bitch about all the petty stuff that complicates our days. Or, we sit around and talk about how we were smarter than some doctor, when we pulled some poor patient back from the brink of death. We're just like the TV news, always reporting the sensational stuff. The blood and gore.
Truly though, we are deeply caring individuals, who hold sacred the tenuous thread of life and the most special, secret experiences we hold close to our hearts. I call these things:


The Sacred and Healing

I listen to the tales
That my nursing cohorts tell,
After time, there's repetition
The favorite stories from hell,
But often the ones
With the most precious feeling,
Are those we keep secret
About the sacred and healing.

You see, it's hard to convey
The uniqueness of spirit,
We can talk all around it
But no one can hear it,
We attempt to describe
The subtle ways we were touched,
But the completeness of the experience
Can't be shared; it's too much.

Some call these things miracles
I call them this,
You had to be there
Or else you would miss,
The moments that no one
Could ever have known,
Defying logic and science
We were witnessed and shown.

I saw a man
Who died of lung disease,
When his heart finally stopped
No one gave it a squeeze,
But his was no ordinary death of the day
What a few of us witnessed
I'll try to relay.

The cardiac monitor showed
When his heart ceased to beat,
He was no longer breathing
It was a remarkable feat,
Then he was pronounced dead
By a doctor of good standing,
And what I saw that night
Was better than a moon landing,
After about 30 minutes
The dead man came back,
His heart began to beat
His breathing got on track,
And as he slowly woke up
We gazed at him in wonder,
There was no explanation
Nor any medical blunder,
'Twas just one of those things
Beyond the telling and feeling,
We had witnessed and been blessed
By the Sacred and Healing.

Fibril_late; 8/18/06