Nurses

Uncontrollable sobbing on the way to work this morning.  It was all this talk about the miss america pagent nurse - all I could think about were our nurses.
The nurse who stayed with us when we delivered our daughter, who had to step out of the room so we wouldn't see her breakdown; she didn't want to burden us. The nurses who brainstormed in the halls, desperate to find a way for us to keep our son.  The nursing supervisor who let us keep two rooms for several weeks so we could move back and forth between antepartum and postpartum as the level of emergency rose and fell, so we could keep our more "homey" set up with plants, lamps and photos for the downtimes.  The nurse who fed me ice chips every three minutes while I was on the mag fighting a loosing battle. The nurses who stayed hours after their shifts when we lost our son, waiting, ready to come in and be witnesses to our son's precious life whenever we were ready to share with them.  The nurse who helped us handle the iPad to Skype in our family when we could not function.  The nurse who came in on her day off the day when we had to face life without either of our children and climbed into bed with us and held me.  The nurses who came to our babies' service months after we lost them.  There are good and inept nurses, like every other profession, but anyone who has ever needed and received care from a wonderful nurse has no doubt of their importance and value.