Working in healthcare, some days you can get caught up in the fast pace
world of medicine where your days are stressed and non-stop. I remember
working in the Cardiovascular ICU and there were some days that we
didn’t sit down, just going from patient to patient. When your days are
like this you never really get to enjoy your job or, in my case, enjoy
the kids I work with. Anyway, the point to my story is the other day I
was at work and in walks this boy who looks healthy and full of life.
If you didn’t know his story you would think he was a healthy young man.
But I remember the day he almost met his maker. It was a while back
when I was working in the ICU and all of a sudden his heart went into a
very lethal rhythm so we ended up “coding” him (doing CPR) for about 45
minutes until we could get his heart back to a normalized rhythm. He
had heart problems all his life and as a kid had many surgeries to
repair them. After he coded, the doctors told his parents that the only
way he would walk out of this hospital is to get a new heart. Little
did they know this would mean he would have to stay in the hospital and just wait
until he got one. As he put it, “I’m just waiting here for someone else
to die.” It’s a sad way to look at it, but in reality that was the case.
Well, about a month later, he did receive a new heart and did
beautifully. So here he is 5 or 6 months later walking back into the
hospital after we was free to live the rest of his life. All this to
say, I guess I would take all the stressful and crazy days if it means
that I get to experience the joy of seeing someone who was on deaths
door and now full of life!
