I told you so...

I often find myself griping about my job to others. I seem to enjoy telling them about all of the gross and difficult things about my job. Things like wiping up poop, 12 hour shifts, getting yelled at, having patients die, etc, but the truth is that I love what I do and I wouldn't change it for the world.
Yesterday was an exceptionally hard day, but by the end of the day I found that I was really happy.
It started off difficult...I had 5 patients, 2 were dying, 2 were blind, 3 were total care (meaning they needed to be turned every 2 hours, changed, cleaned up, fed, etc) and none had slept well the night before.
During the day one of my easier patients started going downhill. She could no longer sit up by herself and was throwing up constantly. After notifying the doctor and getting some tests done it was determined that she had a huge cerebellar stroke and needed to be moved to another floor. It was extremely difficult to talk with the family about this, but it was good to be a support for them.
At this same time I had to help a family decide if they wanted their mother to be placed on hospice because she would probably die within a few days and then run in and out to intervene while another patient's family member wanted some real answers from a doctor about her mother's condition. Some how in the middle of all of this I needed to get meds passed, wounds changed (one huge one I might add...yummy), patients cleaned, etc... All of a sudden it was 6:15pm and I still had to pass meds and do tons of charting before 7pm. I found my self racing in and out of rooms with meds flying until I went into one of my patient's rooms.
I found my patient quietly crying in bed. She was a really sweet lady that because of her diabetes was needing to decide if her leg needed to come off. She had been in the hospital for a few days and was having a really difficult time. I tried to quickly comfort her so that I could leave, but I could tell that she was having a really hard time.
At first I was a bit annoyed because of how busy I was, but then I remembered how I had felt earlier this week. For some reason on Thursday I was down. I didn't have a specific reason to be, but I just was. I didn't feel like anyone had time to talk with me and so I just sort of remained down in the dumps. I realized that I understood how hard it is to be depressed.
After this realization I pulled up a chair (it really felt good to sit down anyway) and talked with her for about 30 minutes. We found ourselves laughing and crying together. I found her a good movie on t.v (I love remembering the titans, don't you?) and was about to leave when she said to me, "you could cheer up a rock". I think this was one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me and it amazed me that my patient, who is going through a lot was able to help me feel so much better than I had been feeling all week with one simple phrase.
I learned a few things from that day. First that no matter our situation it is always possible to help others, like my patient did for me and secondly that Heavenly father knows what will help us and make us truly happy and I really think that at times he must be up above thinking...I told you so.