Nurses learn tough lessons from patients. That suffering is draining; ministering healing in some situations costs us more than our time and effort. It requires spirit and strength to let yourself care about patients confronting death, or enduring painful life. I have always tried to provide compassionate care, balancing my patients' physical and emotional needs. It wasn't until I found myself "on the other side of the bed" that I realized just how deeply pain and suffering affects one to the very core of belief systems. That usual coping methods need to be modified to accommodate this physical/spiritual upheaval.
I found myself humbled by pain and insecurity. My feelings overwhelmed me; at the same time, my inability to be creative kept me from expressing them as I usually have, in journaling, or free-verse. I turned inward. I found in the midst of despair a voice for iambic pentameter. I wrote sonnets. The rigid structure of the sonnet became my focus during long, sleepless intervals. 14 lines, 10 syllables to a line, abab cdcd efef gg. They became my focus, like breathing in labor. Not sonnets for reading, but sonnets for writing, for occupation. Providing concentrated diversion when the clock refused to move from two to three a.m. Along the way, my nurses cried with me.
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