Psalms 139:16

I had a rough night. Few nights  actually. They really didn't tell me how rough residency is.  My skin is thicker that it once was, but there are days when the hurt of the day floods in, often in my car as I drive away from work.  And the tears spill out, and my heart is laid bear.. And there are days that I wish with all my heart that I was anywhere but here.  Here, where my failure is always at the forefront. Where I always feel worn out. Where I hurt and I hide it with a pasted smile. Where I feel so inadequate, not good enough for this task.. Here, where I feel so alone without my family and my closest friends.  And if I am truly being honest with you I started writing this a few weeks ago with a tremor in my hands, and tears streaming down my face. Because if you knew...If you knew only knew how much my heart and my mind and my body hurts .....I'm standing here in this place where I feel so small and so unable,, I'm standing, maybe similar to a place you to...

The hallway of the ICU floor is unfamiliar and cold. Shifts are stressful. Rounds are long. Painful. Attendings are stern. Chaos fills the ICU floor. When there isn't a massive group of people rounding, there are procedures and interventions underway on the ICU floor. With intubating bed 8. Coding bed 1. Placing lines in there. And pulling lines here. Doctors and nurses and pharmacist and Respiratory therapist armed with medicine try and try here in this ICU floor to make a dent in the enemy that is disease.  And sometimes, most often than not, we do not win the battle. We succumb to loss. We succumb to death. Bed 16. We will be withdrawing care tonight.  She's on pressors. On maximum vent settings. She's on continuous dialysis. She is swollen now, her hands and face edematous. She is hardly the woman she was a few weeks ago, few days ago... She reminds me of another ICU room I stood in 10 years ago. My grandmother's. Being just a child then and seeing her...