"Stay strong, be brave and show kindness as often as you can"

So I'm a sucker for a good TV show. Good acting, good plots/stories, and good music in the show really attract me! Needless to say when I got into work today, I was already in a bit of a funk. A show I had just gotten into was officially given the cancellation this morning upon my arrival to work. I won't go into the specifics of what the show was about, but it was good. Good stories, good lessons to be learned, superb acting, and of course good music. One of the main actors posted a very beautifully written spiel about how grateful for the love and support he received from the many fans, not to mention how shaken and disappointed he was the show had gotten cancelled. Upon my arrival into work, I discover I've been pulled to another unit, since the numbers are low on my unit right now. They're actually quite low throughout the entire hospital, which is good. Low numbers means generally happy people, or that's the way I see it. Anyway, sorry for the long tangents; I've been awake since 5:30. But that kind of set me off a bit more, even though I had worked on that unit before. So things are going well; the unit is quiet, everyone is happy, things are going smoothly. Then a new admit patient comes in to be sent to one of the other units, and things are not right. At all. This person....is really not right. Angry, yelling, lying on the floor screaming and crying, hitting other staff, and all sorts of very dangerous predicaments. So a code is called, which means any and all hands get your rear there ASAP. So I get there and another nurse has the box for all the "emergency medications" in it. They're drawing up one, and I immediately jump in and start drawing up the other one. As I'm drawing up the medicine, I catch a glance at who I'm about to give this medicine to. And I get a bit scared. My hands are shaking as I draw it up; partially from nerves and other part adrenaline. I paused, said a silent prayer that nobody would get hurt, and I do what needs to be done.

All the while I was praying in my head, I thought of that beautifully written narrative, and the title of this post is the closing statement. Yes, even as a nurse who has been doing this for a while, I still get scared. This was a scary situation, but what scared me the most was that once again, the mystery and somewhat frightening aspects of the human mind. As I've mentioned in previous posts, we've sent people to Mars but for some reasons...sometimes people's minds just snap. And nobody knows why. I was surrounded by a team of experienced nurses, therapists and psychiatrists, none of which could provide an explanation as to what was going on. And that scared me more than anything. I think that's another reason why I left psych; that fear was starting to haunt me more and more. That fear that somebody's psychosis would really scare the flippin bajeezus out of me and I would no longer be able to do my job effectively. And empathy, of course. I've been on a bit of an empathy kick lately, and one of the reasons I became a nurse was because I am very empathetic with people. I felt that actor's pain and shaken-up-ness (derp) upon reading what I did this morning. I felt that patient's pain as I stuck a needle in each leg, because let's face it, I'm a nurse and I hate getting shots. With each job, no matter what, some days are great, and some days are a crapshoot. You may get a series of really awesome days where everything is going right, and then, the next morning you wake up and everything you worked hard for is all of a sudden gone, for reasons you can't control. And yeah. That just downright sucks. But the words of this title are a good reminder for just life in general. A good reminder for me to keep the faith, keep praying to my maker and to persevere, even if good TV gets canned.