All you can do is feel..

Hey,

I've had night shift this week and it's been pretty exhausting because I started working at my new job (which is something not hospital related) and the nights were rough.

One night I received an emergency patient who was slightly awake when he arrived but his whole left lung wasn't working and his general condition worsened so we had to put a tube in his airway. (One of the docs called his daughter whether this was okay or not, because he was suffering from cancer and it was not clearly what his attitude towards intensive care and being reanimated was..)

Long story short:

At three am his wife and daughter (a nurse working two wards above mine) came and started to cry when they saw him.

His daughter looked at me and cried: "I'm sorry, I did not know what to do, when the Doctor called me I suddenly stopped being a nurse and I started being only his daughter.. I just don't want him to suffer, oh my god.."

so I hugged her slightly and said:
"I know you don't want your dad to suffer and you don't have to feel guilty. Everybody would've reacted this way. In a moment like this you cannot think, all you can do is feel."
She held her head against my shoulder for a moment and then turned around to her mum, which was silently crying next to her husband, caressing his hand.

"Mum, he is not feeling any pain at the moment, they made him sleep and they are looking for him, don't you worry. " She was back in her nurse mode.

He died yesterday evening because the cancer already destroyed his lungs and his brain and there was no chance for him, so they turned down the whole treatmeant. My colleague said, that he looked peacefully when he died surrounded by his relatives.

But being in this situation made me notice something:

I'm feeling symphathy and I'm feeling and acting mild and gentle again.
It's been a long time since this has happened  and I thought I lost this part of me but I think it's been there the whole time, only covered under cynicism and despair.

I guess, I care again.