Day in, day out…
I put aside the grief I cannot carry; shelve the moral distress tearing me in two…
I do what I can (what limited I can) as each of my colleagues do.
I tuck away my last straw- my breaking point…
All of my might just to wrestle them beneath the surface, though they press ever upwards, seeking to break into the air like a scream let loose.
I do all this so that I can be here - keeping myself together to keep my patients alive, my colleagues supported, the system from breaking any more than it already has…
There is guilt and there is exhaustion and there is trying to protect my own boundaries that feel shameful to explain to more than those who already know me well.
What I will say is this, I know what it is to be at the end of your rope; to feel hopeless…
But what do you do when that is more than just my own history? My own ills?
What do you do when that is the state of nursing in our healthcare system as we currently know it?
When I finally broke it was because I could no longer sustain the effort it took to be in my life. But it was slow, so slow it seemed like nothing to those looking in…
At least until it was too late.
I see that in the halls of my hospital, that same desperate clinging to attempted normalcy…
This is the breaking, That is where we are today, And it is where we have been for a long time coming.
How many alarms have to sound (and for how long?) Years? We’re already there.
BC’s healthcare system is breaking. We are breaking.
- S.
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