The road goes ever on and on...

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step on to the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even further and to worse places?"

J.R.R. Tolkien

I've been a nurse for about a year now. I work on a cardiovascular surgical unit - a critical care unit. This is my second career, and thank goodness for that. If I were in my early twenties starting out as a nurse, I'm not sure I'd have the tenacity to work through all the crap that happens on a day-to-day basis. I admire those young, new nurses who do. I sometimes wonder if I do.

Patients are often a raw bundle of emotion. We have to accept patients' emotions, respond therapeutically, and somehow manage to walk away unscathed. Sometimes this is easy. Other times, it's nearly impossible. I was speaking with my younger brother on the phone yesterday, on my way home from another long shift. I tried to describe the emotional exhaustion that can accompany a nurse through his or her day (or anyone who works in health care, I imagine).

It's as if you're on a long journey through a very dark forest. There are plenty of scary creatures out there - patients, their families, doctors, other nurses, codes, potential medication errors... and there are occasional places where sunshine bursts through the canopy and reaches the forest floor, illuminating you and your surroundings in one glowing, bright moment that somehow makes the dark, scary path worthwhile.

Sometimes, you find your path is hung thick with spiderwebs - the challenges of working through those scary things. Yet you push through, coming out on the other side covered in the tatters of those clinging webs. If you have good coworkers, they'll help brush those tatters off of you so that you can carry on. If you don't, you may find yourself covered in their spiderwebs as well as your own, and somehow, you have to figure out how to come away from it intact.

Sometimes there's a root across your path that you cannot see, and you stumble over it. If you're lucky, you catch yourself before you fall - or someone else catches you. If you're unlucky, you don't see the root until it's too late, and you tumble to the ground. Sometimes you dust yourself off and get back to your feet. Other times, you lay in that puddle of mud and moan. And sometimes, you get back up and find yourself hurting and covered in leaves, twigs and dirt. Once in a while, someone holds out a hand instead of pushing you back to the ground.

This is my journey. I hope you'll take my hand and join me along my way.