The Flood Gates Opened!

So over the last few years I have been what I heard a friend once call "emotionally parked". The well has been dry. Not that nothing has happened to upset me, it's just that once you have reached rock bottom, it's hard to reach that point again. My threshold of emotional pain has been set fairly high. It has been at least 6 months since I have cried last, maybe longer. This last weekend I guess I finally reached the threshold.
Although I work in a very emotional place, I have not let it effect me outside of work. I put on my game face for 12 hours and leave it at the door. Not the case this weekend. Without realizing it, the patient I had taken care of Thursday night, and a few times before, kept creeping into my mind. The most adorable 3 month old you can imagine! We will call him Peter: red hair, big blue eyes, super long eye lashes. Everything about him is perfect except for the body he was given. He has a muscular disease that will eventually take his life. His mind is intact but he can't move, maybe just the end of his fingertips. More importantly, he can't breath for himself. Though we have tried many times, he can not live without mechanical ventilation. Well, when you are a family from a small town, taking home a kid on ventilation is near impossible. No company is going to give you a vent because of the risk of being so far away from medical care. There are very few nurses that are available to do home care, which places a huge burden on the family. So what are the choices? He can go live in a facility (like a rest home) or the family can take him off support and let him go. This may seem like an easy choice, but when you have someone who is mentally intact and responds to your presence, it is much harder then you think. As his nurse I felt a huge responsibility to make every moment memorable for him. I got him up into a OT/PT stroller to get him out of bed. I Changed his bedding so he could sit sideways in bed and I even pulled the crib out to the middle of the room so he could look out the window and not have to look at his vent all the time. I played toys with him and lullabies for him. His happiness including the way he was positioned was totally up to me. That is a very humbly experience. Peter got to me. Some how he got in through all the walls I had built up and pulled at my heart strings. As I lay on the couch Friday night with my head on Lucy my dog, unexpected tears came rolling down my cheeks. And then the flood gates opened. I was crying for the first time in a long time. I was crying because it was unfair for him to have such a body. I was crying because of the pain his parents were going through. I was crying because there wasn't anything I could do to change the situation. I kept thinking of his cute little face staring at me. This pain I was feeling was all too familiar. It is that feeling that comes with loss. This situation brought every feeling I have ever had about loss to the surface. Loss to me are those things in your life that have actually taken pieces of your heart that can never be replaced. They are covered up with time, but there is always a hole beneath the cover that remains, and will always remain. As painful as loss is, I find it interesting that I chose a profession that deals with it continually. For some same strange reason I feel strongly that I need and should be there for those who are experiencing loss in their life. The scripture
"those willing to bear one another' s burdens" goes through my head a lot. So maybe in my own way, crying is how I'm trying to carry some of Peter's burden. If this is the case, I will cry a lot in the next few weeks.