“Her Toes Fell Off Into My Hand”: 35 Moments That Changed Healthcare Workers Forever

Putting multiple people in body bags each shift one weekend as a Covid nurse and then having my own family tell me Covid wasn’t real in the days after.

Having to tell my patient we had no ventilators left during Covid so he really had to be strong and focus on his breathing all night just to stay alive. He did.

Carrying a stillborn infant to the morgue in my arms so that her mother did not have to see her on the cold morgue cart. This was against policy, it was night shift and I didn’t care. The look on her face and the pain in her voice asking me to carry her will stay with me forever.

A mother holding her stillborn said “I wish I could sit here and stare at her until we both turn into dust.”

I had a patient my age (23) with severe Chron’s disease in the ICU after surgery. He started bleeding more than 1L through the drainage. Called the emergency surgeons and while they arrived I held his hand while he told me “I’m very scared”. He was extremely pale and shaking. I went home after that shift, couldn’t sleep thinking about it, and the next day my coworker said “take a look at him”. He was intubated and sedated. He made it, and after a few days he woke up and thanked me for everything.

Holding a patient by his gait belt with another nurse so he could dance with his wife one last time. He passed that night. Her cries haunt me.

Having a cancer patient's wife sob in my arms after her husband told the Dr he was tired of fighting and wanted to go home on hospice, sit on the porch, listen to the birds, and drink coffee with his wife.

Sane exam on a 8-month-old baby…I never went home and cried so much. I held my daughter when I got home.

Praying with an older couple before surgery to go well, she didn’t make it. Watching him leave alone with his cane and hat in hand.

I sat with a postpartum mom after she told me she was planning on shooting herself that night. I sat with her while she sobbed and we admitted her that day. I think about her and what would’ve happened if she hadn’t spoken up that day. I held her and we cried together.

During an honor walk hearing the scream of a mother and watching her fall to her knees as her teenage son was being wheeled down to the OR to be an organ donor.

The amount of children and young people that die because they have no health insurance while we keep people in nursing homes that have no mind body or soul left.

When an old lady was sick and i hugged her and she started crying and said all she wants is her mommy.

Doing compressions on a man still in his wedding tuxedo while his brand new wife stood outside the room still in her dress. They were t-boned leaving their wedding, he didn’t make it.

My pedi psych patient asking me “Is this what it’s like to have a mom?” When I cut his food up for him.

Hearing the screams of a mom bc her dad gave her daughter a std .. she was 6.. having to hold a mom while she watched her son almost die in her arms due to gun violence .. I can keep going …

SANE exam on a newborn. I left.

Seeing a man in his 30s watch outside the glass door as his wife passed away during COVID days after she birthed their baby who also didn’t make it.

Losing my 8 week old daughter and my boss calling me the next day asking when I'd be returning to work, on the pediatric floor…

18 yr old, engaged, with brain cancer signing on to hospice. Our chaplain married her and her fiance after she held on for 4 days. She passed right after.