I am now retired after about 40 years in Nursing. In those emotionally challenging experiences when my confidence and performance was challenged while interaction with patients, I would take a few seconds, deep breathe and pray within my spirit for guidance. It has never failed me whenever i chose that route. The outcome had always been effective.

A passage from my book, To Walk Among the Gods. He thought about the veteran oncology nurses crying over the little girl and he realized they were reacting appropriately. They knew how to deal with tragedy: they dealt with it all the time. They were getting in touch with their emotions and appropriately expressing them. It was a terribly sad thing, so they cried. By getting in touch with their emotions and expressing them, they were able to cope with it in a healthy, healing way. He choked up, but he didn’t cry. He was not able to get in touch with his emotions because that was too painful. He stuffed his feelings and buried them with denial along with all the other things he had dealt with during his internship. They were buried deep inside him in a toxic waste dump that was corroding his psyche from within. It required all his psychological energy to keep the toxicity at bay, but the little girl's plight had overloaded the system, broken the seal on the gate, and allowed it all to flood out.

Her case made him realize he could not continue to deal with tragedy by denying it. He had to talk to someone, deal with his feelings, and heal. He had to have the courage to accept the pain, regardless of how much it hurt. Terrible things happened to good people. He knew that intellectually, but not emotionally. That is why he had become a doctor, to help good people when terrible things happened to them. That is what oncology nurses do, they help good people when terrible things happen to them. Understanding that emotionally was like lifting the dark cloud from his soul. He had forgotten his primary directive: try to help but do no harm.

Both worlds were real, they were one world, his world, the world he had chosen. The world he had to become comfortable in if he was going to be a doctor. His naiveté and idealism had prevented him from seeing things clearly in a mature and realistic way. It had taken a little girl losing her leg and some oncology nurses to teach him how to cope: not by stuffing and denying his emotions to avoid the pain, but by having the courage to face the pain, embrace his emotions, and express them in a healthy, healing way.