One bowl of oatmeal

I'm currently in the midst of my usual schedule of successive shifts at work, and while I know one isn't supposed to carry one's employment home, I do find myself increasingly contemplating the futures that await many of my patients after we've removed their IVs, clasped their hands one more time, and helped them to a friend or family member's car.

Every day at work, I encounter patients who are deeply addicted to self-destructing behaviors, whether as fundamental as persisting with a daily diet damaging to their chronic medical condition, such as diabetes or heart disease, or as extreme as abusing alcohol and illegal drugs. When I first started working as a nurse just 3 mere months ago, I was startled by how many of my patients are addicted to alcohol, methamphetamine, and heroin, among other chemical substances.

As always, I find I learn much from all of my patients. There's the slight, gray-haired man who is pacing the halls, going through DTs for the countless time, who likes to tell me stories about his 7 grandchildren. There's the retired construction worker, bent double with pain from an inflamed pancreas and liver, who asks me to pray with him that he will have the strength to stay clean this time around. There's the 29 year old young father, nauseous and vomiting as he goes through meth withdrawal, who raises his head to tell me with fierce pride and hope that someday he wants to be a manager at the fast food restaurant where he currently works washing dishes. And there's the fragile shell of a man, barely able to stand, who looks so far beyond his mere 32 years that I checked his chart twice when I first walked in his room to make sure I didn't have the wrong patient. His veins are so scarred from injecting heroin that the needle bends in half when I try to start his IV. All he wants, it seems, is someone to listen while he cries for the life he's lost.

And so, every night, my fellow nurses and I wonder - when some of our patients, fighting cancer, a heart attack, or a lifelong battle with a genetic disease, would do anything, give anything, to live, how can it be that some of our other patients are seemingly, willingly doing their best to die? What cruel events lead people to self destruct so determinedly? What happened to these beautiful lives?

I doubt I'll ever know. Having never struggled with drug addiction personally, my heart is simply filled with endless compassion for those battling the all-consuming grasp of addiction. I doubt I'll ever be able to understand fully the diseases that lead someone to a slow path of self-destruction, and, sadly, I doubt I'll ever be able to make the road easier for my patients, although I humbly share their hopes, dreams, and prayers.

At the end of my shift, though, I come home, switch on my computer, read the warm, beautiful words of my blogger friends, and find hope. Amidst a world confused, we are doing something different - we are nourishing ourselves, our families, all of those around us, and even the world. You, my wonderful readers and fellow bloggers, share your personal struggles and triumphs, and in doing so pave a gentle path for those of us with whom you share your unique wisdom. Through the stories of our kitchens, we speak out about the joy and sustenance to be found in one of the most fundamental, important aspects of daily living, healthful foods. My incredible blogger friends remind me of the power of one word, one meal.

"We're going to help you get your strength back," I say to my patient, the 32 year-old heroin addict, as though it's really that simple. "I'm going to fix you a bowl of oatmeal."

I can't fix the world, in which this man, as his liver slowly fails, is probably going to die, soon. I can, however, prepare him a nourishing breakfast - a humble gesture, a prayer that I might be able to change that one moment, for the better.