It's beginning to look a lot like...

...double shifts! Hopefully you haven't had to work any over the holdiays, but whether you have or not, you deserve a minute to kick back and read these amazing stories you shared with us since last week's Handoff!

The best gift to receive —

“During the last week of my assignment, which also happened to be Nurses Week, I was floated to the PICU. I was taking care of a three-month-old who had vomited a large blood clot and was put on the list for an upper GI the following day. I came back from lunch to find six people surrounding his crib as he was actively vomiting blood and more clots. After pushing PRBCs and a couple of saline boluses, we rushed him to the OR. He finally came back and was settled, and shortly after it was shift change. Before I left, his mom came up and hugged me and said, “Thank you so much. I could be strong today because you were so calm.” Travelers were kind of neglected during Nurses Week at that facility, but those two little sentences meant more than any branded gift I have ever received.” - Anonymous, RN

Day in the life of a school nurse —

“I am a school nurse at an elementary school. I had a student come into my office sick, I checked him over and said, ‘Okay, Larry, we are gonna call mom to come get you,’ to which he replied, ‘Ok, but my name’s not Larry, it's Christian.’ Then I said, ‘Why have you let me call you Larry for 2 1/2 years?’ He replied, ‘I didn't want to be rude.’ Let me finish by saying this was the first time he has ever been in my office; I usually see him in the hall or the classroom and would talk to him there as ‘Larry,’ and he would always respond.” - Anonymous, RN

And now for a holiday poem —

“This year, I took over 100 flights and was called into mid-flight nursing service four times..
Two short of breaths
One extreme lower-leg pain
And an elderly fall on an escalator tree.” - Anonymous, DNP, RN

It's the little things —

“Last Christmas, there was a family that had a house fire. Two of the children and the father died… I was caring for a little boy; I think he was maybe seven and the mother was there as well. Their house was totally gone, lost everything. Target was doing holiday hours, so when I left my shift at 11pm, I went to target with a fellow nurse and bought them both PJs and robes, other little household items, and got the boy a lego set for Christmas. I hope they were grateful; I definitely learned a lot- after we dropped the stuff off, it was so humbling when a woman in registration came in to ask the mom to sign some stuff, and she said ‘I’m sorry I can’t see this. I wear contacts, and they were in my house.’ It makes you realize that it can always be worse.” - Anonymous, RN

Ghost of Christmas Past —

"One night, I was assigned to be the Trauma nurse on the unit. We received the call over the radio that there had been an MVC with significant damage. There were only two survivors in the crash, two brothers, one aged around seven years old and the other one a toddler. They had emerged relatively unscathed, but their mother had not survived the crash. The toddler had been placed in a c-collar and was inconsolable, crying out for his mother. It was absolutely heartbreaking. We were trying to keep him in the collar for his safety since we hadn’t received the CT results back but he was fighting us terribly. It went on for almost an hour until all of the sudden, he fixated his eyes on the corner of the room and said quietly ‘Ok, Mommy. Love you, Mommy.’ And then immediately went into a deep sleep. We looked at each other in disbelief, covered in goosebumps and quietly left the room.” - Anonymous, RN

Sharing is caring, and holidays are about sharing —

"We had a patient on our adult med-surg floor for nearly two years. He was a severely confused ex-boxer and Marine. He taught me a lot, including how to get out of a wrist lock. Most of all, he taught me no matter how confused people may be, they all want to me a part of something. He found a lot of things he couldn’t do, but one thing he could do was sit with me, the charge nurse, and answer the phone. I would unplug the phone and have him answer it and play secretary while I finished up staffing and monitored Tele strips. During interdisciplinary rounds, I would have him hold a binder and 'participate.' Like each and every one of us, he liked to be a valued part of the team, and so he was." - Anonymous, RN