When you are having a bad day...reflect on this or something like it

I know, I'm wordy and this is my second post today but I felt like maybe some of you out there who are in your first year could use this to inspire you. It may not be the same circumstances, but you will get the point. This is why I chose to stay on teaching after my first year. My first year was extremely difficult, as I was starting a brand new program with absolutely no guidance, found out the third week of school that I was pregnant, and was entirely clueless about teaching in general. When you have a bad day, reflect on a story like this. It helps me to remember why I'm still teaching. Grab a tissue and enjoy!

I was working as a nurse on the cardiac step-down unit at a local children's hospital when T.D. came in. He was a young man in dire need of a heart transplant. He stayed with us quite some time in the hospital while he waited. He was too sick to send home and wait. During that time, we had a lot of sick babies and children. We had at least 5 who were critically ill waiting on hearts and we knew if something didn't happen soon, we would lose them. Well, T.D. got his heart the same day as another patient. He did extremely well throughout the surgery and even afterwards. The summer he was transplanted, we had 5 others receive their new hearts as well.

I didn't see T.D. much after his discharge because he went to his local cardiologists for check-ups. A couple of years pass and the kids were getting sicker and the toll of nursing was really weighing on me, to the point that I was physically getting sick myself. So, I made a difficult decision to leave nursing and accept a job as a healthcare science teacher.

My first day of school, I was looking at my rosters and there it was..T.D.'s name. I thought, surely this isn't the same person? Everyone else who had been transplanted that summer had already passed. T.D. was the only one we knew of that was still alive. Well, T.D. walked into my classroom. Tears filled my eyes. I was so inspired! He was the only one out of the bunch we had transplanted that summer who was still alive and HE LOOKED AWESOME! Needless to say, T.D. did not want to be in the healthcare class so he jumped ship into Art. Ok, no big deal.

The next most inspiring moment came when, that spring, I was in the audience as T.D. GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL! I was so touched that I was moved to tears, out of control sobbing, because I had never thought I would live for the day to see one of my transplant patients graduate!! Even more touching, he had contact with the donor family and they flew in from their home state of NM to watch T.D. (and their son in a round about way) graduate from high school. It was then that I knew I was in the right place. I called my nursing colleagues to tell them what I had just witnessed and they were all jealous that they didn't get to see it for themselves.