Inner Reflections On a Really Tough Decision

So after the Haiti earthquake I felt really, really sad. And I really wanted to do something. I thought well if I didn’t have a mortgage that I had to pay and children that needed tended to, I would take a plane and go work as a nurse for a couple weeks and do my part (I didn’t obviously because I’m sure you would have heard about it).

I am such a hypocrite:

Then if you’ll remember a couple of weeks ago there was another earthquake in Chile. I don’t know if everyone knows this, but they issued a tsunami warning here in Hawaii. I was working that night that the earthquake happened. I saw it on the news starting at 10:30PM and warnings concerning the potential tsunami ran for the next 8 hours until I got off at 6:15AM. Needless to say, I was really freaked out. The tsunami was scheduled to hit Hawaii sometime around 11AM. I was suppose to come in to work that night again. I told the charge nurse straight up, “Hey if this tsunami actually happens, I may not be in to work tonight.” The thought of leaving my children at a time they really needed me was not something I could picture. There was 4 nurses scheduled to work that day. One of them, who has 2 children at home, called out sick. I don’t think she was sick, I think she wanted to stay with her kids and in fact, I don’t blame her at all. The other 3 nurses did not hear anything about it until they got in to their cars on the drive to work. They walked in thoroughly worried about their children and dogs they had left at home and I can imagine they really didn’t want to be there either.

Thankfully the tsunami turned out to be ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. But it did get me thinking about what my responsibility as a nurse during a natural disaster is and how that completely clashes with my responsibilities as a mom. Because really if something like that actually happened, there could potentially be a huge number of seriously injured people and my skills would actually be critically needed. But on the other hand, how on earth do I let someone else take care of my children. When presented with the decision of which I would choose, I choose my kids hands down. But Lord, if my kids were injured I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to make the same decision I did.

It also got me thinking about how we called the fire fighters from 9/11 heroes and such. In my mind I would think, yes indeed they are, but they were just doing their job. Really though, they could have chosen not to it and how much worse off would that day have been or other days like it.