We're all in the same boat

Last night at work I asked the other woman working with me who would be coming in at 11 to fill the night shift. Usually there are two of us at night- a nurse, and a detox worker, who does bed checks and cleaning and helps me out dealing with problem patients. She told me the name of the girl and I remembered her as having just been hired- maybe this was her third day on the job?
She was 21 but looked 16; very pretty, very shy, very young. I couldn't believe that she had been hired to help look after dozens of big, rough-around-the-edges drug addicts in the middle of the night. Were they crazy? She looked like she would have trouble managing the vacuum let alone having to stand down someone being aggressive and threatening. She looked the very definition of naivety.
I thought I should give her the benefit of the doubt, though, and I said to the other girl, "well, I guess I'm pretty young too." "No, Heather, she said, you don't seem like that at all; you have life experience."
Life experience, how did I get that? I remembered my first day nursing in the hospital as a nursing student. I was 17, 5'3" (I'm still 5'3", unfortunately) and much much more terrified of my patient than she was of me. I stood in the nursing station with my instructor and a couple of other students and felt like walking down the hallway to meet my first patient would be like walking to the guillotine. I don't know if it showed on my face but my instructor looked at me, then took my hand, and put it in the hand of another student, and older lady named Shannon.
"Shannon, you are going to walk with Heather to room 503, and then meet me in 516, okay?"
So we walked down the hall together, hand in hand, and looking back at that moment I wish there was some way I could tell Shannon how much it meant to me. My patient was an older lady with dementia and I don't even think she knew I was there anyway.
Fast forward 8 years and I've navigated nursing and chemistry and medicine and several jobs and countries and relationships and adventures. The funny thing is, I still feel like that 17-year-old sometimes, I still have to swallow my nervousness and go and meet that person anyway, dive in with the awkward questions, have the courage to speak the truth. I don't think any amount of life experience can eliminate that queasiness all the time.
Last night sure enough I had a really difficult patient in the middle of the night and finally I'd had it with niceness. He had been going on and on about his anger and how he wanted to kill someone and all his life problems and how his Dad had abused him and how he hated the other guys here and he didn't want to watch tv with them because it made him want to kill them, and everything hurt so much and I just didn't understand and I should feel sorry for him and blah blah blah. What he was really saying was, I'm a victim, I deserve to get everything I want, and I'm angry at you because you aren't taking away my pain.
"Why are you here?" I asked Kris.
He stopped for a second and then said, "I want to stop using these @#%$%&* drugs, and I'm paying good money for you guys to fix me, and you're not giving me what I want!"
"Kris, it's not my job to fix you. I can't do that, that's your job. I am just here to facilitate it. You need to make up your mind that this is what you want, and then I'll help you."
"You don't understand!" He whined. "Everything hurts so much. Have you ever tried to come off 90mg of Oxy's?" (A pretty high dose of opiates similar in effect to heroin).
"Kris, you are the one that needs to take responsibility. I can help you, but I can't do it for you."
I gave him some suggestions that might help with his middle-of-the-night freak-out.
He swore at me, exasperated. "You sound just like my MOM!!!"
As he stomped away I thought, she's probably one cool lady.
I've written lots in my blogs about the pain that underlies addictions- how these people I work with are easing the abyss of suffering in their lives by dulling it with drugs or alcohol. But in case you get a lopsided view of addictions, in most cases, I have become convinced that there is some degree of choice involved. No matter what crap I get dealt in life, it's still my choice how I respond to it. That's what free will is, that's part of what makes us human. I don't doubt that some of my patients here are truly victims and have got to a point where it is impossible for them to help themselves. But for others, not taking responsibility and not accepting accountability for their actions has become a habit that has become a lifestyle.
So I guess that's an example of life experience, because before I worked here I had a narrow and inexperienced view of addictions- it was something so far removed from my life, it belonged to the people who lived on the streets on Vancouver who were nameless and faceless. Now I realize that we are in exactly the same boat. Perhaps I don't know what it's like to come off of 90mg of Oxy's, but I do know what it is like to suffer pain and make the choice to persevere.
And maybe I'm not as shy as the young detox worker last night, but I do know what it is like to be terrified of your patients and I think actually she's doing a great job.