On this Eve of my first working holiday as a nurse, I told Tom that I didn’t feel like it was Christmas. I had missed my annual Christmas Adam Dinner that we always have with our friends at my parents’ house, and had just spent the last 3 days at work feeling drained. The presents are wrapped and the tree is decorated, but I think for the first time not celebrating Christmas “normally”, it had me down in the dumps.

As I mulled this over on my way to the rink, I started to think about the patient who was new to the floor. A 20-something with leukemia. I hadn’t met them, but had received report from the outside hospital in case they arrived during my shift. As I was considering going to say hi tomorrow regardless of whether I was their nurse or not, I started to think about their first Christmas in the hospital. Not being able to wake up in their own bed, not being able to see their family, happiness and joy replaced by uncertainty and fear. Their “normal” Christmas was gone too. Who was I to be complaining about missing Christmas?! Of course, everyone has their own battles, and this is not meant to negate anyone’s feelings, even my own small feelings of sadness. But after my shift on Christmas, I will be able to go home to see my healthy family and husband, a luxury that my patients do not have. I have clear lungs, and a body free of cancer, a luxury my patients do not have. What I also have is the opportunity to make someone’s worst Christmas ever, not so terrible. In this season filled with sales, doorbusters, and material objects, I have discovered the greatest gift I got this season: perspective.

Oncology is really hard. I think the hardest part is seeing the evolution of one’s disease, their grief, and their subsequent understanding of their own mortality. Relapse after relapse, we see these patients come back, after positive bone marrow biopsies and pushed-back discharge dates. We watch their hair fall out, their strength decline, and their appetite fade away. We listen as they discuss hospice, as they count the weeks they have left, as they reflect on their lives. Sometimes we are the punching bags for their families’ displaced grief, knowing that they are in a crisis we are lucky enough to not understand firsthand (at least some of us are this lucky). I look at my patients and their families and think, “This is more than one should endure.”

A few months ago when I had first started at Penn, I was taking an Uber to work and the driver commended me for doing God’s work. I thanked him, but quickly brushed his comment aside. I told one of my coworkers later, and he jokingly replied that since I was early on in my orientation, and with only 2 patients, I wasn’t quite there yet. He said, “When you get to 3-4 patients, then you are doing God’s work.” While sometimes we make light of the work we do, I have to wonder sometimes, are we actually? If cancer pushes people to the darkest hours of their lives, and we are there walking beside them, is this God’s work? As we hold space for the dying, comfort the grieving, and tend to the sick, are we doing the work of something bigger than us? I’m a spiritual person, but not really a religious one, yet it makes me wonder if in fact those who are drawn to this field do possess skills like those of guardians.

By the time I had reached the rink this morning, I had tears in my eyes. It had dawned on me that working Christmas was one of the most important things I would do this year, a very needed shift in perspective than earlier this week. What a gift to be needed somewhere, not just for my skills, but for my ability to connect with people, to hold space for them, to celebrate their lives. What an honor it is to shepherd people through their dying, to bring them comfort, and ease their suffering. What a blessing it is to see the rawness and delicate nature of this human life we have, for we are all just humans caring for other humans, but sometimes, it does feel like more than that. If this isn’t the best gift of Christmas, then what is?

Merry Christmas to you all. May you relish this joyous time with family and friends, continue to move and celebrate your healthy bodies, and remain ever grateful for this complicated and amazing existence we have here on Earth.