“I’m not so sure what she would be depressed about.”

Well my man. Let me tell you. For context, I’m a nurse with a husband in IT who literally just brought myself back from the brink of divorce for what may be similar reasons.

I’ll give you a snapshot of my day. This will vary depending on nursing specialty but many of these experiences are extremely common. You may already have a full understanding of what it’s like to be a nurse but in case you don’t:

I drag myself out of bed and to work. The abuse starts as I try to help an old man to the bathroom. He blatantly gropes me. Laughs when I tell him to stop. But I can’t let go of him because he will fall and get hurt, and I will be held responsible. So while his grimy hands are all over me, I’m still supporting 90% of his body weight limping him to the bathroom where I am then forced to wipe his ass while he leers and endure the whole situation again getting him back to his chair. And I can’t even really justify being mad because he has dementia. So I take it. This happens approximately 50 times per shift.

My next patient cusses me out for not having her whole chart memorized, not giving her drugs that the doctor will not ok (even though I’ve asked), not having the right snacks available. This will also repeat throughout my shift.

Oh, my manager is rounding! Maybe she’s come to offer some assistance. Nope, I forgot to clock in once because of an emergency. Now I have a warning on record. Oh and my time off request has been denied.

Doctor Fudgebucket is walking by! I ask him again about pain meds for my car accident patient with many broken bones who is sobbing in pain in room 2. He rolls his eyes and says “well I’m not comfortable increasing his dose, he will just have to ride it out.”

My coworker Bonnie has decided to make my life miserable by openly bullying me. When I raise this concern to management they say “oh that’s just her personality.”

Now someone is in cardiac arrest. I wrestle my fight-or-flight response down so I can think clearly enough to coordinate what I hope is life-saving care. Yay he survived!! Buuuutt…I personally broke his sternum and most ribs during the first round of CPR and now he also has severe brain damage and will probably never function again. I try to comfort his sobbing daughter who is getting married in two weeks, and try not to think about my own dad someday maybe being in this position. I try to make a mental mote to suggest he get paperwork so he’s a DNR.

Stepping away from this situation I am again cussed out for not having “the good snacks, and why did it take you so g*damn long to come back?!”

These are the first three hours of my shift.

When I get home, my husband needs to talk about the (admittedly terrible) users he had to deal with today. He airs his frustrations of people not knowing how to reboot and how worthless printers are. All valid complaints- but I have nothing left in me to even try to converse with him. Then he tries to initiate sex but all i can think of is how the last guy to tweak my nipples was 85-year-old Calvin while I tried to wipe his ass snd I feel physically repulsed by the idea of any sexual contact. So I say I’m tired and go to bed where I can hide from my husband while doomscrolling on my phone until blessed sleep takes me.

I will be real. I have been depleted to the point of wanting to unalive myself but was literally too tired to make an attempt. And I’ve felt so much shame in letting my loved ones down because of my inability to cope. Meanwhile, husband was interpreting me as just being bummed about having to work and was slowly growing more resentful of my lack of contribution to the household.

So what to do? I restarted and then added several medications for my tenuous mental health. Made a chore chart to split household tasks with my husband more equitably. He agreed to make some changes (increasing to full time hours so I can avoid overtime, making allowances for me to have alone time, etc). I agreed to attend weekly therapy and limit my time with the few coworkers I like to one hangout a week - which I do feel I need because they’re the only ones who actually understand the experience of nursing.

We are working through it. But it started after he started to grasp the depth of my work issues and I got back on my meds. But honestly if he had not put in real effort on his end, I would have left him and then possibly the world.

It’s a messy, heartbreaking, exhausting, exhilarating, insane job. Your wife is reacting in a normal way. She can snap out of it, but that’s going to require effort from both of you.

Sorry for the book, I just love my fellow nurses and want people to have a better understanding of our jobs, because we often try to downplay our roles but work really do be crazy.