Losing battles....

So, I was all set this afternoon to make an exciting, meaningful, and moving entry about the joys of my career, and how amazingly rewarding and fulfilling it can be. I was going to write about how it feels to know that what you do Makes A Difference - how my afternoon took a turn for the dramatic when a coworker and I had to resuscitate a bunny that came in near death's door. She and I raced around the room, and it worked perfectly. Getting the oxygen on, passing a tracheal tube, doing CPR. I had everything drafted in my head - the excitement of knowing that a life is on the line, the awe-inspiring feeling when, for the first time, you pause in the compressions and feel the faintest heartbeat flutter against your fingertips, then blossom into a strong steady beat, the triumph and victory of knowing that, just this once, you won the impossible fight.

And then fate went and demonstrated the sheer depths of my hubris in doing so by having the bunny arrest again an hour later. We didn't win that time.

Sometimes I get so frustrated at the unfairness of the fight that I want to scream. I'm so small and insignificant, and Death is so incredibly huge and powerful, that I'm trying to wage war against the ocean armed only with a teaspoon and a bendy straw. And I wish that I were huge on a cosmic scale and could hold it off by sheer force, or that I had something, anything, that would let me make the fight more even.

Not that it matters. I'd keep on fighting, even if all I had were my bare hands and my phenomenal powers of stubbornness. I know that, even though I'll eventually lose the war, every case that I win still matters. And, even though I lost today, for a little while it went the other way. We made that heart beat. We brought a dying thing back to life. That has to count for something.