American Laura McIntyre and her sister Kathy were born on the same day – May 11, 1990 – and look almost the same. Of course, there is nothing surprising in this, it’s just that the girls are identical twins.
Laura said that she and her sister have a “unique relationship.” We do almost everything together, and we talk to each other all day long. Our husbands sometimes do not even understand why they are needed at all. Oh, and we live only a mile apart.
Although the twins most often spend their free time together, their lives are very different during work hours. The fact is that Katie has chosen a terribly difficult profession for herself – she works as a nurse in the maternity ward of a hospital.
She did not follow in the footsteps of our parents and did not dream of becoming a nurse since childhood. One day she decided to try. And, starting to go to courses for nurses, she realized that helping to take birth was her calling.
Laura believes that her sister is a real heroine.
Katie has always handled the most stressful situations. Yes, she has occasional breakdowns, but usually she carries herself very well, and in many ways that is why she is an amazing nurse.
But the difficult moments and nervous breakdowns that Laura mentions are an integral part of the work of a medical worker. And this is exactly what the girl decided to remind the world of by sharing a not-so-ordinary photo of her twin.
On Thursday, October 10, Laura posted a post that begins like this:
She’ll kill me for a photo like this, but let’s take a moment for the nurses.
In the publication itself, the girl, using the example of her sister, explained how the work of nurses exhausts them physically and mentally. And showed what Katie looked like on one of the hardest days of her life. Katie just completed her fourth shift in a row.
That’s over 53 hours in four days – not including the 1.5 hours she spends in the car each day. She usually doesn’t have time to eat and drink enough water (and she also has to dress like some dove, look at that).
She is so good at what she does that she often forgets to take care of herself while taking care of her patients.
This photo was taken on a July night when she came to my house after a particularly hard day. On that day, she took birth, but the baby was born already dead. Have you ever wondered what the nurse in the maternity ward sees? Yes, they are happy when the birth goes smoothly, and mom and baby are healthy.
But they also see anxiety when the mother is scared, fear when doctors are forced to resort to a caesarean section. They see peace when mothers are helped by her loved ones – but not all mothers are like that. They see teenagers giving birth, they see how drug and alcohol addicted mothers give birth to children with withdrawal symptoms.
They see people from the child protection service coming to them. And they see people coming from the funeral service. Did you know that it is the nurses who negotiate with the funeral home so that its employees come to pick up the child? That’s what I didn’t know.
Laura ended her post like this:
Cathy and the other nurses, you are SPECIAL. You help patients and their families even more than you think. Thank you for everything you do
In just a few days, the photo and accompanying text gained more than 150,000 likes. And in the comments, people write that nurses really deserve such recognition.