Nurses and Moms...is there a difference?

We went to visit our goddaughter last night at the hospital, bringing one of her sisters and staying late to make sure we all got a chance to visit. When we entered the ICU where she is, everyone was very quiet and polite. As we walked around the corridors looking for her room number, the rooms have large sliding glass doors for monitoring, and one of them was open and there was a toddler style bed with toys all around it and a nurse attending to the patient. Further down, we find our goddaughters room, we enter a small nurse office before entering the room. The nurse was very polite and caring, she explained why we had to enter through her office and double doors to get into the room. After we entered, we see tubes and computer screens and see her lying in the middle of it. The nurse attended to everything around us, never once asking us to move or bumping us out of the way.

She's 16 years old, not a clue what's wrong with her, she's in an induced coma while waiting for biopsy results due at the end of this week. Here lies a girl with messed up hair and no makeup on, tubes out of her mouth, her smile is gone, in a "window" as if on "display"...a most uncomfortable and unflattering image. -Yet she is getting the best care and as we walked in her mother and sister are holding her hands and caressing her feet, just to let her know she's not alone. Her mom has not left her side since she entered the hospital, knowing how fearful she is of needles and hospitals and such. She sleeps in the same room as her daughter, right near her, she notices everything. The temperature wasn't right, there was no music, so she addressed it with the nurse and they changed it to be more comfortable for the patient and the mom!

I guess the point of this story is I don't see a HUGE difference between a nurse and a mom, they both look out for the patient, whether it is one they've loved from birth, or one they've just gotten to know and is lying there in a coma expecting them to help them feel better.

I just hope I can be half the "mom" or parent this woman is to her youngest child and that I could act so selfless and defiant of my own needs to assure my children have the best care.