- "Something really good will come from this."
I said that to myself while I was raising the box
up a little higher out of respect,
closing my eyes and saying that to myself.
"Something really good will come from this."
Unfortunately I got caught in the act.
One of my coworkers had seen me doing my little ritual.
She didn't know that's a mantra
that I pretty much to this day even use
when I'm trying to do something
and trying to put my best intentions into it.
No, all she saw was me doing my little ritual and she said,
"What's going on, do you have narcolepsy?
"Are you all right?"
And I said, "I was just thinking
"and I was wishing good things for these patients,
"I was hoping there's a good outcome
"for whatever's going to happen."
What it was, I was getting ready to ship out some blood
for a woman who was in an in vitro fertilization program,
which meant she was trying to get pregnant.
And she was dealing with a doctor in Colorado.
I would usually have about five patients like that per week
but it was always funny because they're not really sick
but they're still patients and they're hyper aware
of every aspect of the process.
So the first time such a patient would come to me,
they'd be like, "Are you going to be all right shipping this
"all the way to Colorado?
"Are you sure it's going to be okay?"
And I would micromanage every expectation they had,
I'd say, "These are the regulations,
"here's how we're going to do it.
"We're going to put it in a really tight container,
"we're going to put that in with absorbent material,
"we're going to put that inside another container,
"we're going to put all of that inside another container,
"we're going to pour some dry ice on it,
"we're going to put it in another container, seal the box,
"put the labels on and you will have seen me
"do the whole process, at least the first time."
And I said, "And because this is so precious,
"this is your day three blood work that you can't get back,
"we're going to treat it like it's irretrievable."
Irretrievable?
"And we're going to keep a spare sample of that
"in our minus 80 freezer so if anything goes bad
"with the shipment,
"you're not going to have to start your treatments over again
"for the next six months."
And they'd be like, "Oh we're so glad."
And so a lot of people knew me by name
and they would come into the lab for the first time and go,
"Is there a Denise that works here?"
And sometimes they would come at a less than opportune time,
but I'd always stop everything I was doing
and I would tell them everything I wanted to tell them
about what they were going to experience
as I was shipping their blood across the country.
So part of my tradition was I would always
as I was packing up the last part of packing it up,
I would put a wish out to the universe,
"Something good will come from this."
And I got caught in the act of doing that.
So now there was a lot on the line,
but I didn't admit what I was doing,
I just said, "Oh I'm just making good wishes."
Well over the years, I did run into some of these women
I had helped and it always took me by surprise.
One time I was interviewing for something
and the woman said, "Oh, you helped me
"and I never could get pregnant so I adopted a little boy
"and I can't imagine my life without this little boy,"
and I'm like, "Wow, thank you."
I never get to hear what happens with these people.
Now fast forward to maybe three, four years
after I'd been doing a lot of IVF shipping
and I had a big change happen in my job.
They changed what part of the hospital system
I was going to be reporting to,
what my day of work would be like
and I was very emotionally fragile.
I also had lost my husband six months before
after a long battle with leukemia.
So I wasn't the most emotionally strong person
on the planet, but I put myself
in the care of a bereavement group at Gilda's Club.
It was mostly for people who'd lost their spouses,
but over the summer there weren't enough of us
to make the group worthwhile so they also added people
who'd lost anybody in their family to cancer.
So we had this newly merged group,
and the group leader asked me,
"Denise, how's it going with the change in your job?"
And I had a meltdown, I was crying inconsolably,
my body is shaking, I'm saying,
"I miss being part of taking care of patients.
"I miss feeling like my job matters to somebody.
"I just don't feel like I even belong
"in the healthcare system anymore."
And the woman sitting next to me at this bereavement group
looked at me and she said, "Are you Denise from the lab?"
And I said, "Yes I am."
And she said, "You helped me and my husband so much."
She said, "The day that I met you,
"I called my husband on the phone and I said, 'Even though
"'this whole mailing the blood out every month thing
"'sounds scary, I think this is something we can do
"'because we have met the most wonderful person.'"
And she said, "We now have a son who's nine months old,
"we can't imagine not having him in our lives,
"but he really truthfully would not be here
"if you hadn't helped us."
And it was on the darkest day of my life
that she said that to me.
I'd always thought, "I hope something good
"comes out of this, either they get pregnant
"or they find that they want to adopt or something,"
but I had no idea it would mean they would show up
as an angel helping me through my darkest day.
So I learned a lot
from putting that kind of energy out there
and pretty much every day of my life, I think to myself,
"Something good will come of this."
Thank you.