As a nurse, have you ever cried over a patient

My wife's story: I worked in Infectious Disease in the ’80 s when AIDS was little understood beyond being a death sentence. My patients varied from a very young hemophiliac man to a mother of 3 infected by her husband, who promptly left her, to IV drug users, to the largest category, gay men. The disease was awful with diarrhea, vomiting, profound weakness and horrific lesions, and treatments (such as “Ampho-terrible") had brutal side effects. Some so-called health care providers avoided going into patient’s rooms, and when they did, dressed in space-suit-like protective gear that did not allow any skin to skin touch. At the time, life partners were not accorded any rights, and many gays had been abandoned by their families.

My patient was an extraordinary, physically beautiful black man who had achieved his life's dream as an airline steward. He had traveled extensively with a self-deprecating sense of humor and an eye for the quixotic which made him a spellbinding storyteller. When he was feeling good, he had a glorious smile and laugh, and I spent many happy moments with him. But overall he was desperately lonely. He obviously had lost his job and with it his co-workers. His friends abandoned him, as the herd leaves its injured members on the savanna. The black community tended to be anti-gay and his family had long ago abandoned him. Some of the hospital staff shunned him. He mourned his lost health, his lost good looks, his lost opportunities. He feared pain and his inevitable death. Most of all, he dreaded dying alone.

I was able to keep the only promise I was capable of making him. My tears dripped and my snotty nose ran as I removed my (ungloved) hand from his cooling one, and I kissed him on the cheek between lesions. So yes, I have cried over patients.