You Can Still Choose Gratitude On The Worst Days

Some weeks don’t just feel busy, they feel heavy. When you’re caring for patients all day while juggling your own stress, family health scares, and the nonstop noise of modern life, it’s easy to slip into emotional exhaustion and call it normal. We hit pause and talk about gratitude as a practical reset, not a fluffy idea, especially for people working in healthcare, telehealth, and other high-stress roles. 

We share what gratitude looks like in the real world: the tiny moments that bring you back to center, the patient messages that remind you why the work matters, and the mindset shift that can change the whole tone of a hard day. Nicole opens up about being diagnosed with AFib and the fear that comes with “knowing too much,” plus how she’s navigating cardiology visits, testing, and next steps without spiraling. We also talk about how gratitude can coexist with anxiety, grief, and overwhelm, and why naming what you’re thankful for can help you move from panic to action. 

We go deeper into the daily habits that shape your mental health, including the idea that “you are what you consume” on social media, and why swapping “I have to” for “I get to” can rebuild perspective fast. We close with one of the most important burnout buffers we know: having a sounding board, someone who understands the trenches when your spouse or friends can’t fully relate. If you’ve been feeling stretched thin, this one is a breath of fresh air. 

Subscribe for more honest conversations from two board-certified nurse practitioners, share this with a friend who needs the reminder, and leave a review with one thing you’re grateful for today.

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Transcript

Why Gratitude Matters In Healthcare

Nicole 0:26

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Tattoos and Telehealth. I am Nicole Baldwin, and this is Kelly White, and we are uh board certified nurse practitioners who are just chatting it up. We are uh um good friends, and we just love to connect every week and just talk about things. And sometimes it's medical things, and sometimes it's not medical things, and sometimes it's just some random shit. So nothing we say is to be construed as medical advice, and uh listening or watching this podcast does not constitute a patient-provider relationship. So, Kelly, today, gratitude.

Patient Messages That Refill The Tank

Nicole Shares AFib Health Scare

Kelli 1:01

So Nicole and I kind of want to switch things up a little bit. So let me give you a little bit of background. If you guys follow us, you already know that we get into some deep things, we get into some surface level things, but we talk about, you know, real life things that happen, real life shit. You know, life happens, and life happens in healthcare, and we see some things, man. And but we're human and we also deal with personal things. You know, we have our own healthcare crises, we have our own issues, we have family members that have problems. Y'all have heard me talk about my husband having colorectal cancer, you've heard me talk about my dad having prostate cancer, like you've heard us talk about things. And this week has just been heavy. Nicole has had some stuff, I've had some stuff. We've had a patient-heavy week. Both of us have been super, super busy, which, you know, thank you, Lord, has been a blessing, a huge blessing on all fronts. But we want to take a step back for just a minute and just talk about gratitude and what it means for providers, especially those of us in healthcare, to take a moment to just be thankful, right? To just be thankful for our patients, to be thankful for what they bring to us. You know, I tell myself that I often learn as much from my patients as I hope they learn from me. Like I'm constantly learning from them. And it's a blessing. It's truly a blessing in disguise. And no matter how busy I am or no matter how stressed I am. Gosh, I sat and visited yesterday with a gentleman that was uh amazing. And came to find out he had family that lives close to where I live. Like we are separated by states. He lives on one coast, I live in Texas. We should not have anything in common, right? No, he has family that lives an hour away from me. Like, and he he hunts and does some other activities close to where I live. It's a small world. And it was so refreshing, I guess, to think of it that way. But, you know, gratitude, especially in the world of healthcare, it really helps to uh uh counteract that emotional exhaustion, the cynicism that we develop that can lead to burnout. And I think it's important for us. It helps to re-erase some of the hardships that we feel, the long shifts, the stuff that we have to take in and often swallow and move on to the next thing, um, especially in high stress environments. Um I mean, I know that that's often what it means to me. Little notes. Like I got a message from a patient the other day about what microdosing her GLP along with her hormone therapy has meant to her and what that did in just a very short period of time, and how grateful she was to Hamilton and to us and what we've done for her, and how that just really changed her life in a short period of time. And it's that little bit, I mean, it was just a short little like one paragraph, five or six sentences, but this was like, here I am and thank you. And in that moment, it was just like, yeah, you know, yeah, that feels really good. And it gives you that moment to say, that's what we keep doing this for. And it doesn't matter if you're, you know, you're running the halls of an ICU or you're busting it door to door on the ER, or you're in a clinic, or you're in the NICU, or I mean, God, I can't imagine. Bless you, NICU nurses, bless you. I can't imagine. You know, like, you know, Nicole and I were talking before we hit the record button about just the week that we've had and how we have to step back, especially when it's us personally. And remember, if I was the patient, what would I tell myself? Like, if I were the patient, would I stop and be like, settle down, slow your roll? What would I say?

You Are What You Consume

Nicole 4:25

Agree, agree, agree. So this week's been a long year. It just, it just has been. I just for a little context, because I'm pretty much an open book. Um, I was diagnosed with AFib this week, and I was having some issues all of a sudden with my blood pressure, very random. Usually it runs around 110 systolic, no big deal. And then over the last couple months, it's been just ridiculous. And it was it was super high. And I'm already like, you know, I'm gonna have a stroke. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna uh just all the things, right? Sometimes you just know too much. Uh, and I'm definitely in that know too much box, and it can definitely be scary. Uh, but I did go to the cardiologist and all the things, and we have all the tests scheduled and all all the things, right? All the things. So I'm hoping to just at the in the end get an ablation and all will be well. But my dad has electrical issues too. So here we are. Here we are. So uh it's been a challenging week, but I think being thankful definitely puts you in a different mindset when things are running chaotic and things are crazy and things are frustrating. What can I be thankful for? Immediately changes your mindset. Like, literally, like 180. Like, what am I? Any day above the ground is a good day, but what I'm saying is I'm thankful for my family, I'm thankful for you know, the health of you know, my spouse, my kids, my animals, all the things. And so I think just focusing on even thinking about it twice a day. What can I be grateful for? There is so much to be grateful for. And some of these problems are problems from what we prayed for that we wish we had, right? Going through nurse practitioner school, like I just want to make it through, I just want to move on with my career. And now when there's like bumps in the roads or whatever, or busy weeks or whatever, it's like I remember the the time, the days that I prayed for what I have now. And so being mindful that you prayed for this, and this is and this is this is where you are. So here you are, right? Be careful what you wish for. But sometimes it's just important to just put that at the forefront. And even at at the dinner table, you know, can can we each think of, you know, two to three things that we're super just thankful for? It's been a shit week. And let's just talk about what we're great for. And it changes the mood like that.

Kelli 7:09

Yeah. You know, I um I follow some people. I I'm always um I'm a fan of, you know, back when we were growing up, you are what you eat. I am, I have the mindset of you are what you consume, especially in our our day and age of social media. So, like what you consume is what what do your eyes take in? What does your brain think about? What what do you hear? What are the voices you hear, the videos you listen to, the content that you take in? So you are what you consume. And so in social media, I do the best I can to try to make that as either clinic relevant or educational related to the things that I believe in from a functional medicine standpoint or from a holistic care standpoint. And there's certain people that I follow, and one of those that I that I routinely and just really love to see their that particular person's post, they said, You're complaining about, you know, you think you're you think your workout is hard. There's people who can't move their bodies, they're confined to a wheelchair. You complain about meal prepping. There's people who don't know where their next meal is gonna come from. You know, and and it puts it in perspective. You know, you're you're upset that your gym clothes are too tight or too big. There's people that don't have clothes to wear the next day or cling clothes. And it's just it's just like, whoa. And and and it really puts that in perspective because you know, because I work out and I meal prep and I do all the things that I complain about. You know, I'm complaining about, oh, I gotta go meal prep and I gotta go get my stuff ready and I gotta make my lunches for the week and I gotta do all these things. Then I'm like, no, you get to do those things. You get to do your laundry because you have clothes to wash in a in a washing machine with laundry detergent. Yeah.

Nicole 8:40

I don't have to, we get to.

Find Your Sounding Board

Kelli 8:41

We get to. Yeah. And it's that moment where you take a step back and you go, be grateful for what you have. Because, like you said, one, there's people that don't have, and two, you prayed to be here. You prayed to be here. You literally prayed for the things you have now. But when you have weeks like, you know, like Nicola's had, or or the busyness or the craziness, sometimes it's hard to step back and take that in perspective. And and it's just, you know, this is our moment to tell our patients and our listeners and the people that love us and follow us as much as we do them. We're human too. We do it too. We read the we read the black box warning on our own medications. Like we call our own physicians and go, wait a minute, are you sure you want me to take this medicine? You know, we do it too. We do the things too that we tell patients not to do. Um, you know, we we research and we look up and we do the things, and so you're not alone. We do it too. I think the difference there is we have that voice in our heads that says, no, stop, take a minute, settle down. We reach out to each other often. You know, I'll call Nicole and be like, all right, girl, you got to settle me down because I'm going off. And we do that.

Nicole 9:45

Talk me off the wedge. Talk me off the wedge.

Kelli 9:47

And I think that's important too. You know, I think it's important in life, in life alone, but especially when you work in healthcare or you work in medicine. God, you've got to have that sounding board. You've got to have that person who is also in the trenches with you, who knows your experience because your spouse may not know, they may not be in medicine, they may not understand what you're experiencing. You know, they don't get it. They don't know the the gore or the tragedy or the the yelling and screaming and the things that you've seen or done or dealt with that day. So you need someone who is your sounding board. You know, they've they've been there, done that, they're in the trenches with you that can just talk you out of college.

Be Thankful And How To Reach Us

Nicole 10:20

Yeah, they get it. They get it for sure. They get it for sure. So today, be thankful, be grateful. Even if you're not where you prayed to be, that's okay. You can still get grateful. There's always something to be grateful for, always something to be grateful. So we just wanted to remind you to be thankful even for the little things. And I I, you know, just take a deep breath. It'll be okay. This too will pass. Yeah, for sure.

Kelli 10:52

So if you guys like what you hear, like what you listen to, enjoy talking to us. Or if you have any questions, comments, thoughts, concerns, please send us a message down below. Like, subscribe, share, follow, all the great things. We would love to hear from you. If there's something that you want us to talk about, something that's related to medicine or telehealth or a certain condition or think something that we can address, please let us know. We're happy to um discuss that, or um just reach out to us. You can find us um at hamiltontelehealth.com and we are happy to um have a chat with you.

unknown 11:20

All right.

Kelli 11:21

You guys have a great rest of your week. Bye bye. Bye.