My son came home from school the other day and announced that the two most underappreciated occupations were teachers and nurses. During National Nurses Week, he had heard that, he told me, from his teacher.

And though her bias might have tinged the first part of her claim (frankly, I think one of the most underappreciated occupations has to be "person who cleans the bathrooms at O'Hare Airport"), it certainly got me thinking about the nurses I've known.

Immediately, I remembered the nurses at the NICU when my own two preemies were boarded there, unflappable in the face of my terror.

With both boys, we were lucky enough to be in the "easier" part of the NICU, where the infants were of more advanced gestational age and therefore typically more stable.

"He's huge," one nurse told me of my son, who clocked in at the decidedly un-huge weight (to me) of three and a half pounds. When I scoffed, she said he was indeed large, at least compared with the preemies on the other side of the NICU, babies who had been born three months early.

She was reminding me, in a gentle way, that we had it pretty good with a kid who could breathe on his own.

"He's a beautiful baby," she later told me in a conspiratorial tone. "And believe me, I don't say that to everyone."

Even if she did, it made me feel warm, to know that another person saw what I saw — his specialness.

A few weeks later, I was sitting with him in the NICU, cradling him and rocking in the chair, when the monitors that measured his heart rate and oxygenation started to alarm. I panicked entirely, looking around wildly, as powerless as a butterfly in a hurricane.

A rounding nurse leader, someone who I could tell by her demeanor was high up, swiftly plucked my son out of my arms and put him in the bassinet.

She opened the front of his swaddle and began to rub his chest vigorously.

"Wake up, little one," she said calmly, as I melted down beside her. In a few seconds, he had returned to normal. She looked at me with no trace of worry, which calmed me a bit.

"These little ones sometimes forget to breathe," she said lightly, shaking her head as if marveling at a silly trick.

A few minutes later, too scared to hold my son, I sat beside his bassinet and silently cried. One of the other nurses saw me.

"He's going to get stronger, you know," she said, with a confidence I envied.

Not only were the nurses helping keep my son alive, but they were also shepherding me through emotional crises, something that seems unlikely to have been included in their job descriptions.

Years later, I was in a different hospital with a different son when I met another nurse.

Sick with a high fever, low blood sugar and dehydration, he had been hospitalized with some mysterious virus for a few days. In the beginning, they came to the room once every hour to check his blood sugar by finger prick. He wailed every time, and though I didn't blame him, I was getting frustrated by how hard it was to distract him.

One nurse asked if I had a game he could play or a TV show he liked to watch. I told her I did, but that I felt bad because all he'd done for days was watch TV and play video games. It couldn't be good for him, I said, wasn't it keeping him from getting sleep?

She shook her head softly.

"Sometimes when we're sick, we need something to occupy the brain so the body can focus on healing without interruption," she said. "His body is telling his brain, 'We got this. You go watch some TV and we'll make you all better in no time.'"

I've thought about that conversation many times since then, partially because it's so true but partially because it's also so kind. That nurse treated her patient that day by treating his mother, by treating my spirit, alleviating my guilt and lightening my burden.

Good nurses do just that — they comfort.

They comfort by giving medicine, by offering water or a blanket, by reminding you to order your food before the cafeteria. Often, they comfort simply with their proximity, their unhurried, serene presence.

With all due respect to teachers, I think my son's teacher was only half-right.

There's something special about a nurse, and no matter how appreciated they are, they're always due a bit more. And that's the definition of underappreciated.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: Patty Brito at Unsplash