I am convinced that nurses aren’t actually people. I’m pretty sure they are angels.
This story is just a little more proof of that.
Just like many offices where employees share a closeness, the nurses at Mercy Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri have a lottery pool going on.
More than 100 nurses chipped in to buy lottery tickets for the October Mega Millions.
They ended up winning $10,000 worth of the lottery jackpot.
While their individual winnings wouldn’t have been that great, they each would have taken home $50, they still decided to use the money to help others.
Something they do just about every single day of their lives.
The nurses gave their $7,200 in post-tax earnings to two of their own who were struggling.
The money was donated to a nurse who recently lost her son to suicide and a neonatologist whose husband is battling cancer.
“We thought right away that this [money] wasn’t going to make us or break us and it was money we didn’t have before,” Stephanie Brinkman told ABC News. “We needed to help somebody.”
Brinkman has been a NICU nurse at Mercy Children’s Hospital for the last 12 years.
She’s the one who organizes the lottery pool whenever the Mega Millions or Powerball jackpot reaches hundreds of millions of dollars. The group has won before but never more than $20.
“It’s completely unbelievable and I think it happened for a reason so we could help [our colleagues] in need,” said Brinkman.
She stayed up to watch the lottery results come and her phone starting lighting up with calls and messages once it did.
“I was so in shock, I couldn’t believe it,” Brinkman told CNN.
Gretchen Post has been working as a Mercy Children’s Hospital nurse for 28 years and always contributes to the lottery pool.
Her son Jack died of suicide the same day the nurses won their $10,000 prize.
She was planning her son’s funeral arrangements when she found out that her colleagues were going to give her $3,600 of their winnings. She said the money will go toward her son’s funeral.
“It really was a relief,” Post said. “I’m very grateful. I know our unit always stands by each other.”
Post says her son was very compassionate and giving and that he would have done something similar.
“He would think it was really cool [and] he would have wanted to give it away too,” she said. “He was this simple kid who never wanted anything, never asked for anything but he was so giving himself.”
Post says the funds will help her raise her two other children until she is able to return back to work.
“It’s going to take a little bit of time, especially going into the holidays,” she said. “I just want something to come out of my son’s death so I will also [work to] spread suicide awareness.”
Typical of a nurse to think of others, even in her own grief.
Dr. Casey Orellana also received $3,600.
She said she was praying about her husband’s cancer treatments when she learned that her colleagues wanted to give half of their winnings to her.
“I knew it was God answering my prayers,” said Orellana, who has worked at the hospital for 11 years.
She says the funds will help go toward her husband’s treatments and to help her raise her four children during a time when she hasn’t been able to work much.
“He’s had most of the treatments that are available here in the U.S. so we’ve looked around the world for treatments,” said Orellana. “It’s required us to travel and pay for things insurance doesn’t cover. I was surprised that they won the lottery but I wasn’t surprised they were being so generous and amazing because that’s just who they are.
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