The other day I stumbled across a photo on reddit that showed a doctor allegedly grieving outside a hospital after losing a young patient. The photo affected me deeply, as I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals lately with my sons, who have health problems. Health care workers have become an important part of my life, and I’ve sometimes wondered how they cope with everything they see. The reddit thread shows they clearly struggle with it, as they’re only human, too.

I wrote a personal column in response for The Province, the paper where I work. It spread like crazy, with people offering stories of their own medical experiences. It’s now the most-read thing I’ve ever written — The Province’s Facebook post about the story was seen by more than 50,000 people in a single day, and the paper’s Twitter page was a stream of retweets for a while.

I’m glad the column reached so many people, and I hope it helps readers find ways to say thanks to those health care workers who have changed their lives, just as they changed mine.

I’ll never forget the words a nurse said to me one day when things looked particularly dire: “It makes you realize how much of a miracle life is.”

Now imagine how they must feel when they see that miracle taken away in front of them on a routine basis.