The Night Shift Isn’t Coming: What The Pitt Taught Me About Caregiving Without a Team

I recently started watching The Pitt, and while I won’t give too much of the plot away, I will say this: it hit me harder than I expected—and not for the reasons you might think.

What stuck with me most wasn’t the high-stakes drama or the intensity of the ER. It was the camaraderie. The way the doctors, interns, and med students—despite the chaos, trauma, and sheer weight of what they face—show up for each other. There’s an unspoken understanding between them. A hierarchy of support. A rhythm to how they move through the fire—because they do it together.

And I realized, sitting on my couch, that this is what’s missing for so many of us in the special needs parenting world. Especially those of us raising children with profound and complex disabilities.

I am the parent of a daughter whose needs are layered, intense, and often traumatic—not just for her, but for me as her caregiver. There are moments in our day-to-day life that no one sees, no one talks about, and no one is coming to relieve me from. There is no team to pass the shift to. No attending to step in when I’m at my breaking point. No night shift.

Just me.

And I do it because I love her. Of course I do. That love is the engine, but it doesn’t make me superhuman. It doesn’t protect me from burnout or trauma. It doesn’t replace rest, or relief, or the need to feel like I’m not carrying the full weight of this alone.

People love to say “it takes a village,” and while the phrase might be overused, for many of us, it’s not just a saying—it’s a longing. I would give anything for a village. A support system. A team that sees what I see and knows what I know. One that can share in the caregiving the way the staff on The Pitt shares the weight of the ER. They intuitively know how to help one another—because they live it together.

That’s what’s missing.

And now, as my daughter is on the brink of aging out of the school system, I’m counting down the days until my last consistent sliver of support—the 9-to-3 weekday staff—is gone. What lies ahead is terrifying: a fragmented adult services system that offers far less than what we already struggle to piece together for children with special needs. It feels like falling off a cliff with no net, no plan, and no one waiting to catch you.

Watching The Pitt made me realize something I’ve felt in my bones but couldn’t quite name: no one can survive trauma alone—not even the most capable, compassionate, or experienced person. Those doctors aren’t heroes because they’re invincible. They’re heroes because they lean on each other. Because they have each other.

Parents of children with severe disabilities need the same. We need a system—not just of services, but of support. We need a structure that doesn’t expect us to be all the shifts, every day, for the rest of our lives. Because while love fuels us, love alone won’t prevent us from crashing and burning.

The night shift isn’t coming. The weekend staff isn’t coming. And until that changes, we need to start talking about what caregivers really need to not just survive this life—but to live it.