Six months?! Allready?
Yes, it's true. I have been doing the freezing weather/too many mormons/TV watching(I finally have cable)/and long distance phone calls for exactly six months! Several people have asked me "are you still glad you moved? you can tell me the truth". First of all, I dont know why they think I would lie to them (ahem, Janalee). And secondly, yes I am glad I moved. I dont think I could live here forever, but for now, it's going pretty darn good.
This also marks six months at Primary Childrens. I thought that when I transfered that it would be an easy transition, given that I stayed in the exact same area. But oh was I wrong! Of course I knew that the technical stuff would be different and the whole culture of it would be different, but I was not expecting the many differences in the actual care of the patient. I won't get in to the details because that could get dreadfully boring for all the non-health care workers reading this (mick, I'll call you later) but I do feel that it's been a benefit to my "nursing practice" by seeing the methods of what each hospital does and why. But no matter where I work, the patients continue to teach me new things!
Yesterday, I took care of a young girl that immediatly reminded me of a previous patient that I had taken care of. But it wasn't so much the patients themselves that were similar, it was more of how I reacted to both of them that was the same.
The first patient was a teenage boy that carried a VERY rare genetic disorder that predisposed him to cancer with a poor prognosis. This disorder not only effected him, but the rest of his family. By the time I knew him, his mother had allready passed away from breast cancer, his brother had passed away from osteosarcoma, and his sister was currently in a different hospital fighting cancer herself.
The only family he had left was his grandma, who rarely visited.
Does anyone else feel like their "problems" just disappeared?
I thought, "How do I approach him? How will he react to me? closed off? depressed?" But instead, something happened that was quite the opposite.
EVERYTIME I did something for him, no matter how big or small it was, he ALWAYS replied with
"Thank You"
I was his nurse for a straight three days that week and many times after, and he never once failed to be grateful.
My other patient was a young girl that I took care of yesterday. She was sassy with attitude! Ms. drama queen! But I liked her for it! She was getting ready to be discharged home, when they decided to do a routine MRI before she left. The results showed that the tumor she had in her brain was actively bleeding causing too much pressure in her head. She immediatly went to surgery. The surgery went suprisingly well, given the bad circumstances. But it resulted in severe right sided weakness.
Right after returning from surgery, her mom left to run errands (ummmmm, ya). Luckily my other kids
weren't very busy, so I was able to spend a lot of time helping her with the most basic of tasks. And just like the young boy, each time I did something, no matter how small it was, she always replied with
"Thank you"
It wasn't until later when I stepped back to notice, that in each case I had a stronger desire to do my very best for them. I spent more time in their room making sure they had everything they needed, carried on longer conversations with them. Anything they wanted, I got for them. Icecream for breakfast? Totally ok. They had me wrapped around their finger!
Both of them taught me a whole new perspective on not to just be grateful, but to be grateful despite the hardest of circumstances. They did not cry, complain, lash out, or with draw, though they had every excuse to do so, and yet, they still did not. I have been working in this area for over two years now, and I can honestly say that the kids that FIGHT to live, generally DO live! I have seen it over and over again! I hope I never have to experience cancer the way these kids have, but whatever comes my way, I hope that I will have the same fight in me that I have seen first hand in them!
"Fight the good fight with faith" - unknown
