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novembre 12, 2005

My poor brave girl

Maddie was hospitalized again last night (seventh hospitalization in her 2 yrs. 3 months). She went into repiratory distress Fri. night around 5 pm. We drove in the emergency lane down to the hospital while she coughed so hard she threw up. It was scary. She's home now and is doing OK. She hasn't improved too much but she hasen't gotten any worse either, so she's stable enough to be home. She's on steroids to reduce the inflammation in her lungs and we're just waiting for them to kick in. She is using extra effor to breathe in the midst of all the breathing treatments we are giving her. I'm glad she's home but she's still pretty sick so it's scary. This time her breathing difficulty has been more along the lines of an asthma attack, though she has never gotten this bad before unless she has had food in her lung. She has had "reactive airway disease" since she was 4 months old. This is basically asthma induced by colds. Her maintance meds have been changed so hopefully this will not happen again, though her pulmonologist said we may very well end up in the hospital again this winter. It is scary to watch you child is such a state so I'm not looking forward to this. Needless to say, I need to make some decisions reguarding my school. The pulmonologist says she is fine to go back to school for now, that he wouldn't hesitate to tell us to make other arrangements if he felt it was necessary at this time, but we have a long winter ahead of us and I'm not sure I can handle this. I don't have long until the end of this semester and there is a possibility based on two different scheduling situations that we can get her down to going 3 half days a week, or maybe even less. There are no super hardfast rules. If you have a good reason you can decrease your load and save your next clinical rotation until later. So this wouldn't be a problem. I just need to decide and also see what these new meds can do for her. They don't carry any more risk than her current ones and may well keep her out of the hospital. Thing is, you catch colds everywhere, I can't keep her in a bubble, so where do I draw the line. The good news is that the pulmonologist said this will most likely be her worst year. Reasonable worst case senario is a course of steroids every month and maybe another hospitalizaiton. Steroids are serious though and carry alot of side effects inc. a decreased resistance to infection so it seems like a downward spiraling situation. Plus I don't want that. The real scary thing for me is the reality that kids do die from this, the great majority are fine, but Maddie is toward the more severe side at this point of the condition. This requires a lot of emotional and physical enery on Mike and I's part. We have to freak at every cough because that's just how this thing is, you really never know when it is going to get bad fast, you have to be on your toes all the time to have the best chance possible and who in the world is capable of being on their toes all the time, we are human, we need to sleep every once in awhile, we make stupid decisions and mistakes sometimes. When it comes to your baby, this reality really sucks, even if I do everything I can humanly, there is no guarantee. It's something every mom shudders to think about.

Posted by carriec at 10:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

novembre 07, 2005

My first day as a student nurse

Hi all, it's been a while, I'm only posting now to postpone the inevitable finishing of my care plan, this thing I have to do after I have a patient in the hospital. I had my first patient on Friday. It was crazy. I had a "morbidly obese" lady who had her knee replacement re-done because she fell and broke the first. Now, she was a very, very, very, very, kind lady and had been on bed rest in a nursing home since December. The bad things:
1. that I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing, yet, somehow I still had the responsibility of a real live nurse, I even gave her medications (under supervision).
2. they forgot to put a depends on the poor women and something really bad happened with the entire physical therapy team in the room (bless her heart, I really, really, felt for her), and yes I cleaned it up, having a 2 year old in diapers prepared me as well as it could...=)

The good things:
1. this woman had been on bed rest (because her knee was in shambles) for nine months yet less than 12 hours after surgery she was pumped up and wanting to walk (didn't quite succeed, but, heck, I would be enjoying the morphine and the 50 tv channels). This was very inspirational to me because it's nice to see people want to get better. She really was going above and beyond the call.
2. she tolerated me...=) She didn't say anything ugly even though it was painfully obvious that I was quite clueless.

I hope that wasn't tmi for HIPPA but I knew she wouldn't mind.

In other news, my camera is broke, so no recent pictures to post. The screen just went black (digital) and when you take a picture it's black. Little Maddie has turned into quite the orphan Annie so I really need to get a picture up of her curls! I'm so excited she has curls! I always wanted a little girl with pretty curls! There is even one long enough to "boing." I was doing it all night tonight and she was just like, leave me alone MOM! She is so grown up now! I swear, you blink and "poof." Still having some lung issues but nothing we can't handle at the moment. I was thinking the other day of adopting a little Chinese girl who had a minor health problem. It wouldn't bother me at all after Maddie. You can adopt babies with cleft palate or lip or a heart defect. So long as it wasnt' something super chronic, I'd feel really good about it, probably less anxious than going thru another pregnacy...I was so crazy when I was pregnant, I had serious anxiety disorder induced by hormone levels. I'd feel better knowing what I was getting into rather than the unknown...just a thought? What do ya'll think????

Ok...back to my care plan...

Posted by carriec at 11:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack