Nurses Day

Today is Nurses Day, in honor of that I am posting a tribute to my favorite of all the nurses that has cared for Evan. Alice is the nurse practitioner that works with Evan's cardiologist.

I can't remember the first time I met Alice. She was one of many people that came to check on Evan on a regular basis. I was tired, scared and overwhelmed. Alice soon distinguished herself from everyone else by her kindness. She was a mother too and was very understanding about what I was going through. She was especially good about explaining every thing that was going on, never making me feel like I was asking a silly question.

Through the years she has always been there for us, helping make sure that Evan was getting the best health care possible. She is the one that did all the leg work to get Evan his home INR testing machine. Whenever I have a question she is very prompt in answering, I never have to spend days waiting for answers. When we need something taken care of there are no worries once Alice is on the job.

When we go in for appointments I am happy to see her smiling face. Evan is also very excited to see her and show off his new developments for her. It is great to know that we have someone like Alice looking out for Evan's health. Nurses are awesome!!!

Moments in the night

In the course of Evan's life I have had a chance to meet some amazing nurses. In general they are all a bunch of caring people but there are many that stand out more and who remain in your heart long after you leave the hospital.

One of my favorite night nurses is Nurse H. She has been taking care of Evan off and on since he was first born. I am a bit of a night owl so there were many chances to have interesting chats with her. When she saw how confident I was placing Evan's NG tube after only having just learned that afternoon she strongly encouraged me to think of nursing as a possible career.

Nurse H also discussed her joy in raising her children, helping me realize that all the scariness and worry that attended Evan's infancy was not the norm. She was right, Harry's first year has been a joy. I was glad that I did not let the worry and pain stop me from knowing the sweetness than can come.

I will never forget the look on her face when I told her that Evan had suffered his stroke. She looked as if someone had punched her in the chest. I had to reassure her that he was in no immediate danger and that his prognosis looked good. It was nice to know that she really cared about how Evan was doing.

It was with joy and happiness that I was able to give here a bit of comfort during Evan's recent hospital stay. Evan had awoken rather early in the morning so he was raring to go when she came in to check his vital signs. The baby (and parents) in the next room had been stressing her out so she welcomed the chance to hang out a bit in our room. Noting my knitting that was laying at the foot of the bed she asked a favor of me. She wondered if I would let her knit a bit to help relieve the stress of the evening. Light conversation about knitting and the exchange of tips helped the tension melt away.

Student nurses

I am not trying to be mean or anything but I am seriously getting annoyed with the student nurses that have come to the hospital. I know that they have to learn skills somewhere. I truly get that. I am just so tired of having to baby them along when all they are trying to do is something as simple as taking a set of vital signs.

Last night I had to show the student nurse how to use the machine that they use to take blood pressures. She has been using it on the infant setting instead of the child setting so she was not getting a correct reading. Then this morning we had student nurses come from a different school with very green students. It took forever for the one working with Evan's nurse to get his vitals and then right before it was Evan's nap time she wanted to start all over again. I just had to tell her no because getting Evan to sleep was more important than her assignment. Tonight we have the same student from last night but by now Evan is in rebellion mode so it took some heavy duty distraction to get a reading.

I actually like educating the nurses, telling them all the nuances of Evan's heart defect and the surgeries that he has been through. I also gave a lesson on child development to one student that was assigned to the play room. It is in my blood to educate. I just wish that they would not insist on following the letter of everything. There are times when with young kids that you just can't get vital signs the required number of times per shift.

They are also not equipped to know when things out of the norms are fine. After Evan's second surgery I spent a good half hour trying to keep Evan asleep while a student insisted on repeatedly taking Evan's temp. He was running a bit on the cool side so she kept wanting to do it until he read normal. Evan was squirming a lot making the under arm thermometer not read correctly. Finally one of the student's class mates rescued me by bringing in the tympanic thermometer. A quick swipe to the forehead showed that he had a normal temperature.

If you are a student nurse reading this I have a few words of advice for you. When it comes to kids please be prepared to have things not work out for you. If you have to do something more than twice go get help or wait until later. Enlist the parent's help, they can often help smooth things out with a fussy kid. Parents can be more knowledgeable than you suppose. Don't act surprised when they can tell you all sorts of detailed information about their child.

Change of Shift

My post made it into Change of Shift which the nurse version of Pediactric Grand Rounds. Check out all the great submissions.

I am not a nurse, but I play one on TV

I had an interesting experience last Friday. We had a big group of my husband's family over and as we were headed in to the restaurant for dinner I noticed my sister-in-law rubbing something on to her son's hand. She was putting some antibiotic ointment on a cat bite that he had received a day or so earlier. His hand was swelling and looking pretty red so she was getting worried that it could be infected. I told her that we had some things at my place that she could use to try and head that off. Neither of us wanted him to need a trip to the doctor.

Back at home my brother-in-law was eager for me to look at and treat his son. His reasoning was that since my mother was a nurse some how that magical nursey knowledge had rubbed off on me. Sadly his logic was seriously flawed in that my mother is not actually a nurse. My sister is a nurse but she became one after I had moved out of the house so none of her knowledge transferred to me by osmosis.

What I had going for me in this situation was years of first aide training, a love of biology and the fact that my son had his heart defect. I used a sterile needle to lance the area that I had left over from Evan's last round of Lovenox injections, which is something that most people do not have just laying around. I knew that puncture wounds were nasty because the bacteria gets pushed into the bottom of the wound and then the skin will often close up over the wound causing boils and other icky things. I had learned all about the fun things that bacteria does in my college biology classes. That is what led me to decide that lancing it would be a good thing. I then doused it with some betadine that I had saved after my rabbit had needed for an open wound that she had developed. My training in first aid is what led me to want to keep it through several moves so that it would be handy for this kind of use.

I have been pondering what I want to do when I grow up. My experiences with Evan and now this have really firmed up my belief that maybe nursing is the way to go for me. All signs have been pointing to Yes lately. I guess now all I have to do is figure out when I will be able to get back to school.

My nephew did fine with the lancing. His hand looked better the next morning and by the time they left late in the afternoon all the redness was gone.