This is why I don't blog! I seem to get too busy with life to be able to remember to write about it. Which is really frustrating to me, becasue my life right now, is so amazing; I want to be able to remember it forever. Work has been going okay for me. I lost a patient last week and that shook me up quite a bit. He came in with a chief complaint of vomiting and within three and a half hours, was dead. The doctor allowed the wife to come in the room in the midst of us doing CPR and when he did that I thought, "you have got to be kidding me! She doesn't want to see her husband like this!" but then I later realized that it gave her some sort of closure. It was hard for all of us to watch, though, becasue she was in complete anguish and I, personally, had never seen anything so personal. I've never had anyone close to me die either. After a patient dies, there is quite a bit of paperwork to do, including calling the organ donor people. While I was on the phone with them afterwards, they were asking me how the wife was doing, if she had any family with her, and how were they related to her. That's when I burst into tears, I couldn't even finish the phone call. I was so sad for this young family.
Other than that, work has been coming along. I find myself frustrated with my nursing school for not better preparing me for charting! That's what seems to slow me down the most. It's really hard to learn how to give a complete picture of the person I'm taking care of, in like three sentences. Mostly it ends up sounding like, "Breaths even and unlabored, NSR (normal sinus rhythm) on the monitor, pt (patient) denies pain, will continue to monitor" but what I really want to say is "Patient's breathing has slowed down to a normal rate since arrival, they have a normal sinus rhythm on the monitor, patient states that she is not in near as much pain as when she came in thanks to the pain medication I provided thirty minutes ago through her IV that I had started a few minutes prior to that, she rates her pain at a zero but complains of a still not feeling herself yet..." she what I mean?! LOL I want to literally write an entire chapter about my patient every time I have an encounter with them. But then sometimes my trainer gets onto me for not providing enough of a narrative and then I really feel screwed. Anyway I'm working on the charting thing. In all honesty though, I'm sure that it will take a year for me to get this all down!
Amelia had been doing really well, no signs of an ear infection, for a couple weeks. During that time she was eating like a horse. She is such a funny bunny. Anyway two days ago her ear infections came back and we are back to her eating next to nothing and crying out in pain every time she tries to sleep. So sad. She's getting so big though. She took her first steps on April 1st but still isn't too brave and has only worked up to three steps. Which I am fine with. She's still a baby for crying out loud! People have been commenting on her mullet she's been rocking recently, so I've begun to put her mullet part into two little pig tails. That makes her look like a toddler. It's cute and kind of sad too. But no need to worry, we'll be trying to have another baby soon enough!
Ellie is definitely my daughter. Man she drives me nuts sometimes, but only because I want to say "Ashley, you already learned about that" then I remember that she's not me. She has so much to say about school and other people. She told me the other night that she feels like she's so different from her peers. She can't figure out why no one wants to play with her at recess but yet everyone asks her for help in class. She says, "I'm so nice, why don't people want to play with me ever?" I couldn't explain that one to her, other than saying I had and still have the same problems. I guess we're just a little awkward somehow. Although, for the record, I feel more normal than most people I see in public!
Noah, he's sure my little pistol. He hates reading and has become behind in school, despite our best efforts. We practice with him every night, to no avail. But he's still just as thoughful and loving as ever. And I'll take that over reading skills at this point. Reading will come with time, but I'll only get so much sweet little boy before he grows up.
James and I are trying to plan the next two or three years of our family and everything that entails. Man life is so complicated, so many things to try to work out. But we are excited with what we've got in store. Hopefully God likes our plan too and allows us to go on our new planned adventures! I'll attempt to post some pictures of what we've been up to, but I'll probably not have the patience to write captions!
