Yes, I Deliver

The circus nurse is now, officially, a (paid) labor and delivery nurse.
Goodbye academia, hello life.
Praise be.

The Game of Life

At The Kid's football play-offs (that's flag football) this past weekend, talking with some of the other parents, one father had a lot of big-life-questions that he was trying to work through. He remarked, "I wish I could visit the homes of other parents... what do they do with the artwork? Do they keep it all or just the three-dimensional pieces made of sand?"

He went on: "Remember, the box top from the game Life? Everyone was having such fun. Do you remember playing that game?"

"Yeah," I said, "I remember that you could sell your children when you neared the end of the road."

The man just stopped and stared at me, blankly.

I was momentarily confused...didn't everyone try to accumulate children when playing Life so they could sell them at the end?? Apparently this was a goal only to those of us of a certain social strata... because I looked over and another woman about my age and, um, caliber, was bent over laughing her ass off in recognition.

BTW... I think this child selling arena was actually the space on the board entitled "College" wherein, now that I read the rules, one is supposed to pay $40k (this can't be the 1977 version) or some such sum. My brother, being the good, red blooded male that he is, convinced me, perhaps rightly, that he should be reimbursed for his progeny. That boy was way ahead of his time.

(And the answer to the question in the back of your mind is: Yes. He has 4 children... so far.)

Per Sempre

Without impatience I'll dream.
I'll bend to the task
That can never end,
And little by little at the tips
Of reborn arms
Succoring hands will reopen,
The eyes reappeared
In their sockets will give light again
And suddenly in tact,
You'll have resurrected, your voice
Will be my guide again,
I'm seeing you again forever.

~Giuseppe Ungaretti

The Trick of Humanity

I spent the first day of pediatric clinicals in the intensive care unit. My patient was very young, under one year, born with congenital anomalies that included a heart defect, this one specifically, choledochal cysts and biliary atresia, meaning that she needed both open heart surgery and a liver transplant. She received both, preceded by a miriad of other surgies. When I cared for her, she was nine days post-op. I counted eight IV lines going into her body, exclusive of her pacer wires, NG tube, Jackson-Pratt drain, CPAP and ventilator.

I didn't mind the PICU so much as I expected. In fact, pediatrics seems like a place I would be excited to work, a great surprise to me. Maybe it's the timing. The most significant obstacle would be coming to terms with advanced technology out-sizing the patient. Following yesterday's rotation I felt like this was a huge moral dilemma, so I sought out reserach on the subject and found an interesting article that takes on the distress that PICU nurses face in the wake of modern technology that outpaces moral questions about life at any cost. The authors ask how medical and "life-saving technologies are outstripping our human abilities to comprehend and live with the consequences". Certainly a very worthy ethical question and definitley one that represents what I find the most difficult aspect of peds: what it means to be humane. To me, it looks like humanity tricking us again.

A Home in the World

"I can't consider any of that time as time away, because you don't want to spend half of your life being away or where you shouldn't be. I choose to think of all the time as being present. I'm always home."

The Reader

A classmate saw me reading before class this week and asked, "How can you find time to read?"
I just shrugged, because that's the polite thing to do, but I felt my brow furrow as I thought, "How can you not?"


The photograph is by Jennifer Zwick and is titled The Reader.