Tuesday, June 15, 2010

The thing about....

Nursing.
I could go all technical and talk about AV blocks 1, 2, and 3. I could talk about PACs, PVCs, SSS, bigeminy, trigeminy, couplets and salvoes, and runs of V-tach and all about afib and flutter. I can discuss all of those heart rhythms until everyone is sound asleep. But what matters is that I am smart enough to put an amp of atropine in my pocket when I see that my patient's heartrate is dipping into the 30's (no, he isn't an athlete). The thing about being a nurse is that sometimes you make the decision to put the answer in your pocket -- long before the MD tells you to put the answer in your pocket. And yeah, he got his pacemaker.

The best thing about being a nurse is when my patients ask me, at the end of my shift, if I am coming back in the morning, and the look of relief when I say that I am. When my patient, or the family, is visibly relieved that I will be caring for them tomorrow, I have done my job. My patients feel safe when I have the team. I am good with that.

Being a mom


Smallest of all (she is all of SIX, 6, and only has memories from the last 6 years), during the very late-night ghost-tour in St Augustine, was given (with the price of admission) a disposable camera. Disposable camera. 6 year old. Smallest of all said, looking quizzically at her camera, "Mama, how do they get the pictures OUT"? She had only seen digital cameras...had no conception of a thing called FILM. The thing about being a mom is that you get to laugh and appreciate the small little nuggets of funny. Sometimes the sheer innocence (not the gossamer winged "innocence", but the sheer lack of knowledge that is on the young, nice side of uninformed) of kids will stand you up, turn you around, and make you remember that the world view isn't cast in your own stone.

Small people are with their dad for 2 weeks. *sigh* It is amazing how quiet quiet can actually be.

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