I loved being a nurse as many of you know.
Since I was little, I used to be suspicious that I could save the world. My
usual fantasy was that I actually saved the whole world in some sort of covert
spy ops. But when I became a Neonatal Intensive Care nurse this need to save the world was satisfied on
a daily basis in tiny little ways in tiny little bodies. I loved that when I
left my shift I had made a difference in either my patients life, their families
or both. I had to give up nursing
because my body is, let’s be honest, ridiculous… (Although, I keep trying because:
screw you body - I will win!! And Al keeps carrying me from the car, after a
shift, asking me to stop “winning”…) However just because I am not a practicing
nurse it seems the mantras all my teachers were terrified I would forget are
still ready and waiting in the most paranoid parts of my brain. This can be a
problem when a friend says she has this slight ailment and you proceed to give
her a "head to toe assessment" (mantra one) with asking questions she would be hesitant
to tell her doctor and then declare she must get immediate medical attention because
it is probably cancer. (To be fair I usually don’t say cancer out loud… that would be unprofessional. I just think
cancer and try to get her freaked out enough to go but not cancer freaked out.
Also it is usually not cancer…) And it
also becomes a problem when an ex-nurse becomes a mom. Moms in general can be a
bit neurotic (or maybe that’s just me?) but throw in some medical knowledge,
with no medical equipment like MRI’s and blood tests at your fingertips, and
you are just asking for trouble.
While visiting family just over Christmas Amelia got sick...
REALLY sick really fast. We were out on a treasure hunt (so fun running around
downtown Denver like real tourists!) when she started to look a little pale and
started wandering a little like a lost
freshmen on the first day of school. She refused to quit though (because fun always
comes before comfort… and going home would "ruin it for everyone") and powered through. When we had finished, freezing cold
and tired but triumphant, Grandpa convinced everyone to come home and skip
dinner out; her cousins were so sweet and agreed, so off home we went.
She collapses into bed and falls asleep. Now being at my
parents’ house I have no way to take her temperature. Well, according to my mom
she has an “excellent thermometer”… It is a strip of plastic from 1985 that you
press against the forehead for 5 minutes and it heats up little colored dots to
then give you a range. I.e. green dot means 101-103…which is quite the gap. Also you have to match the color. Sometimes its between a dirt brown and a vomit green and so you can't tell if you should go with the range 101-103 or 104-107. In other words high fever or eminent death. Mom
loves the damn thing and when I was younger I did too - because I could use it
to get out of work - because it almost always said I had a temperature! However
now that I am a nurse, I refuse to use it despite her insistence that it works
great. So I have no reliable way of taking Amelia’s temperature. I can tell its
high just by feel and when I take her pulse it is 160 (resting heart rate for
her age is 60 – 80) Now this is alarming and I begin freaking out texting Al on
Skype wondering if I should rush her to the emergency room (he is back in New
Zealand and does not answer… Why? Because Princess Buttercup needed a walk… I
will introduce you to Princess Buttercup, AKA Percy, in a later blog.)
It is now 11 o’clock at night. I give her Ibuprofen to get
her temp down and, hopefully, her heart rate and proceed to check her pulse
every five minutes (who am I kidding? Most times it is every 30 seconds and it takes
me 30 seconds to take her pulse so I am basically scrunched under the top bunk
hanging on to her wrist) to see if it is coming down. It comes down to 130
eventually and I keep checking wondering what the hell is wrong with her body
until 1 am when I realize if I was a mom with no nursing background I would not
have checked her pulse, been grateful she was asleep, and gone to bed.
Another side effect of being an ex-nurse is you have to be
the calm one in the room telling the parent to calm the $%&* down (really
nicely and with absolutely no swear words…). Except now I am both the parent
and the nurse so the conversation goes: Her
pulse is high because she is sick and still has a fever. Her body is doing what
it should and you have gotten the pulse to come down. Then the parent says,
but it is still too high! Then the
nurse says, yes it is a little high but
you need to calm down and get some sleep because if you stay up all night
twisting into odd shapes to take her pulse without waking her up, you will be
in bad shape tomorrow. Now GO to bed. This conversation takes another hour
and I finally fall asleep at 2 am. Of course she is fine (well, REALLY sick but
not sick enough to brave the superbugs at the hospital… we’ll get into that
another time…) and gets better over the next few days.
Mantra two was: how to be calm in emergencies. I was fairly
good at it. Sort of prided myself on it actually. Calm and level headed but
fast - like a nurse should be. Apparently this was a façade… A few weeks after
we arrived back in New Zealand Amelia had taken a shower. Now there is one poisonous
spider here. I have been told there is
another one but I only ever see the White Tail; so I am suspicious that New
Zealanders are lying to make them look tougher and have made up another one so
that they can be more like Australians. Although, let’s be honest who wants to
live in a place where like half of the nonhuman things can kill you?? Anyway Amelia
gets out of the shower and comes out to the living room with this crawling up
her arm
I proceed to scream. Not calmly get up and brush the
poisonous spider off her arm for her, nope, just screaming - no words and
waving my arms until she brushed it off screaming herself. Not only had I
managed not to assist her but freak her out so much that she was shaking for
ten minutes afterwards. So in summation, being a nurse was great. However, apparently
I pick and choose what I apply to my mothering skills and I am only picking and choosing
the most deranged parts. And now, rather than a "healthcare provider" I am more like someone who dressed up as a nurse for Halloween and doesn't know it's over and not real...
