The Swine Pneumonia

At Dr. Brody's yesterday, he found that the swine flu I had a couple weeks ago has become a slight case of pneumonia. I came up as a number 16 on his scale; 32 would be considered "walking pneumonia". No biggie, it should be knocked out within a week.

In other health news, I'm getting much better. My mono and ebstein-barr viruses (the virus that causes mono) are still gone, so after 4 years of mono, I have now been mono-free for a month!

"Hello, my name is April,"
"Hiii Aprilllll."
"I've been a mono-sufferer for 4 years, and today marks my first month clean."
*clap clap*

Dr. Brody did, however, find that my bile duct is clogging up with thick bile (a result of where my mono settled) and that my digestive system is still pretty messed up. My heart/vessels are still some-what collapsed, but I no longer have the heart of a 80 year old (like I did in December), now I'm down to having the heart of a 40-50 year old. Yay? The good news is..... my heart muscle itself is not damaged, nor is my aorta (the pretty important large vessel that delivers blood to my body).

Though "recovery" is taking longer than expected, I have felt a change for the better, and hopefully I'll be in the body of a 21 year old before I turn 22!

Gracie

Grace giving Mom Mom a ponytail:

Grace... not taking a nap:

I'm A Survivor

I am proud to say that I had the swine flu at the same time as Rupert Grint... from the Harry Potter movies! What does this mean? My theory is that one day, my dreams of being an actress will come true, and instead of all of Hopkins knowing I'm contagious, the whole world will know.

I was diagnosed with Influenza A/H1N1 on Tuesday afternoon, after making an appointment to get checked out half-way through my shift in the NICU. My test came back positive within a few hours, where it can take up to three days to be conclusive. The results gave me a 7 day ticket to the basement where I could cough away from the family. May I suggest the following things: Frost Nixon, I Love Lucy re-runs, M*A*S*H re-runs, and my new favorite show 18 Kids and Counting (I love that family!).

I am heading back to work tomorrow morning for an 8 am appointment where I will hopefully be cleared to go back to work that evening. I have missed being able to go places this past week, but have certainly enjoyed cheating, in a pretty hard-core fashion, on my diet. I'm off the bandwagon folks, and have not yet been able to pick myself up and jump back on.

The NICU has been very supportive of my situation, understanding and ensuring me that this could happen to anyone and not to worry. I feared for two little ones that I had held during the one and a half days that I was at work and sick (thinking then that it was a sinus issue). There are many teams in place at the hospital to make sure that anyone exposed to an infectious disease is well taken care of, and everyone seems to be just fine! I am excited to get back to work; I have been thinking about those babies!

Victory Jam 2009

I'm fresh from a week at Harvey Cedars Bible Conference in Surf City, NJ. Every year, New Covenant gathers with other PCA churches from Maryland for 5 days of insane fun! It's for middle schoolers, but all of we college-aged counselors and youth pastors enjoy the camp just as much, if not more! This year, I went as the camp "nurse". Duty called within the first few hours of camp when one girl fell on the rocks and sliced open her knee, requiring 12 stitches; and may I just mention that I had guessed that she would need 10, whereas Mr. Don guessed 9 and Joel Loftus guessed 8. That's why Mom and Dad pay the big bucks for a Liberty University education, so I can show up my youth pastor and friends with good guesses.

Monday night, Brandon came wobbling up to me with a dislocated pinky toe. May I just say, this was the best experience I had that week, and I laughed myself to sleep that night; I'll try to do this story justice in writing, but it was a "I guess you had to be there" experience. But away we go:

We were outside around 11:00pm for a fire drill, when I hear someone say, "Uh oh, April, you might wanna look at Brandon, here he comes!" I walk up to Brandon and he tells me to look at his toe. It is at a 90 degree angle, going the wrong way. Brandon is.... whimpering? giggling? I couldn't tell; anyone who knows Brandon will understand the fact that he looks exactly the same when he laughs as when he cries. His little face scrunches up and he sort of whimpers. My first question was, "Are you laughing or crying?". He was laughing. I told him he needed to go to the hospital to get it reduced, or put back into its socket, because I sure didn't want to fix even what possibly could be the smallest socket in the human body. I wouldn't want to try something when only knowing the theory of how to fix it, but Mr. Don didn't want to take the trip for such a menial injury. Turns out that a counselor standing with us was a Marine and had learned basic first aid, including care for dislocations. So, Brandon sat sideways on a nearby bench with his injured left leg up on the seat. I, remembering a splinter injury Brandon once sustained while I was baby-sitting, stratled Brandon's leg and held it down (might I explain that in order to remove his splinter, both Aunt Michelle and Uncle Freddy had to sit on Brandon lest he hit the ceiling). The Marine was settled at the toe. Here comes the moment. Just as the Marine asked if Brandon was ready, someone threw a ball point pen between Brandon's puffy cheeks, I turned around to watch Brandon's face, the Marine tugged, and Brandon let out a brilliant "Aaaaahoooowwww" straight from the chest as he, still, sorta giggled and smiled. It was a sight, and I wish you all could have been there. His toe back in place, I was much too happy from the moment to remember to do my job as a nurse and check that there was life-blood coursing through his toe. As I was lying in bed thinking about this, I figured that if his toe fell off in the middle of the night, it would be a great ending to an already fantastic story (just kidding).

The rest of my week was filled with changing the dressing on the stitches, putting on band-aids, handing out water and ibuprofen, and sending two more people to the hospital; one with an infected and fractured foot, another with a neck and spine injury. It was an intense week, but lots of fun. While no one was in need of my service, I watched the kids play from my window and enjoyed bible studies and skits.

This was some raw organic strawberry watermelon juice, which, believe it or not, goes sour just as quickly as raw strawberries or watermelon would.

I'd sit and read while the kids played X-Games outside.

Here we are playing the Green Grenade Gangster Gnomes in water balloon volleyball:

Some encouragement from the sidelines:

A bible study:

And a quick attempt at a pyramid:

The thing about being a counselor, or nurse, or adult at Victory Jam, is that there seems to be this invisible brick wall that comes out of nowhere in the middle of the week, and hits you in the face.

Here's my room:

Complete with a bunk bed for any sick kiddies.

I had to take my own food because of my special diet I'm on right now:

The proudest moment came on Thursday as our very own NCPC middle schoolers swept in the final relay race of the X-Games (a competition of pool and beach games between all the churches) and won the first place prize! It was a big day for the Blueberry Bagel Pandas.