Thursday, A Long Day

My day today began at 5:00am when I decided to hit the snooze button 7 times. I started getting ready at 5:28am and was out the door by on minute before 6. I was planning to stop by Dunkin' Donuts for a bagel but accidently took a really slow route (which I never ever take to get to work, boy I guess I was really tired!) and ended up just heading straight to 95S. Once I got to work, I finished taking my medications and headed out to wash my hands, under my fingernails, and up to my elbows. It's 7am.

Head into the nurse's station and print out the census. 31 patients. 14 empty bedspots.
Check the census to see who is receiving formula and who is receiving breastmilk. Go to bedspots of babies of whom we don't know which feeds they are receiving and figure it out/place breastfeeding info packets at the bedside. It's 7:20.

Check the emergency equiptment: 3 emergency bags, 3 crash carts, transport monitors are plugged in, transilluminators for IV access uses are plugged in, EKG machine is working and full of paper and electrodes, defibrillator is working and has pedi-pads, adult pads, gel, and paper. Sign my name, It's 7: 35.

Walk around to see if anyone needs help. Help take pictures of a baby, ones that look really nice. Our printer is broken. Head over the the NICU offices to put the pics on the computer but the printer paper doesn't work, too grainy; not as good as they should be for the parents. Go to Labor and Delivery to use their printer, pictures look nice. Receive info from the L&D nurse on professional photographers that give their time to capture last memories; God is good, I've been trying to think of ways to ensure beautiful pictures for families, and He layed out my day so that I could pass such info along to our nurses in the NICU. Place pictures in memory box. I've stopped looking at the time.

Notice a baby de-saturating, turns out she spit up, so I change her shirt and blankets while I talk with her. Run an IV through tubing. Start to make name tags for babies who don't have one yet. Almost lost my goldenrod color crayon, which is the perfect color for winnie the pooh and lions. Watch and listen as doctors make rounds. Go to the storage closet down the hall and get a pop-top isolette, grab an incubator, two IV poles, and set them up in empty bedspots 32 and 14. Grab some fruit from the cafeteria. It's 11am.

Grab the elevator key and run to open the elevator for a baby going to the OR. Help prepare a baby to go to MRI. Each of the 3 IV lines need extension tubing so the metal IV pole can be outside of the MRI room. Run down 3 floors to MRI to grab 9 packs of extention tubing, run back up to the floor and run the fluids through. Un-plug the baby's bed and IV pole, grab extra blankets and diapers, get suction tubing for the baby's breathing tube, get the emergency bag, call the nurse practitioner and let her know we are leaving for MRI. Help the nurse, Nurse Practitioner, and two Respiratory Therapists to MRI. It's 3:00.

Get back from MRI. Its 5:00.

Put 15 or so sets of vital signs in the computer; we took vital signs every 5 minutes while at the MRI procedure. It's 5:20.

Go to "lunch" break until 6.

Re-stock emergency bag with what was used at MRI; a 1mL syringe, a needle, and some syringe caps. Help by getting vitals on 2 babies. It's 6:55.

Go to my locker, head down the escalator. Go home. It's 7pm.

Get home at 8. Exhausted. Don't even feel like typing full sentences.

And Matt didn't save me any pizza for dinner. "Not a slice", he said.

That's ok, I can't have pizza anyway.

The Countdown Begins

I am 8 days away from returning to Lynchburg and my final year at Liberty University! These past 3 years of college have gone by so fast, and it's hard to believe that I will be graduating!

I just received an e mail from my 3rd roommate. It turns out that she is unable to return to school this semester. My other roomie and I will be on the lookout for a third roommate. This was unexpected, but I'm sure it will all work out, and we hope our friend can return for the second semester.

I have 7 days to go in the NICU. This summer has been amazing. Johns Hopkins is such an exciting place to work. I have seen so much and been able to spend my days holding and caring for adorable little ones. God's incredible design is so evident in the small 24-weekers we admit. These early babies are amazing to watch grow outside of the womb, and the medical doctors and nurses have so much knowledge of how to help the babies develop. There is one little baby that came to us at 24 weeks and is now 2 months old. The baby is growing and improving so much and I love knowing that it was God who sustained him! There are so many other amazing things to be seen, and it shows me how God's design for the human body is perfect, and that any alteration in the body's systems causes a problem of one kind or another. I will miss being able to learn at our nations #1 hospital while I'm back at school! Thankfully, we at LU are able to work at great hospitals with fantastic teachers.

This year, I will be the photographer for the Liberty Nursing Student Association. Heather taught me how to set my camera to take a great picture. Thanks Heather!

Keep up with everything we are doing this year at www.lunursingstudents.blogspot.com, or you can follow the link to LNSA on the right hand section of this page!

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.

Home Sweet Home

I'm home! I've been home for a couple weeks. My big 'ol bed is delicious.


I started up a 4 week microbiology intensive after the semester ended and left 2 weeks early so I could start work at Hopkins. My teacher is nice enough to send me quizzes and tests through e mail. I should be done class by the end of the week!


I've been at Hopkins doing orientation since last Tuesday. I started orientation on the floor last Thursday but stayed in a conference room going over protocol and basic information for the NICU. This past week, I've been on the floor getting to know the staff and learning what my job will be like this summer. It seems the majority of my time will be spent organizing/storing/keeping up with breast milk. This includes finding out if new admissions are going to be breastfed, printing and keeping up with labels that are put at the baby's bedside and on their bottles, freezing and thawing milk, and fortifying milk with extra calories. I may even be able to feed the babies! I'll also be setting up IV nutrition for the babies and doing "cares" (or vital signs and changing diapers) every few hours. At times, I'll be able to take babies on "field trips" to CT and MRI scans, and anywhere else the baby may need to go in the hospital. It will be a fun summer, sad at times, and very eventful; there are all sorts of cases on the floor.