Easy going junior resident, Dr. Moore, looked at the board and tensed up immediately. By all indications it was going to be a disaster of a day.
In the middle of the nurses’ station was “The Board”, the central form of communication of vital patient data. Listed were the patient’s name, doc, gestational age, diagnosis and other pertinent information. On this day the board showed all worst-case-scenario patients: a bleeding placenta previa; severe pregnancy induced hypertension; a set of twins in labor; a set of triplets contracting regularly; another patient with a breech baby dilated to 6 and being prepped for the operating room. Additionally, four other patients were dilated between 7-9 centimeters. To top it off, a pregnant diabetic had just arrived and looked like she would need an admission to the ICU for diabetic ketoacidosis.The situation was beyond belief.
Each morning the junior resident arrived around 5A.M. to prepare a report for the oncoming senior resident and obstetric attending physician. As Dr. Moore studied the board, he began to look pale.
In actuality, the situation seemed beyond belief because, little did Dr. Moore know, he’d been set up for a practical joke by the L&D staff. The shift that night had gone from really busy, to incredibly slow. Well, slow is an understatement, we actually had no patients left. It was almost unheard of, but every room in Labor and Delivery was empty. So, as bored nurses are known to do, we decided that we needed to spice up the night…thus a brilliant plan was formed.
Gathering around the board, full of mischief, we came up with the obstetric version of the Perfect Storm. Then, we raced around closing doors, putting up name tags and preparing equipment for our performance that we had choreographed precisely.
As soon as Dr. Moore approached the unit, the chaos began. Nurses began to scurry about pushing IV poles and delivery carts. We went in and out of the empty rooms slamming doors and turning on call lights.
“Would someone let NICU know that we are going to deliver in room 4 soon,” someone shouted towards the nurses’ station, “Tell ‘em we have thick meconium!”
Dr. Moore was taking note of all of the activity as he moved toward the board.
The secretary was repeatedly calling herself, making the phones ring incessantly and also ignoring the call lights.
“The night has been crazy,” explained the seemingly frazzled charge nurse after Dr. Moore had been at the board for a few minutes, “We’ve been short staffed to boot.”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted, doing my best to act frazzled, “Dr. Moore, you have to see this!”
I held in my hand a urine collection cup which I had filled with pale gold apple juice.
“The glucose on this is off the chart,” I said as I held up a urine testing dipstick.
“The urine actually smells sweet!” I declared, taking a big whiff.
Quickly, I added “Let me see how it tastes,” and I took a swig.
Dr. Moore’s knees buckled slightly as he looked at me in horror.
At that moment, the nurses reconverged into the nurses’ station and burst out in laughter.
“What? What are you guys up to?” he asked, with a mix of realization and relief. A grin broke on his face as he grasped the fact that he’d been duped.
With that, the charge nurse picked up the dryboard eraser and wiped the board clean.
We’d pulled off a practical joke that would be talked about for years to come.
I forgot to give Scout his antibiotic this morning before school. So, I decided that I would drop by the middle school and give it to him. (You know, since I am a nurse, that I am concerned about contributing to resistant bacteria!)
Anyhoo, I called Scout out of class. I didn’t know if that would make him look super uncool.
So, here is our afterschool conversation:
Me: Was it embarrassing for you when I came to give you your antibiotic?
Scout: Yeah, why did you have to come wearing sweats?
Ha! He was embarrassed by my attire to drop somethingby school. That just cracks me up
We've had a ton of fun celebrating the Princess' birthday!
*Disneyland last week
*The birthday dinner yesterday Sometimes you celebrate special occasions on different days when you have a firedaddy *Pizza, yummy cake, and rootbeer (No, that is not a beer bottle in front of my girl :)
No more flu! I thought I'd mention that since the Lysol wipes were next to the cake. LOL!
Oh and the Princess made her own cake!!!
Easiest ice cream cake in the entire world:
What you will need: Use a 9x13 pan 24 ice sandwiches cream 8 oz tub of whipped topping (think coolwhip) (I used store brands for the sandwiches and whip and they worked perfectly) Crushed Oreos (I didn't want cookies left over so I bought the 4 oz To-Go mini cookie pack)
Place one layer of ice cream sandwiches on the bottom of the pan Spread on a layer of whipped topping Place a second layer of ice cream sandwiches Spread the top layer of whipped topping Sprinkle on the layer of crushed Oreos Keep in freezer until ready to serve
Shhhhhhh don't tell how you did it...let them think you slaved for hours!
Firehubby says that I shouldn't buy Baskin Robbins ice cream cakes for his birthday anymore. He thought it was that delish! Sorry Baskin Robbins! Thanks Mom and Auntie El for the recipe
“Push,” the doctor said gently, “You can do it. Give me a little bigger push.”
Pulling back on her legs and tucking her chin to her chest, my patient gave a little more effort to her last push and a tiny baby slipped into the doctors hands.
“It’s a girl,” the doctor announced with sadness in his voice.
The baby did not move or cry, or even breathe. The only evidence that she was alive was the beating of her miniscule heart, rhythmically pulsating beneath her thin chest wall.
The doctor gingerly placed the extremely premature baby into the warm blanket I was holding.There would be no rescuscitation of this infant, as she was too small, born much too early to have any chance of survival.
“Would you like to hold your baby?” I softly asked the sobbing mother and father.The mother, reaching her hands towards her baby, answering my question without words.
“Okay. Now, give me another push,” the doctor said calmly.
With tears streaming down her face and her baby cradled in her arms, she lifted her head off the bed, doing her best to curl over her abdomen and gave another push. The silence of the room was broken as she let out a grunting sound and then a cry of anguish.
Looking down between her legs, I saw another baby emerge into the doctor’s awaiting hands.
The frail baby was placed into the warmth of the awaiting blanket.It was a girl. She lay motionless in my hands. I brought her closer to the bright delivery light that pierced the dimness of the room and notice that there was the slight motion on the left side of her chest.
“She is alive also” I informed the parents, as I brought the baby to the mother’s chest. I carefully unwrapped the first baby and reunited the tiny infants, comforting them in the same blanket.
A little over 5 months before,these two baby girls were conceived by in-vitro fertilization. After failing to become pregnantwith two prior rounds of IVF, the fertility specialist had convinced the parents to transfer four embryos. He and the couple were disappointed that the embryo quality was not optimal. None the less, the idea of transferring four embryos made my patient and her husband anxious, they only wanted to become pregnant with a single baby, or worse case scenario twins.The doctor informed the couple that he was not optimistic that any of the embryos would implant.
To the surprise of everyone, my patient did indeed become pregnant.But the first ultrasound brought heartache. The ultrasound showed one baby, then two…then a third baby. Three babies! This was completely unacceptable. This was not supposed to happen. The embryo quality had been poor. If they had known that they could possibly become pregnant with triplets, they would have never allowed four embryos to be transferred.
The couple went home devastated. There was no way that they wanted to have three babies. Yet, this pregnancy was so difficult to conceive in the first place, so abortion was out of the question.
For weeks and weeks they discussed what they could do. How could they handle this problem? The ultrasound showed that they were having two girls and a boy. Finally, around 17 weeks into the pregnancy they had come upon a solution that worked for them.
They would end the life of one of the girls.
Although fetal reduction is usually done at 9 to 13 weeks, the patient and her husband found a clinic that accepted them for reduction of the triplet. They desperately wanted to be parents, and they decided that a girl and a boy would be acceptable.
So, the termination was performed by injecting the baby’s heart with potassium chloride.
But, there was a major complication to the procedure. The doctor had accidentally terminated their boy and not their girl.
Over the next weeks the patient and her husband had come to terms with the thought of having two girls. They just wanted healthy babies.
The next crisis was soon to follow.Premature labor started and despite intensive efforts, my patient had delivered her two baby girls.
The babies lay silently in their mothers arms. Both parents were weeping over their lost babies, their lost dreams.
“Okay. One last push now.” The doctor encouraged.
The stillborn baby boy delivered. He was much smaller than his sisters and his little body had begun to deteriorate inside the womb.
Before the birth, I had given the patient options on how we could care for her baby boy. I could bring the baby to her chest right away to hold. Or the baby could be brought behind the partition temporarily and then I could take a moment to look over the baby. At that time I would return to them and describe the baby. If they were up to it they would see him, or I could take him from the room. The final option was for me to take the baby directly out of the room.
Now that the baby was born, I cradled him in my hands, covered by the blanket.
“Would you like to see your boy?” I asked.
“No,” the husband said quickly, “Take him from the room.”
Opening the door, I flagged down another nurse and asked her to stand by while I took the baby boy to a utility room.
Quickly returning to the patient’s bedside, I helped her create memories of her little girls. While she held them, I took footprints and slipped tiny handmade baby bracelets onto their delicate ankles. The parents held their babies together as I took family photographs. They kissed and cherished their baby girls.
About two hours later the baby’s heartbeats slowed and stopped. The girls had died.
After providing comfort to my patient and insuring she was stable, I went to the utility room to attend to the baby boy. It was important to me that he was treated with the same dignity as his sisters. Over the next twenty minutes I bathed him, powdered him and dressed him in a tiny handmade gown. His little feet made perfect prints with ink onto white paper. Pressing clay into a seashell, I prepared for an impression of his foot.Then I took his picture as he was cradled in my hand.
Returning to the patient’s bedside, I told she and her husband that I had cared for their son. They declined the mementos that I had made. The same mementos that were made for their baby girls earlier, in their presence.
This surprised and frankly saddened me. Some parents have a difficult time seeing their baby after death. But the parents had held their little girls for hours after they had died. I could not understand why they had rejected the baby boy’s mementos.
A couple of days later, I learned that my patient and her husband had chosen to bury their baby girls and give them a funeral. They had left the baby boy with pathology to be disposed of with the other specimens in the hospital.
It was the final straw for me. How could this baby, who had once been so cherished, be thrown away. How could he not be honored, recognized…loved?
It just broke my heart.
Ultimately, none of us will know what was in their mind...
My thought is this...if they acknowledged the child's life, they would have to face that they had a hand in his death.
That day I went home and asked Brian if he would agree to adopt a special baby boy.
My boy is has turned the corner and is doing much better.
Things I am thankful for today:
God, in so many ways, but especially for answer to prayer
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The improved health of my son
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Continued health of my family and myself
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Support and prayers of my family
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Support and prays of my blog friends and friends in real life :)
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Excellent, responsive medical professionals
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Tamiflu-I attribute the significant decrease in his symptom so quickly to getting this in his system about 12 hours after the onset of his symptoms. (He went from seemingly well to very ill within 7 hours)
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Flu.gov in helping me manage my boy’s illness at home
Here is how I managed his flu at home, we are an at-risk (asthmatic) family, so it was important that we took good flu precautions:
He was in his bedroom for 2 days with me (either 6 feet away or with a mask) as his only caregiver, in order to prevent flu transmission to the rest of the family.
I am allowing him free range of the house again as his fever has been below 100.7 for 24 hours. He will have significant reduction in his viral shed now.
“CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever (100°F or 37.8°C) is gone except to get medical care or for other things you have to do and no one else can do for you. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine, such as Tylenol®.) You should stay home from work, school, travel, shopping, social events, and public gatherings.”
He will still need to cough and sneeze into tissues, have good hand hygeine, and stay out of my kitchen (my rule) until he has full resolution of symptoms.
*Although my son did have a flu, it is not certain that it was H1N1. He was treated as if he had H1N1, but individual confirmations are not being done. I will be getting my son the H1N1 vaccine as soon as he is well and it is available. My family is in the high risk group for complications for H1N1. We will all be vaccinated.
Here is a link to help you know if it is a cold or a flu:
Because I am a heath care provider I received my H1N1 vaccine yesterday- It will help me to protect my vulnerable family and my pregnant patients by helping me to avoid the H1N1 flu, once my H1N1 immunity is established (2 weeks according to flu.gov)
Are you at risk?
People at High Risk for Developing Flu-Related Complications
Children younger than 5, but especially children younger than 2 years old
Neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions [including disorders of the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerve, and muscle such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy (seizure disorders), stroke, intellectual disability (mental retardation), moderate to severe developmental delay, muscular dystrophy, or spinal cord injury].
Chronic lung disease (such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD] and cystic fibrosis)
Heart disease (such as congenital heart disease, congestive heart failure and coronary artery disease)
Scout (who has asthma) has very rapidly come down with a cough, some shortness of breath (not extreme, but enough to require Albuterol nebulizer), congestion and a fever.
He has been to the doc and is on the full regimen: antivirals, antibiotics, steroids... I have isolated him to his bedroom. Of course, he will have Nurse Mom quite close to him at all times.
6 years ago, the Princess (also asthmatic) was hospitalized with complications of the seasonal flu. Please pray that she will not get it.
Also, with my new asthma diagnosis I am praying not to get it either. The hospital just got the H1N1 vaccine in 24 hours ago and started shot clinics today. I hope to go in tomorrow and get mine. Only peds and ob nurses are eligible at this time at our institution.
The last year was a "Scary-Nightmare" for the four of us...Halloween was a highlight. Firehubby, Scout, the Princess and I will each share our versions of that fateful Friday known as October 31, 2008:
I'll give a little background here::
Ana had plagued me for the three months prior to Halloween of 2008. Yes, good ol’ anaphylaxis. Being exposed to fragrance would cause me to have hoarseness and sometimes shortness of breath. The doctors told me that these symptoms were due to a potentially life threatening allergic reaction. It was a very concerning time of my life.
By the eve of Halloween I was a mess. I'd been on the verge of a medical crisis all day long. But, I wanted to go pick up some groceries and drop my new prescriptions at the Albertson’s pharmacy.It was a Friday night, and the place was bustling with women dressed in skimpy,and frankly, inappropriate costumes and letcherous men coming to check out women doing their last minute shopping. Dressed in sweats,I dragged my weary self around the store. I wanted to pick up some supplies to make mummy hotdogs in an attempt to make something special of the day for my kiddos.
My allergic reaction went into full swing when I got home and soon epipens were flying and an urgent call to 911 was made.
My memory does not serve me well on what was happening with the kids. Brian was phoning friends to take the kids off to trick or treat and there was a flurry of activity as the kids got into their costumes. I cannot remember what they were for Halloween last year. Sad.
The kids went out the door as I heard the sirens in the neighborhood. I hoped that the kids would be down the street when the firetruck pulled up to the house. The evening would be traumatic enough without seeing the emergency vehicles arrive.
Sitting at the dinner table calmly, I waited for the fire crew to come in the house. As the crew sauntered in, they looked unimpressed and probably wondered why the heck they had been called. That is, until I spoke to them and started to explain the situation. My voice sounded like Froggy, from the old Our Gang TV shows.
Instantly the pace in the room picked up. Monitors were pulled out and medication boxes were opened. The next thing I know a paramedic was jabbing a needle into my hand trying to access a vein that was as small as a thread, vasoconstricted from the Epinepherine.
He got the IV in on the second try and pushed some more Epi and gave me a dose of intravenous Benadryl.
Ding Dong.
“What?” I thought, “Who can that be?”
“Trick or Treat.”
“No way!” I said, as best as I could through my hoarseness.
Everyone in the room exchanged looks of disbelief.
Then, the fire captain shrugged, picked up the bowl of candy from the kitchen counter and headed toward the front door.
Oh my gosh, can you believe it? Parents sent their kids to the door of a house that had a firetruck in the driveway?!
The ambulance arrived a moment later , packaged me up and rolled me out the front door.
As we went out to the drive, I could see crowds of neighbors and trick or treaters gauking at me.
What’s a girl to do? I raised my cupped hand and did the princess wave all the way to the ambulance.
The rest is boring from there…ambulance ride, shortness of breath, breathing treatments, IV bolus of steroids, resolution of symtoms, and signing of discharge papers a few hours later.
The kids missed our family Halloween. Our kind friends had welcomed them to their neighborhood block party, but it wasn't the hours and hours of running door to door, parents in tow, that they delight in.
Epilogue: This year is sure to be better. In August, we journeyed to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. We were desperate for help with my worsening medical condition. To our surprise, we found out that I actually had been misdiagnosed. What I had been experiencing was asthma and vocal cord spasms. The ordeal had ended. I have my future back.
Please go read what the other members of my family had to say about Halloween 2008:
Mysweet patienthad an epidural and was lacking control of some very important muscles.
Toot.
As her labor progressed, her flatulence increased.
Each time she passed gas she was so cheery and did not seem the least bit embarrassed.
Toot.
Finally, she reacted to the passing of wind.
“Honey, “ she said in a hushed voice to her husband sitting beside her in the recliner, “you really must have eaten something last night that bothered you stomach.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Because you have so much gas,” she whispered.
The look on her face was priceless when she found out who had fluffed the morning away. She'd been surprised at her husband's lack of manners.
She was the first to burst out in laughter the next time we all heard…
Marie-Jeanne and. her pride and joy, granddaugher Laura
Years ago there were two people who had a passion for geneology…
One was a man in America…my father
Another was a woman in Luxembourg…my distant cousin
Each had come to an impasse in their research and decided to utilize ancestry.com to try to reach across the oceans in search of their descendants.
On February 13, 2003, these two seekers very quickly struck gold!
This is story of how my father met my cousin, Marie-Jeanne.
The connection helped unfurl the history of our family. Dad's Grandfather Peter (My Great Grandfather)
Dad’s Grandfather Peter traveled to America in search of the American Dream.
Marie-Jeanne's Grandfather
Marie-Jeanne’s Grandfather was brothers with Dad’s Grandfather Peter.
Marie-Jean's Father
Of note: Marie-Jeanne’s father was a prisoner in the German concentration camp of Dachau for his patriotism in defiance of the Gestapo. His family believed he had been murdered. Then one day, miraculously, he walked back into town. Dachau had been liberated by the allies and Marie-Jeanne was reunited with her long-lost father.
Pierre and Marie-Jeanne on left
My family grew very close to Marie-Jeanne and her husband Pierre. Their marriage was one to envy. Their admiration and love for each other beautiful.
Dad and Mom
Dad and Mom traveled to Luxembourg and were treated with the most gracious hospitality that one could imagine.
Marie-Jeanne and I share our birthday…August 15, a special connection.
My brother who lives in Hungary has been a frequent guest of Pierre and Marie-Jeanne.
Today, with a very heavy heart, we say goodbye to our wonderful cousin.
Marie-Jeanne passed away of pancreatic cancer on October 22, 2009.
Although we only knew her for a short time, we will always treasure her in our memories and in our hearts.
To Pierre and family, I send my heartfelt condolences.
God rest your soul Marie-Jeanne…God rest your soul.
Believer,Firewife, full-time mom, part-time L&D nurse, daughter, sister, friend, blogger. That's it in a nutshell. Silly and serious...opposites I know, but I'm both. I love meeting new bloggy friends! Thanks for stopping by!
1. I take HIPPAA seriously. I fiercely guard my patient's privacy.
2. This is NOT your birth story, nor your mom's, definitely not your grandma's, not your sister's, or your next door neighbor's. (Nope, not octomom's either) 3. Do not take anything I write here as advice. If you call me @ home with a medical problem you will here the tap tap of my keyboard...yep, I'm Googling your medical question! ")
The (soon to be) birthday girl :)
