Quarterlife Crisis

I am now on my pediatric inpatient floor rotation and am loving it! It involves much more craziness though I have discovered. I watched a lumbar puncture on a teenager this week....while he was getting the anesthesia medicine, he said "This is like medical weed, but better than the real stuff" or something like that. Ha. Good thing his parents weren't there! Oh did I forget to tell you that this kid failed 9th grade this year....wonder why? (Side note: I watched the LP and did not get light headed or pass out yay!)

This week has been full of 4th of July celebrations....I did 2 arts and crafts sessions on Wed/Thurs. Today (Friday) we had festive ice cream sundaes with red and blue sprinkles. It was a huge hit! It has been very exciting to get to be so hands on in this rotation. Next week I'll start preparing kids for procedures, teaching them about procedures, providing distraction during procedures, etc etc.

It has been so great this week to see the difference we make in these kids' hospital experience. One little girl came in Thursday for a minor surgery to drain an abscess. She was so scared and nervous beforehand. So we talked to her about what she could expect, what things look like, feel like, etc. She got some cool Hannah Montana prizes for being so brave. Today when she was getting ready to be discharged, I said "I know it's not fun to be in the hospital, but we try to make it fun"....to which she replied "This was the 'funnest' place ever." Hopefully she won't remember the scary medical stuff, but instead the fun parts of being at the hospital.

Unfortunately, this floor has a lot of sadness going on. There's a little boy who drowned and is most likely going to be a vegetable; there's a little girl with an incurable brain tumor; another little boy just diagnosed with a inoperable/untreatable brain tumor with just months to live....just to list a few. I'm sure I will learn a lot about how to deal with this during this rotation and the pediatric cancer clinic rotation.

Onto other news...I have started to get my resume ready to send out to hospitals. It is looking more likely that I will have to move, and I am totally ok with that. Of course my first preference would be to stay here in Charlotte. I realize that this entire career change process has been totally God-led, and I can only trust Him that I will get a job in the right timing and at the right place. Prayers for this are appreciated :)