Happy Valentines Day. I just thought I would brag for a minute. Lins and I work in one of the coolest places - pediatric cardiology in one of the leading children's heart transplant centers in North America. This was a story on the CBC national news today. So to all of you out there that think we are crazy to be nurses, it isn't all that bad.
"Xander Dolski's heart problems were discovered by ultrasound 20 weeks into the pregnancy... His mother was brought from their home in Winnipeg to Edmonton's Stollery Children's Hospital...Once an organ was found, Xander was delivered by caesarian section five weeks prematurely on Dec. 19, 2005 weighing about five pounds. He was immediately taken to surgery to get the new heart... Had this baby been born elsewhere, he wouldn't have survived more than three hours outside the womb even with the best of medical care... An organ needed to be found before Xander was born but after his lungs were developed enough to accept the strawberry-sized transplant." Here is the Link to the CBC website if anyone is interested.
I got to have this little guys and his parents as my patients in January after the transplant. We do get heart transplants, but more often we care for kids who have major heart surgery, some of them two or three surgeries. There are some kids and familys that you get to know really well, seeing as they are often there for months at a time or come in and out of the hospital so much. It is easy to get attatched to these families and is sometimes hard to deal with when something goes wrong or the kids pass away. It is also hard to know that in order for a kid like Xander to get his heart a little baby somewhere else had to die. But for all that is bad, the job is very rewarding - especially when you see one of your patients and your hospital on the national news in such a happy story! So thanks Lins for talking me into working on 4C and teaching me so much. And might I add that 4C has the best staff ever and I really miss seeing everyone now that I am off on maternity leave - I emphasize I miss the people and some of the patients, not necessarily "working"!
2 comments:
I somehow deleted my comment, here's the jist...The patients and families and dr's and nurses we work with really are amazing. I think we work with it every day and take it for granted. Now that I have my own little miricle, I realize that every one of those kids is a miricle too. We are lucky to be a part of it all and see this incredible stuff. Way to talk us up whit!
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