little blue butterfly

wow, if I ever needed to process a day at work, today would be the day.

Every time I explain to someone that I'm a pediatric nurse, the reaction is the same: "that must be really hard! don't you get emotionally attached?" Well, the answer is yes, emotional attachment is inevitable and mostly a good thing in my line of work but I've been extremely blessed in my first year and a half of nursing to not lose any kids that were especially close. Today, I had my first taste of what it might be like to lose one someday. and I still had to work a full shift.

The first thing I heard when I got to work this morning was that one of my favorite cystic fibrosis patients had a terrible night, couldn't breathe, went to the intensive care unit, and they were still wondering whether or not they would have to intubate her. Intubation for this sweet young lady would unfortunately be a last ditch effort and there is an extremely slim to non-existent chance that she would ever recover from it. She is precious to me. as close as family. We call her our little blue butterfly. She has a heart of gold and is often caring for us even more than we are caring for her. She was the first pediatric patient I ever took care of as a nursing student and was a huge influence on my decision to become a peds nurse. I've spent many hours reading to her, playing cards with her, watching the Disney channel, eating NC BBQ, snuggling, discussing life, and just loving on and being loved by her. So, all that to say, the day started off a little rocky. After what seemed like hours of uncertainty about what had actually happened to her and constant begging the Lord to work a miracle on the 5th floor of the hospital, we finally got some reliable information from our manager! She is in the ICU, and she is in extremely critical condition but they were able to give her steroids to avoid intubating her! praise the Lord! keep praying, this is going to be a long road for her and for all the rest of us..