1. I am now a weed wacker maniac! I have always been quite frightened by the weed wacker...it seems so out of control and dangerous the way Rob whips it around the yard. I mean that thing could slice your belly right open and there you would be with your innards all over the front yard....ewww, not good for front yard appeal. Well....I did it!!! Rob showed me how to work it, and I pushed aside my anxiety and went to work....IT WAS EXHILARATING!!! Now I know why guys love the leaf blower, weed wacker, chain saw....the gas powered mower is so...well, powerful. Rob thinks that now because he's 'trained' me he never has to do the edging again...wrong.
2. Next...while I have now been working in the PICU for 3 years...I still don't feel very competent at my job....but they must think I'm capable cause they gave me an ECLS patient last Friday. These patients still scare me...but I did it anyway. This picture isn't exactly clear, but this is about what my patients room looked like. The machines in the picture include a ventilator and an ECLS machine, there isn't much room to move around. There are about 15 different pumps used to give things like blood, albumin, plasma, maintenance fluid, and the remaining are drugs...lots of them. One baby like this requires 2 nurses...and we didn't stop working all night, it's pretty insane. I'd like to also mention that the chest of this little baby wasn't closed after his heart surgery due to swelling...so there is a thin little piece of opaque plastic film that covers the heart...you can see it pumping, if you wanted to you could practically touch the heart
What is ECLS...Extracorporeal Life Support...a machine that essentially does the work of the heart and/or the lungs until the patient's are healthy enough to take back over the work. It's a pretty wild technology, and not all of children's hospitals do it.
Okay...your turn...I challenge you to do something new...and/or something that scares you this week. Leave it in the comments for fun.
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