Hitting Home Hurts Hard :: N30020 Clinical Journal Entry #14

What a week.

Someone once said...

Nobody trips over mountains.  It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble.  Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.

Last night I took my sleeping medication so I'd get deep, restorative sleep and set my alarm for a time so early I've never seen it before. It blared and blared while I groaned and wished it was about 6 hours later.  I immediately took my medication to combat my sleep disorder and ensure I'd be awake for the rest of the day... the medication I hate taking.  I fumbled around, took my other medications, put on my white scrubs and new Dansko shoes.  I threw my hair back and put on my badge with an undeniable new excitement and even a little pride.

I walked outside in the morning chill, saw the moon, and heard the cricuts.  Yawn.  I got into my car, defrosted my windows, and hoped the sun would be up soon so it wouldn't feel as early.  Then I started out for my long journey north to finish what I started somewhere around five years ago.  

I re-started the nursing clinicals I'd broke away from a year and a half ago.

You know... I knew this would be hard, but this hard?  Seriously?  The health issues would be a challenge, yes, but these past couple weeks, was I too consumed in that aspect of returning to nursing school to realize my first course/clinical back would be Pediatrics?  When I think Pediatrics, I either think of the kiddos I nanny or sometimes, on a despised, all too vivid recollection, I will think of myself, 5 years old, in a hospital gown, hooked to an IV, and crying.  Odd?  No. Because I've seriously been there.

This, friends, this is where it all began.  This first week's lecture and today's clinical together have culminated an even more vivid reminder of being a child in the hospital, the tubes and machines and beeping, the crying mother, the strained father, the neglected siblings.... not to mention the fear of the unknown, the fear of intense procedures or operations, the inability to fully understand what is going on... You're only a kid, you know.  But like it or not, this is where my life in healthcare began, as a patient, and now, as a nurse.  A nurse who will be a better nurse because she remembers over 17 years of being at the mercy of doctors and nurses.  A nurse who has been through all of the emotions, fears, concerns.  A nurse who is dedicated to helping children have better hospitalizations than she had, just because she knows how.  Because she knows how much a smile, an extra minute chatting about crafts or sports or school, even just a touch or grasped hand can mean to a bored, disappointed, scared hospitalized kid.  She remembers how the smallest things speak volumes and dispel fear more than words ever could.  She wants to be a nurse who "gets it," a nurse who makes a huge difference in the life of children (and everyone else), minimizing as much negativity as possible during their hospitalizations.  She wants to be a nurse who doesn't use this clinical rotation as a memory-challenging clinical rotation as something to dread, but instead as a chance to practice new interventions, all while incorporating child-friendly phrases, lots of smiles, a few giggles, and charming yet informative demonstrations on baby dolls and teddy bears.  She wants to be a nurse who won't promise one thing and return with another, not the nurse who tells the child that "x" won't hurt, when really, it will.  She wants to culminate her experience in nannying/childcare with her experience as a patient, and of course her love for nursing, to totally rock this.

The only problem?   Sometimes the memories can be overbearing.  

This morning, we started with a four-hour computer system class, followed by lots of discussion, forms, lunch, orientation things, and then touring our floor.  For the first part of the class, we will be with the kids infant-7 years, and then the second half, we will be on the unit for the kids 8+ years.   The Cleveland Clinic has many pediatric units, but we went to the one we'll be starting on next week.  All 10 of us followed our instructor down the dark hall as we each tried hard to see the patients through their doors or windows, to see what we were getting ourselves into!  There were babies in cribs, little girls clutching their stuffed animals, and some boys who were with their families or watching cartoons.  Every now and then we'd hear an impossibly loud, high-pitched scream, and chills went up and down my spine as I remember making those same screams and being in a bed surrounded by other kids who did the same.  We saw the playroom, and I got nauseous thinking about how I loved doing crafts in the playroom when I was little, and also my day shadowing at our local children's hospital's PICU when I played Connect Four with a little boy.  That was the day we lost 3 kids, one of whom came in via Life Flight.  We literally worked for hours on him, only to see him die, to hear his mother sob until she couldn't breathe.  Ahh, pediatrics.  You know, I love kids.  Love them.  I want to help them.  But for one, I'm scared of their illnesses simply because my immune system is extremely compromised.  And we have three cases of Swine Flu on the floor right now.  But what really bothers me?  The memories are just so intense.  Nursing school is hard enough, I don't need to sort through all of the emotional baggage all over again.  But I have to do this.  I have to.  So I guess I just need to be strong.  I love my group, my clinical instructor, everything - I'm just so scared of getting back into this horror.

Let me just tell you... Hitting home hurts hard.