A little break after a rough week...

So, I had my first patient die on Friday. It was an awful experience, truly awful. We worked so hard on him on both Thursday and Friday, gave him a massive amount of blood products, and even did a minor surgical procedure in his room because he was so unstable... Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, he met his inevitable demise at 1330 on 21 March 2008. CPT Corbin and I were devastated right along with his family.

The universe must have been sending out signals about my rough day, because 1/2 an hour after my patient died, Will called me from Iraq... Quite ironic, but very welcome. Talking to him made me feel better, but I still miss him like crazy. Sometimes talking to him makes me miss him more, but I would never pass up the opportunity to talk to him since I get to hear his voice so infrequently. He has been deployed for six months now, and has nine more to go. He should be home on leave in October, so I have something to count down to in the near future.

Later in the day, Geoff took pity on me and was nice enough to fly up from Philly to hang out with me on Friday night and Saturday. We stopped by the White House (which is much smaller than I remember it, but then again, I am bigger now than I was in the eighth grade... Ha-ha) and went out to dinner with a classmate of mine and her friend at Old Ebbitt Grill on Friday night, then walked down the mall a little. On Saturday, we headed up to Ft. Belvoir to get my uniform from the tailor at Military Clothing and Sales, then went to Buca for an early dinner before I got him back to DCA to fly home. To commemorate the event, we took a self-photo on the metro... Ha-ha. I think he is going to come up again the second week of April for a few days so we can get out and see some of the sights. I haven't really gotten out that much, and it has been years since he has been to DC, so we are going to make a real effort to see some of it before I leave. Plus, it will be a few years until we will see each other again. We will see how our schedules work out...

In terms of school, we officially have three weeks to go, and I couldn't be happier. We start our clinical rotation at Fairfax INOVA hospital tomorrow evening. It is a level I trauma facility and we get to rotate though the trauma, neuro, and cardiac ICUs, as well as the ER, so needless to say I am excited about that. On the other hand, I am so tired of spending 19 hours a day either doing patient care, or preparing for the next day. Hawaii will be such a relaxing treat after all of the hard work I have been doing! Anyhow, speaking of school, I must get back to preparing the rest of my clinical objectives since they are due by the end of the week...

The end is so close I can taste it!

66H8A (in training) out...

Time flies...

When you are knee deep in crap all of the time... No joke! But, things are going really well despite the fact that I am starting to get no sleep and doing patient-related work for more hours of the day than I want to. We have six weeks to go at this point and I am so ready to be done.

I don't normally talk about patients I have taken care of, but this patient really touched me in particular and I almost cried about three times taking care of him the other day...

February 26, 2008, the 23rd birthday of a brave American Soldier that I had the pleasure of spending it with. He was involved in an IED blast that rolled the vehicle he was in, severing his spinal cord, breaking 10 of his vertebrae, contusing his left lung, puncturing his right lung, breaking 10 of his ribs on the right side and lacerating his liver. He is paralyzed from the waist down, with minimal function to his right hand and arm. You would think that he would be devastated, but he is so positive and has such a great outlook on life. Mid-morning, when his family came in with cake and ice cream, I said to him, "I am sure that you were not planning on spending your 23rd birthday here at Walter Reed," and he said to me, "Well, not really, but I am alive, not in Iraq and with my family, so I can't ask God for much more." I was absolutely speechless. In fact I had to excuse myself because I was about to cry. He was really nice and asked me later, "Are you okay Ma'am? You seemed like you were kinda sad when we were having cake and ice cream." Of course I lied and said that I was fine, but I couldn't help but think about Will all day.

Anyhow, it is definitely challenging here at Walter Reed with all of the Soldiers and their loved ones, but it just reaffirms my belief that I am doing exactly what I should be doing with my life... Serving those that are brave enough to put their lives in danger every day for the security of our country. I love it and never regret making the decision to be an Army nurse.

Well, like always, it is back to work for me. I have to start preparing for the week!

66H8A (in training) out...