Kid Hospitals = emotionally draining

It seems like what we did in the clinic at school is a world away from what I'm seeing in "the real world". I can see how a lot of people say they did most of their learning on the job. Thursday I was allowed to pick up and feed a baby by myself! Well, not totally alone, but I mean I used to have to sit down first and have the baby handed to me, but this time I swaddled the baby myself and brought her to the chair myself. Hehe and I didn't stumble over her tubes and like drop her out the window.

I felt so bad for some of the kids I saw Thursday. There was one 2yo girl who had brain surgery on Tuesday. And so she was NPO (nothing by mouth) for the last day and a half, with no NG (nasogastric) tube or anything, just intravenous hydration. We saw her at her bedside to assess her ability to swallow safely. She had a huge gauze pad on the left side of her head, and her left arm in a cast so that she won't pull at it. She had barely any hair, and she was really cranky for food and drink. Her mom was there, with such an anxious / loving / distressed facial expression. Ah, just tear my heart out why don't you????

And then I saw a kid who's also about 3 years old for speech/language tx. This boy was born with Short Gut Syndrome, so he's got his stomach pretty much outside his belly. He's got a G tube to feed him, a J tube to do something else, and another tube to drain his bladder, etc etc. He's been in the hospital ALL HIS LIFE!!! So I go into his room with the SLP, and we start to do play therapy w/him on the floor, and he's wanting to push the truck around, but we kept having to tell him to not go so far because he's quite literally tethered to his bedside with the machines. Oh my, what kind of life is that?? :"-(

And later I gave the Rossetti Infant-Toddler Language Scale (or at least I tried) to a little girl who's about 15 months old. She's also been in the hospital all her life. Everybody loves her - her nurses, doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, all the SLPs who work with her ... And yet, I hear from these same people about her parents who have barely come in to see her for her whole life, and how they just don't love her like they should. She's scheduled to be discharged March 1st. I dont' see how that's going to happen for her best interest, because her parents will have SO much to learn about how to take care of her medical needs (she's also tethered to machines). Apparently, her parents are really young, like 17.

Maybe I'm not cut out for kid hospitals. There are lots of kids in here also for non-accidental head truama. That just kills me. It really tears me up inside how ... anyway, let's not get into that. It's too depressing. Ugh, and there's also the media. I've been here a month and a half, and three times I've seen a news crew around, usually ABC I think. Who knows how many more come around that I don't run into. Last month during PICU rounds, I remember hearing a resident or social worker saying this high profile kid who's been in the papers and news for some head injury was afraid to go home when he was discharged becuase he didn't want all that public attention. He was hiding crouched in the corner of hte room refusing to leave! Argh!

Thursday, I left by the employee exit, and almost ran into a news camera that was aiming for the entrance of the building. Turns out, as I was channel surfing that night, that WGN Chicago (i think?) had interviewed a kid last year who had a liver transplant, but is back to the hospital now due to liver failure. So they just taped the exterior of the building, and my ugly face didn't get in the way... Too bad! LoL