ugh...

as you may know, i'm a pediatric icu nurse. i love my job. i love helping my patients and their families. having said that, i have decided that i hate being on the flip side of things and i'm a horrible family member/patient. it always makes me a little more conscientious of my interactions with family members of my patients and how i interact with my patients. it also makes me think of the saying "ignorance is bliss" because my mind tends to wander during these times.

my cute neice, sydney, had surgery today. she had to have her gallbladder out at the ripe old age of 13. i can totally feel her pain, as i had to have my gallbladder out 4 years ago. i went with her and her stepmom, and my cute mom, this morning to the hospital to wait with ang (stepmom...i know, funny...we have the same name!) during the surgery. my brother, syd's dad, was out of town for work and couldn't get off work, so we were proxys, if you will. well, we would have gone anyway, i guess. back to my story...so we got to the hospital and got her all checked in. then we had to watch while they tried to draw some blood for labs. they had to stick her 3 times. it was terrible!!! they also had to do an iv, but they were going to let the anesthesiologist start it, especially after having difficulty with the blood draws. i'm glad they did. he gave her some laughing gas to get her all goofy, then tried the iv. he even had a hard time finding a good vein. i'm just glad she doesn't remember it.

while we were out in the waiting room during her surgery, i tried not to think of all the things that i have seen as a result of complications to surgery and think about how well she was doing. after what felt like an eternity (but was really only about an hour), the surgeon came out and told us all went well and that syd was in recovery. i was so relieved. but then again, my mind started to wander as i watched the clock tick by and waited the 40 minutes until we could go back and finally see her. you see, i forget that when i am at work and get a post-op patient, we are the ones doing the recovery and so they skip the whole recovery room. i kind of forgot that and kept thinking of all these things that could be taking so long. and of course, nothing went wrong. they were just doing the normal post-op things. but we finally went back to see her and she was somewhat awake and a little drugged, but doing ok.

after about an hour, they decided she could go home. she was not having any problems with nausea and her pain was not the greatest in control, but she had pain medication on board. well she made it home ok. we sent ang to bed for a nap, since she's been sick with a nasty kidney infection, and my cute mom headed to the store for some prescriptions. so i was in charge of syd for a while. we got her all comfy in the recliner, she had a few crackers and some sprite and was headed to sleep. all of the sudden, she bolts awake, yells for a bowl (which i had no idea where to find one!) and says she not feeling so good. luckily i got her the bowl in time!! i grabbed a cool cloth and went to nurse my cute niece to better comfort. i've decided this sucks. not the taking care of her part...but the part where i can't fix it and make her all better. i've decided i don't like seeing my cute little syd so sick to her stomach and hurting so much. i've been through this surgery and i hate to think that she is feeling as crappy as she is.

now, it's been 15 minutes, i've given her some more phenegran and she is sleeping peacefullly. hopefully she'll stay this way for a while. i just want to scoop her up and make it all go away for her.

update: well it's been 4 hours now and syd hasn't gotten much rest. she's been really sick to her stomach and keeps throwing up. she can't keep anything down, including her pain meds. but ang called the doctor and he assured her that she'll be ok. just try and get her to rest. so hopefully she'll sleep tonight and feel better tomorrow. i'm back to work tomorrow, so i'll be checking in on her during the day. thanks for all your kind words!!!

update #2: well, thursday night i talked to syd and she is doing much better. she sounded better. she got some good sleep, hasn't been as sick to her stomach and has been able to eat! so yeah!!!!