Sorry Kids! Your Mom's a Nurse

My son went to the skate park yesterday. The place was hopping with skateboarders of all ages perfecting tricks. But the first thought that entered my son's head was: "Mommy would not be happy. Look at all the kids riding around without a helmet!" 

Yes! My crazy insistence on injury prevention has seeped in. My boys know that I will call out to any random kid on wheels, "Where's your helmet?!" Because I am a nurse in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. I have seen firsthand the protection that a little plastic bowl can provide your noggin... and the horrifying effects that a hard hit on concrete can leave on an unprotected skull. I wish I could pass out business cards with photos of kids who have suffered head injuries. Too much? Yeah, you're probably right, but it's annoying to see kids needing hospitalization for injuries that might have been prevented if they had actually clipped their helmets in place.

And yet... being the child of a nurse presents an interesting dichotomy. My kids know that while you can never be too careful, you're never quite sick enough to need an ER visit. Is your arm still attached to your body? Then you'll be fine. It's barely hanging on by the ligament and you're bleeding profusely? Well, maybe we should call the advice nurse... right after you use your good arm to clean up that blood!

My older son had a broken clavicle last year. I'm embarrassed to say that we didn't even get x-rays until 5 days later. Hey, don't judge! He came home after flipping over his bike handlebars and complained that his shoulder hurt. In retrospect, I should've known that a broken collarbone is the most likely injury from this kind of Superman stunt, but I was more concerned with whether or not he had been wearing his helmet. And, in my defense I wanted to take him in at least a day earlier but he insisted he was too busy with school projects to find time for a measly doctor's visit. Surprisingly, he toughed it out without much complaint, but loves to tell people how his parents neglected him for the good part of a week.

Heaven forbid either boy has the sniffles though! He will whine all day about his congestion and how his sore throat feels like it's on fire, and how he hates the gross-tasting medicine. On and on. Yeah, we've all had colds. Buck up Buttercup! You'll manage.

My younger son came down with a mysterious illness right as winter break ended. I think it might have been a nasty strain of "I enjoyed my time off and don't want to go back to school just yet". I wasn't falling for it and insisted he'd be just fine. I'm not really impressed unless you have a raging fever and some color change. I sent him off to school with the assurance that he could come home if he truly felt miserable at school since both mom and dad were home and available at a moment's notice. After running errands and doing housework I noticed that there was a message on the machine. A sad little voice pleaded, "I'm not really feeling good. Can you come pick me up?" The time indicated that he'd called three hours before! (My husband didn't hear the phone when I was out.) I rushed to call the office, picturing my baby lying on the hard cot all alone and miserable. She assured me he hadn't been in and patched me through to the classroom. My son's teacher didn't know he had tried to call earlier so nobody looked up my cell number to reach me. When asked how he was feeling and if he needed to be picked up early (with only an hour of school remaining) he said he felt fine. Like 7/10 good. This is why I never worry right away.

Well that's not really true. When you work with extremely sick kids you see a lot of scary diseases that can spring up unexpectedly. Nurses know too much and sometimes we freak out unnecessarily. I'm guessing most people's kids don't wake up to a parent leaning over them with a stethoscope or shining a light in their eyes, or bending their chin down to their chest to check for meningitis. Is it a headache or an invasive brain tumor? A twisted knee or osteosarcoma? Oh my  God - leprosy??? Oh, wait, that's just a hangnail. Yeah, okay, time to dial it back a notch.

We all have our weird parental neuroses. My boys' immune systems will be stronger for having battled mild diseases without the help of antibiotics. They'll know how to tough it out when they sometimes feel like crap. That doesn't mean there won't be whining, but they'll be fine in the end. We got this.

Pass this on to anyone who was lucky to survive having a nurse for a parent!

It's Like I'm Sherlock Holmes

I work the night shift as a nurse in a busy Pediatric ICU.  The work is emotionally stressful, physically taxing, and mentally challenging - especially at 4 in the morning when you are the charge nurse and have to scramble to rearrange the puzzle pieces to accommodate busy admissions with a short staff and patients who are spiraling down.  Thankfully though, the night shift tends to have more down time than the other shifts (why do you think I've stayed there for the past 14 years?  Certainly not for the coffee).  But it's not always doom and gloom.  Case in point: last night my colleagues had me laughing so hard I was wheezing and wiping away tears of mirth.  I'm sure a parent complaint is on the way.

I come home after work, have a quick breakfast, check in with the family, and go to sleep.  Often that sleep is briefly interrupted by noises from the boys who are home and doing their thing.  We went through a good 3-month period a few years ago where they liked to blast "Rock You Like a Hurricane" at top volume... on repeat. I had some crazy dreams then.  Or, one will offend their sibling and a yelling match ensues, followed by doors slamming and general mayhem.  But I've become an old pro at sleeping through most anything, and I generally wake refreshed and ready to rejoin the family and hear what they've been up to.  When I walk down the hallway toward the living room and family room I never know what I'm going to find... but they leave me ample clues that detail the events of the last 5 to 7 hours.  And now I'm like Sherlock Holmes, piecing together the minute details of a crime scene.

Here's how it typically plays out: I creep warily down the hallway and gird myself for the disastrous view that  assaults me upon first entering the living room - site of many a crime.  Toys are usually strewn everywhere, clothes litter every seating surface, and possibly some new food has been ground into the carpet.  Last year when we were rearranging the boys' rooms we had bookshelves laying in the living room and the boys had rediscovered old toys that they hadn't played with in a while.  It was like trying to navigate a minefield just to get to the kitchen and my beloved coffee.  The scene was vividly laid out in front of me.   "Ah yes, a great battle has taken place between the Stuffies and the Transformers and if I'm not mistaken, Megatron has once again defeated his old nemesis Stripey".

Today, the battlefield is clear, but I glean much information from the detritus that leads, like breadcrumbs (sometimes it literally IS breadcrumbs), from one room to the other to spell out all of the day's activities.  A lacrosse ball which my son grabbed from the sidelines at the Cal vs Oregon game.  How do I know where it came from?  He's written on it with a Sharpie - so, ok, that one was cheating.  The puppy is whining in her crate, but yarns from my area rug lay within view - she's been destroying my nice things again and it looks to be from 25 minutes ago by the size of the drying drool outline.  The boys ate sandwiches and Cheddar Bunnies for lunch, along with Gatorade to wash it down.  This one's easy because the wrappers are right next to the lunch dishes still on the table, and the bread loaf is on the counter with the bag open to invite staleness; the peanut butter jar also open next to a dirty knife.  Breakfast obviously consisted of cereal - Honey Nut Cheerios by the color of the milk remaining in the three bowls on TOP of the dishwasher.  (See previous post about Force Fields).  The paper lays open to the entertaining comics page, next to the past three days' worth of newspapers that need to find their way out to the recycling bin.  An iPod with a dead battery has been discarded on the couch cushions, but it seems they were busy enough that there was no time for a DVD today, because no case is laying open near the television.  And unless I'm mistaken and my husband has taken up solitary daytime drinking, he fell asleep watching the news last night.  A beer bottle with a few last swigs sits on the table next to the rumpled blanket on the couch.  But today's coffee helped to revive him, based on the dried brown ring on the mug next to the computer.

They've since gone out to do guy things together and as much as I hate to perpetuate the gender stereotypes I will gladly stay here, alone in the quiet house, with an episode of the Vampire Diaries to watch while I clean up the mess.  Gotta set the stage for a new day's adventures.