Friday, July 13, 2007

Words fail me...

The little one I baptized a few days ago died last night. It shouldn't have been a surprise - she had many physical problems - but she had seemed better. I had seen her with her mom at her bedside yesterday at 5 pm.

This has been a bad week on the unit, with two babies who were in beds right alongside each other dying within a day of each other. Teen Mom (see below) whose little baby girl is still in many ways a medical mystery to the docs with her many congenital problems, didn't come in to sit by her child's bedside, as she usually does. I fear she's been shocked and horrified by the two deaths, and it is finally dawning on her how sick her baby is. I hope she'll be there on Monday so we can talk.

I've been assigned an additional unit, since one member of my CPE group has dropped out for medical reasons. I'm picking up the Respiratory Care unit (think asthma, cystic fibrosis, that sort of problem). Sick kids, usually past the baby stage so I can have some conversations with them, not so acute as the babies downstairs. Different challenges that will be good for me.

As much as I'm learning, I will be glad when these last five weeks are over. Poor PH is patient with my every-night tears, but I feel badly that his wife dumps all her emotions on him over dinner.

The cure? I had frozen custard after dinner tonight. I'm much better, even though my jeans are tighter.

2 comments:

Towanda said...

hard week. Custard would just be the start of it for me...

take care of you, ok?

mibi52/ The Rev. Dr. Mary Brennan Thorpe said...

Thanks for your kind words and good thoughts. The hardness of the week was exacerbated by a blow-up in our group that I was drawn into peripherally, unwillingly. So the custard after dinner was preceded by a glass of wine with dinner. Both medications were very soothing!

Tonight PH and I are going to some friends' house for dinner. God bless her, the wife can talk and talk, so I can just sit there and enjoy the company and not speak much.