First day of EfM

A partial group met on Monday at the mentor's house. No small feet consider San Antonio traffic at 6pm, but most of the group made it and mostly on time. There is one other first year student as well, so it will be good to have someone to bounce the interpretations of readings off of. I have the tendency to over analyze and dig too much, perhaps, though with my schedule at school I might be prevented from doing that by shear logistics.

Anyway, we spent the meeting sussing out the truly important things- can we meet at 1800 or should we wait til 1830 to allow those who work downtown to get all the way to the north side of the city in time. Can we meet on Saturdays for the life time lines? A resounding yes until I mentioned I am in pediatric clinical rotation from 1300 to 2300 every Saturday until mid November. And then finally to the most important issue at hand of them all- who is bringing next week's food and how do we feel about having the occasional glass of wine. All sorted out in almost un-'pisky like alacrity. S. K. bring the food and yes, the occasional- or even not so occasional- glass of wine is perfectly acceptable. I decided to wait until next week to spring onto them the fact that they just might prove to be my test subjects for the dinner my friend and I are guest cheffing for in November. Russian Night at the Southtown Cafe- should be a grand time I hope. We already have a good portion of the menu worked out between us and a lot of experimenting to do ahead of time. Back to the matter at hand: Information and papers were handed out and I quite look forward to reading them on Sunday and Monday (the two days I set aside for EfM studies).

Tuesday I spent at a local elementary doing hearing and vision screenings. I forgot how much I love being surrounded by kids. Third graders aren't quite my old high school students, but it was close enough to pull at my heartstrings a bit. I dearly miss interacting with the little snotters every day. Though you couldn't drag me back into teaching by the nose hairs. Wednesday was spent in Labor and Delivery. Which was eyeopening. I watched two new lives enter our world. And under very different circumstances. One being given up for adoption, the adoptive parents there so desperate to bond with this brand new boy and the birth mother so desperate not to. The father in the corner asleep through so much of the birth and not interested in watching the life he created enter the world. And the other boy, so desperately wanted by the parents. The father so eager you couldn't help but to smile at his bumbling about like an over eager puppy. And then the crushing fear as the baby was whisked away to transitional NICU for a minor problem.

It makes one wonder, what would I have done? As a nurse there is so much that you are responsible for- monitoring the mother and the baby, co-ordinating care, maintaining paperwork- that it is sometimes hard for the nurse to really be there for the patient. I don't mean to say that the care is poor, for it isn't. But the nurse is so busy that they can't or don't or perhaps even won't really open themselves emotionally to the patient. To watch the fear in that mother's eyes and watch the nurse go about her routine as though nothing were wrong- well, I don't know if I could have done it, paper work be damned. Sometimes I wonder if we don't loose something when we transition from student to nurse. Maybe its just that we loose time, maybe its that we loose the ability to really be there with the patient in what ever emotional stew they happen to be in at the time. All I know is that I fear loosing that ability to be there. There is a time to push aside emotions, but there is a time for them to come into play as well. All I know is that when that mother took my hand and thanked me with tears in her eyes for fetching her mother, for blocking her mother-in-law, for bringing her ice; I knew that what she was thanking me for was just being there and with her fully and emotionally during her time of greatest fears. I know that this is what I am most afraid of loosing.