Winning Combination

This weekend I took care of my usual patient, and thanks to the St. Patrick's Day holiday weekend which equated to a bunch of people calling off so staffing was horrible, I also had another patient.

I'm not Irish (although I did write a family heritage paper my junior year in high school on being Irish...but that was only because I didn't know where my family really came from, and a friend told me while we were in the library to pick up a few books and find a girl who looked like me. So, he flipped open an Irish book and there was a girl that apparently looked just like me. So there ya have it...I was Irish...at least for that paper!)

Anyways, I'm not Irish, so I guess I don't get why St. Patrick's Day is SUCH a BIG...make that HUGE...deal where I live!!! And since it fell on a weekend, people were drunk for 3 days!

Driving home Saturday night was interesting. I not only had to watch out for the usual bad city drivers and crazy bikers who think they are a car but don't care to follow car traffic signals or signs, but also the wasted "I'm not going to look before I stumble into the middle of the busy street" pedestrians. And the one man who fell (passed out?) in the middle of walking across the street...and just stayed there! To which his friends were just laughing at him from the sidewalk!

Yeah, it was interesting. So I guess staying inside the hospital despite the amazing sunny warm weather outside was not all that bad of an idea.

And, despite the fact that my usual patient is usually singled (AKA: one nurse, one patient) because he's so sick and I had another patient because our staffing was so bad, I didn't mind.

My other patient was THE CUTEST girl ever! I seriously want to take this girl home with me. Which may be possible because the mom was there for 35 minutes all weekend. Boo for parents that don't visit their children in the PICU....it seems to be quite the theme lately!

This 10 month old had a nasty case of RSV and was wheezing so loud you could hear her down the hallway, but despite that she was smiley and babbling and oh so cute! I just wanted to cuddle her and kiss her cute little curly head all weekend....while wearing my isolation mask, gown and gloves of course : )

And it was this weekend that I realized (or maybe just remembered since it's been awhile) that while I love working in the PICU with the sickest of the sick, every once in awhile, it's nice to have a patient who is not quite as sick. Someone you can play with and hold and sing to. Someone who smiles back at you and claps her cute chubby little hands when you walk into the room!

I'm sure she won't be in the PICU when I go back to work tomorrow. And I'm sure our staffing will be much better on a non-holiday Tuesday. But, I have to say, despite making it one crazy busy day, I wouldn't mind having the two of them again. It was a good mix of super sick and super cute. And that's a winning combo in my PICU book!