Superheroes in Bethel

A little human Christmas tree we made while I was home for Christmas.

Well I'm back in Bethel, Ak. I had an amazing trip home to Seattle, I wouldn't want to have spent Christ's birth anywhere else! My bestest Christmas present was definitely being able to see all the people I love and miss so much (alright well i definitely didn't get to see all of you, i actually only got to see a small percentage- one week is most def not enough time. I hope to come back in June for my little sister's graduation- yay syd!- for 3 weeks! Hopefully the people I didn't get to see this time I'll get to see then)! It's funny though because as much as I loved being in Seattle, I knew it was right for me to return to Bethel. The peace of God is with me when I'm here, I'm content here because I know it's what the Lord has for me right now. I didn't think my heart could so fully be in two places at once.
I must admit though- I look forward to the day when the Lord releases me from Bethel and I can return to Seattle.

Praise the Lord I'm starting my 7 days off! Man am I a tired girl, I'm so excited to spend a week resting, cleaning, playing in the snow, visiting with friends and going to church. I should be glorious... well as long as I can figure out this sleep thing. The plan is to go to bed now (well after my shower, because I just finished working out- good job huh :) ) and then wake up around 3 to go to Charly and Rogers reception here in Bethel and then go to youth group at church (i'm super excited about this) and then I'll go to bed tonight and hopefully i'll be tired enough that I can sleep through the night and then get myself back on a day schedule.

I'll relax tomorrow and then we're gonna have a game night again, should be fun- well except they want to play Monopoly and I hate monopoly- they claim that since it's electronic it's better- but I highly doubt that. I just don't have a long enough attention span for that game.

Then on Monday guess what I'm doing? I'm going to go for my first snow-machine ride! I'm super excited. One of the other nurses from work is going to take me. He just got a new snow- machine and is real excited to show it off. I'm gonna wear my snow suit and a face mask and my good snow gloves. They say you have to bundle up real good because any exposed skin can get burned. Like freezer burn I guess. :) I'll have to let you all know how it goes.

Today was a super busy day at work. I probably only sat down for like an hour out of my entire 12 hour shift. Overall it was a good week though- some busy days, some medium days and like two slow days. I was pretty tired though- flying on airplanes really takes alot out of me- i am not a good flyer.
I like being a nurse. I look forward to the weeks to come and all the knowledge that I'll soak up. I just want to know everything you know! I want to know all the drugs and common procedures, I want to be able to already have a good idea of what the doctor's gonna order. I know the more I work the more I'll know and then hopefully the more confident I'll become.
I think one of my best parts is seeing my patients get better, since I'm with them for 7 days I really get to see improvement.
I better get going because I need to sleep before the party this afternoon so I'll just give you one of my favorite moments of my week- it happened just today actually. I had this precious little 4 year old boy and he had an IV in which he was getting a really strong antibiotic through. After getting one of the doses of the antibiotic he told me that his IV site was hurting. I was not very happy to hear this at all because it's so hard to get IVs in little kids, I really didn't want to have to take his out and have to restart another. I was in the middle of admitting another kid and dreaded having to worry about his IV.
After I was finished with my admit I checked his IV and sure enough it was read and kinda puffy and it hurt when I touched it- he was really good at explaining to me what hurt- like I said he was precious. Sometimes with strong antibiotics this happens because they irritate the vein and sometimes you can leave them in but then again because they are so strong you really don't want the IV to go bad and have that strong antibiotic leak into the skin so... I took it out. Now I was left with the problem of restarting it.
I talked with mom and the little boy and the both were comfortable with restarting (this also confirmed for me to take the old one out) in fact the little boy seemed rather intrigued by the whole thing but mom had said that they had to hold him down in ER to get the old one in, so I was still rather dreading it- he had some good veins though.
So me and my little nurse friend Tayma brought him into the treatment room, gave him a spider-man sticker and set to work. He was so calm about it, he just held his mom's hand and watched everything we did. Usually kids are screaming by this time. Tayma held his arm and I poked- he didn't even flinch, he just watched, he even smiled when his mom told him something sweet. Sadly the first poke didn't work and neither did the second actually but third time is a charm and we got a really really good blood return and flush on that one. He didn't cry through the whole thing! He was so pleased when he saw his blood (we had to do a blood draw too). He was just the most precious thing ever! We gave him spiderman bandaids with each poke and he was so proud of each of them.
I said maybe he would be a doctor when he grows up because of how interested he was in everything and how brave and calm he was- he said he'd rather be spiderman when he grew up. Tayma said they were pretty similar because they both save people. So I'll be praying for little spiderman that he really does grow up to save people someday.
So many kids here are superheroes- I'm sure of it. God has created them with such life and purpose some of them just forget to take off their ordinary clothes when they become teenagers and utilize their superhero gear. There are so many ODs, and alcohol intoxications, and self-mutlilation cases and suicide attempts out here, with kids so young, it breaks my heart. They forget that God created them to be superheroes.
Little Spiderman, ended my night and my week well.
I love you all. Happy New Year!