crazy week

Ok, this week has been rather insane at work and so I would like to tell the world. It's been an exciting week at work. Now since I work at a children's clinic excitement would be a bad thing. A very, very bad thing

Monday: The morning was packed, every available appointment was taken. Dr. Chris however, never turns down a sick child. So at the beginning of our lunch we saw a three week old baby that was sick. Brett, the nurse's assistent, went to check the baby in. He noticed that the baby had turned grey and was barely moving. He got the nurse. That baby's oxygen was at 64! (For those of you who don't know, brian damage can happen when it get's as low as 90.) So they put the baby on oxygen, discovered it had RSV (same aweful thing I had last couple of weeks, very dangerous in kids that young) and called an ambulance to take the baby boy to the Children's Hospital in Denver. As soon as they left we had a head injury on an eleven year old boy come in. He had somehow managed to smack himself in the head with a shovel. How he accomplished this I can only guess. The mom said his eye dialated but it fortunately wasn't as seirous as she thought. Then we got a call that the ambulance with that baby had turned around before it got to Denver, which means that something went majorly wrong. We were all worried and praying because we thought that the baby was going to die.

Tuesday: Also very full. We found out that the baby lived and that after bringing it back to our hospital to stableize it they finally took it to the hospital in Denver. It's now in ICU (intensive care unit) on a ventelator (breathing machine) they don't yet know when that baby will be out. If you think of it pray for that family, for that little baby to get all the way better, they are new parents and probably quite freaked out, and ventelators are very expensive. About lunch today we had another injury walk in. A seven year old boy slipped on the ice, cracked his nose and punctured his lip. Yikes, there was a good bit of blood so we moved things around to get him in right away.

Wednesday: We saw 29 people in five hours. I was at work from 8h - 19h. It was crazyness and insanity times five. RSV, flu, and a nasty little stomach bug, have hit Summit pretty hard this year. RSV is more contageous than the flu if that gives you any idea. Half the church has had it this month. The first hour we were open we had to see eight people in an hour. (We only have four rooms so four people in an hour is considered busy, but Chris never turns down a sick kid.) The first three kids who came in all tested positve for RSV (extra nasty chest cold and a few other yucky symtoms), one we sent to the hospital and the other two got brething treatments and oxygen. All this respitory stuff is made much worse for the little kids when you throw in the fact that we are at 9,000 feet above sea level and there's less oxygen in the air so more kids require oxygen when they get sick.

Usually I work to the sounds of angry/hurt screams in the background of kids who do NOT want to get shots. Having grown up in a daycare my mom ran I'm pretty good at consentrating with a high noise level. This week the background noise at the clinic has been totally different. It's much quieter. The children don't feel well enough to scream at the sight of the doctor. It's all the most pitiful noises children can make. Weak, half-hearted crying, coughing, wet coughing, dry coughing, very weak coughing, and a lot of bad wheezing. It makes me want to cry.