balloon fight anyone?

I am a pediatric nurse. For me, that description is on par with I am a woman, or I am left-handed. I didn't sit down one day and decide to have an insane love for taking care of sick kidlets; I just do. Today, however, was a shift that made me question myself just a little. Nothing drastic, just the kind of questioning that prompts things like, Wouldn't it be cooler if I were ambidextrous?

D Ward is officially a pediatric zone. Up until yesterday, the oldest patient was six. One poor old man ten times that age (literally) spent an uncomfortable night with us after getting his hernia repaired, but I think the noise was too much for him; his smile was pretty wide when he shook my hand and headed out the door this morning. Now that he's gone, our average age is back where it should be, somewhere not even halfway to ten, and the cacophony of sixteen kid and babies all crying or laughing or yelling at once (to say nothing of the mamas) has reached new levels.

Into this melee I waded today, and my fellow nurse, the other one with seven patients on her assignment sheet, wasn't looking too excited. I chalked it up to the hour (seven is entirely too early for enthusiasm in my books) and started off with my morning tasks. Shortly into the shift, she came to me to check a dose of tylenol. Which is when, since this is standard policy for all non-pediatric nurses, I remembered that Andrea doesn't take care of kids. I looked around me at the swirling mass of babies and groaned inwardly. It was going to be a long shift. Especially since one of her patients was The Sick Baby, a little one who came out of surgery yesterday with a hemoglobin of 3.something, and who had a potassium of 1.9 this morning.

So there we were, up to our ears in babies and kids and mamas, all demanding attention, a few needing more of it than we could spare. Blood had to be drawn, dressings had to be changed, tube feeds needed to be given, IV fluids needed to be mixed. And I was the only pediatric nurse in the place.

In the midst of the chaos (controlled, I promise), we ended up working as a pretty awesome team. We had not one but two charge nurses today, since the usual charge, Red, was training one of our other ICU nurses, Sarah. And Andrea, it turns out, is a rock star, who refused to be overwhelmed by it all. We found veins on babies that didn't have any veins. We mixed antibiotics in mugs of tea for little boys to gulp down. The lab ran blood tests for us with only a drop in the tube. We tag-teamed on medications, wound care and discharges, but by the end of the shift we were all exhausted. I felt lost, because like I said, taking care of kids is what I do. It's what gets me up in the morning, and I've always loved it. It turns out it's not so easy when what feels like five hundred mamas have come to you for une couche (a diaper), when the baby in the corner really isn't looking too good, when your normally cheerful patient just turned into a screaming lunatic and when you're five steps behind while the next shift is walking through the door.

I was standing in the space between beds eleven and twelve when I found myself again. On either side of me were little brown boys playing with long blue balloons. They had the same surgery a few days ago, and they spend their days chattering back and forth, shooting each other with lego guns and generally carrying on like any five year-old boys would. I had just finished emptying one of their catheters, and I straightened up and headed back to the desk. I'm not sure whether they planned it or not, but just as I turned to go, little Bligoni and Edoh both launched a full assault on me with their balloons.

I stood there between their beds, a five year-old boy on either side of me, beating me with a long blue balloon, and I burst out laughing. I got Andrea's attention and she started laughing. Bligoni and Edoh were already hysterical, and it wasn't long before their mamas joined in. When I was able to compose myself, I leaned down to whisper a secret in my patient's ear. Edoh, je t'aime. I love you.

He responded by planting a huge, wet kiss on my cheek and bashing me in the head with his balloon once more for good measure. Which, at the end of the day, is why I love being a pediatric nurse.