Thursday, July 17, 2008

Adios AL

A.L. Reaching for my camera
My pal

Farewell to my buddy. When I left, I discharged AL. I can just look and this kid now, and he'll start to laugh. He's been a tough cookie to crack, but he just needed some constant attention, and lots of tickling to make him perk up. Fingers crossed that he doesn't fall through the holes (they are larger than cracks) of the system.

This morning was a bit hairy. I walked in and noticed that my 1 year old malnourished, neglected, HIV kiddo was on a face mask for oxygen. And looks much worse. (his labs reflect it with a white blood count over 30 now, CRP over 240, platelets down to 27). He lungs sound horrible. His sats, on full supplemental oxygen were 68%. Somebody mentioned get an ABG. Why? What are we going to do different w/ those results. This kid is "Not For." I called the Reg to inform her. I really didn't think he'd make it another hour or two. He has these beautiful brown eyes. It's the only expression of personality that he has. He's too weak to make sounds (though he lets out a tiny, tiny cry when he gets blood drawn). He's basically too weak to reach out as well. An hour later he stopped making eye contact, he would barely crack his eyelids when touched. Somehow, though, this kid was still clinging to life when we left this afternoon. I want to be optimistic that, but...

I went for a great run this afternoon. As mentioned before, there is a nature area close by, and I hit out and instead of running the path that cuts through two big hills/slopes, I took the path that went up one of them. My plan was to see the surrounding area, and wait to the last minute possible to see the start of the sunset, then high-tail it out so I made it out of the park on time. I have a nice wipe out headed up hill, added a nice right next to where I gashed my leg while running a trail a 2 months ago. Of course, in my self-conscious nature I looked around to see if anybody had witnessed this, and sure enough, there were a few people down in the valley who must have seen, cause they were staring at me. I waved and kept going.

I'm looking forward to my day off on Saturday!