I am currently kickin it in nawlins. This pristine plot of earth just so happens to be my birthplace. My hood, if you will.
Good ole NOLA—home of huge ass beers, drive through daquiri stands, and the saints. Strip clubs, casinos, and bars abound. The inhabitants are no less colorful than their surroundings. Yes, indeed—these are my people.
Driving into the city yesterday, as we were passing the dome for the umpteenth time in our lives, we found ourselves shocked and awed by the billboard that was facing us...
I’ll let this billboard speak for itself. And I feel that it speaks VOLUMES on behalf of the refined society that is nawlins. WHO DAT!
Gotta rep the 504. Show some love peeps.
So this morning I got up bright and early with Ms. Linda to play take your best-friend-from-high-schools-daughter to work day. I rocked a full set of scrubs and my pink crocs circa freshman year of high school. I was looking fly. Obvi.
We got to work and hit up the cafeteria for some coffee for me and diet coke for Ms Linda, then headed over to the physical therapy department. We sat in the staff lounge for a while, meeting and greeting everyone as they came in. I already knew Lori, Ms. Linda’s sister, and Dayna, their good friend, but there were 5 other girls in the department. Today was Hillary’s birthday, so Ms. Linda baked two fatty cookie cakes for everybody. We busted into those bad boys before shifts started at 8am. I shadowed Ms. Linda around in the morning. We started with a burn victim dressing change at 8. It was a little girl with her entire upper back, shoulders, and neck covered in freshly raw skin. Apparently the mom accidentally spilled a pot of scalding hot water on the girls back when she was doing the little girls braids one day. The mom feels so bad about it that she can’t sit in the room with her daughter while the girl is getting treated.. honestly. Grow a pair. That poor little girl was screaming and crying, asking for her momma, and I was holding her hand. Well, holding her hand and being sweet with her while they were peeling off her old dressing, but then when they were popping blisters and scraping off debris and rubbing on the ointment, I had that poor girl’s wrists on lockdown to repress her highly developed wiggling abilities. Homegirl wiggled out of both of her socks AND her panties by the time we’d finished. And that was with the straps on the table strapping her down too. 45 long minutes later, we had her back in her spongebob dress and with her momma again.
Since it took us so long to do the first patient, Ms. Linda sent her student Caysi to go hang out with their 8:30 patient, Haley. Haley is a sweet little girl who I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with, but she has a sweet pink helmet that she has to wear all the time because a good part of her skull is shattered. At 9, Ms Linda, Caysi, and I went up to NICU to see Ms Linda’s EB babies. EB (Epidermolysis Bullosa) is a skin disease that you’re born with that basically means the babies get blisters whenever they touch anything. Their skin is so fragile and the blisters form pretty much continually--in response to any form of friction. You have to pop the blisters whenever they form so they don't spread. You can only pick the babies up with a fleece blanket, and they can only wear certain diapers and drink out of certain bottles, etc. etc. etc. Poor things.
After the field trip to the NICU we headed back to PT to hang with more kiddies. There were kids all over the place, most notably the little girl projectile vomiting in the corner. The little girl’s name was Duchess. Duchess has a sister and a brother: princess and prince. I kid you not. Duchess is an absolutely gorgeous little girl. She's about eight months old, with a head full of curly curly black hair. She also looks like she’s always giving you the stink eye. It’s very serious business being a duchess, don’t you know. Sweet duchess has respiratory problems and pretty much zero muscular capability in her little arms and legs. I got to spend some quality time with the duchess in the afternoon, which is how I came to know all of this. I also know that she throws a fit if you take her off her oxygen for any small amount of time (we were just switching her from her portable oxygen to her oxygen that’s hooked up to her bed and she started freaking out—huffing and puffing and salivating and snotting. Lovely little thing.) and what her smile looks like (I somehow managed to get a little smirk out of Miss Priss. Thrice, thank you much.). I came to grow quite fond of the duchess. I identify with her regal strife. It’s hard being royalty.
Caysi, Linda, and I had Trinity next. Everybody calls Trinity Tee-Tee. Tee-Tee has spinabifida, autism, and both of her little legs in big casts. Poor baby. We worked on scooting side to side, because she’s about to get a new wheelchair that she will ideally be able to scoot herself onto. She can scoot forwards and backwards, but not so much with the sideways. So it was more of Caysi picking Tee-Tee up and plopping her down a couple inches to her left. Sometimes she’d push Tee-Tee backwards to make her prop herself back up. Sounds mean, but Tee-Tee was loving it. She’d just giggle and whoop and whatever else. Her favorite phrase is “whip it,” which is a command directed towards Ms Linda, instructing her to “whip” someone…which actually translates to clapping twice in the vicinity of the whipping victim. She also loves to crash into things, and yell out “CRASH! BOOM!” She made me laugh.
After Tee-Tee it was time for lunch. During lunch, there was a presentation scheduled about wheelchairs and the adjustments that are being made in the production of wheelchairs in this economy. Although this may sound less than riveting at face value, the speaker brought 10 boxes of pizza, 2 things of salad, and 2 liter bottles of coke products with him. Chat away! It was de-freaking-licious. Oh and I almost forgot! Today was the first Wednesday of the month, which means free ice cream day at the hospital! Ohh my. Don’t mind if I do. They had a couple of options, but I was sold at “salted caramel”. I heard Demi Lovato talking about this deliciousness on It’s On With Alexa Chung last week, and have been dying to try it ever since. It did not disappoint. The salt just brings out the sweet of the caramel...very yin and yang. Def a new favorite flavor.
So after lunch Ms Linda had this little boy Mikey coming in. Mikey is the cutest freaking thing since I don’t know what. I am head over heels in love with this kid. He’s like an old man trapped in a four year old’s body. A beautiful blonde four year old with chipmunk cheeks and the heartiest laugh you’ve ever heard. Everyone loves him, and it’s easy to see why. Mikey had brain surgery a while back, and has had many subsequent brain surgeries that have left one half of his body much weaker than the other half. He rocks this sweet Spiderman shinguard thing, as well as a spidey-esque tape job on his bad hand. So for his PT, we went on a walk through the hospital with the fart machine. It’s his favorite thing to do, and it never gets old for him. He sends someone to walk in front of him with the fart machine hidden in their back pocket, then follows behind with the remote control and just about kills himself laughing every time he presses it. He was seriously falling over on the ground laughing the entire time. It was hysterical. I got the esteemed opportunity of being the farter in his little game, so I walked around the entire first floor getting dirty looks all the while. Then after I ran around the lobby with it for a little while, Mikey’s grandma, Gigi, took over. The woman deserves a freaking academy award. She was running around acting a fool, and had a couple of women straight up stop in their tracks to make sure she was alright. She’s a g. By the time we got back to PT, Mikey was pretty tired, but he wanted to wrestle with Ms Linda so we went and sat on the mats. Mikey is only allowed to fight with his bad hand, and is required to stand when fighting. It was cute when I was watching him attack Ms Linda, but then they sicked him on me. Mikey came running at me, full speed, then collapsed on me but not before he stuck out his bad hand to jab it straight into my neck. He proceeded to slam that little gimp hand of his into my neck again and again until his time was up. Mikey don’t play.
After Mikey, Ms Linda took me up to the sixth floor so I could shadow a nurse. I was shadowing a girl named Sam, who reminded me so much of my cousin Aimee. She was so funny. We didn’t have too much to do, because it was already 2 and so it was pretty much paperwork til the night shift started up, so she invited me to come back and shadow her tomorrow morning. I sat around with all the other nurses, and when Sam told them that I was thinking about being a nurse they all responded, “Run while you can! There’s still time! Don’t look back!!” One guy was in his last year of nursing school and kept asking me all these questions about school and where I want to do nursing school and what type of program I want to do and all this… I have no freaking clue. I’m just seeing if this is what I want to do! Thus far things are looking up. I can def see myself being a nurse. But I just don’t know.
I got to play with Duchess and another sweet baby girl, Madison, while Sam worked on paperwork and dealt with some lab drama. A resident came up to me and asked if I knew where something was. Ha! Go me. Apparently I look totally professional. Oh PS it’s July 1. July 1 is the first day of residency, which means the worst time to be in a hospital. Stay away people!
Other highlights of the day included meeting Nicholas, a boy who is a celeb in the hospital. He pretty much lives at the hospital; he gets dialysis 3 times a week. At the hospital or not, though, this kid calls up every department in the hospital from his pink iPhone all day, every day. He has Ms Linda’s cell phone number, and apparently they chat all the time. Nicholas is hysterical. He thinks that Ms Linda is a “winner winner chicken dinner” and that Ms Lori is a “looooser”. I was awarded the title of a “little winner” because I am Ms Linda’s friend. Go me. His favorite color is pink, he loves Deal or No Deal, and had a bingo birthday party for his 20th birthday this past year. Also I got to wear a nametag. How very official. And the final highlight of my day was a delicious cheap Mexican feast for dinner. I had fajitas and so much queso. Mmmmm.
Okay I am freaking exhausted.
Laissez les bon temps roulez.
peace love and salted caramel ice cream.
