Plodding On in Nursing School

It goes without saying that Annika's health concerns have necessitated some adaptation for our family.  It's a little bit like raising an infant again, but at high speed.  This first week at home, Annie's gone from needing help with every step to needing reminders to keep both feet on the ground because she wants to dance.  Her progress is joyful, but our lives are still changed.  It will be a LONG while before we feel comfortable leaving her alone unattended.

As much as I love my job as a newborn hearing screener, I've decided to put it on pause in order to be more available for Annika.  I initially thought I would pause nursing school as well, but after some consideration my plan is to plod on through this semester to stay with my cohort.  I'll then have the summer off.  Due to some online classes, the amount of time I have to be on campus is limited--primarily Tuesday and some Friday mornings.  Here's an empassioned letter that I sent to our Program Coordinator explaining my experience and reasoning.  It was written in the height of this trauma, so please read with compassion:

Dear _____,

My name is Kara Wheeler and I just completed my first semester in SLCC's nursing program. I believe that ____ may have reached out to you to explain how my nine-year-old daughter unexpectedly went into cardiac arrest on December 23rd and was life flighted to Primary Children's where we are currently in the CICU. She was on ECMO for four terrifying days, but is fortunately off and even had her breathing tube removed last night. Even so, I think this is going to be a challenging journey for her and our family.

As Annika becomes more stable, my feelings about nursing are clarifying. I can't express the amount of gratitude and respect I feel for the healthcare workers that brought my little girl back. Her survival is literally nothing short of a miracle. Well over 100 people are working together to provide her with the most outstanding care. In this Cardiac Care unit, I feel like I am witnessing the Gold Standard in terms of coordination and communication between physicians, surgeons, nurses, respiratory therapists, occupational therapists, pharmacy, care techs, and so many others. Each time I listen to them give report I think, wow, I wish I knew my stuff like that. And truly, they KNOW their stuff.

I know lots more stuff now too. Pharmacology has become a real life tutorial of Milrinone, amiodarone, DIlaudid, Versed, Lasix, Mg+ K+ and Ca+ drips, epinephrine, Lovenox, lactated ringers, blood products, platelets, and so many more. I'm now aware of far more than just foleys and IVs, She's been intubated, had an IJ, an Andersen, not to mention the enormous venous and arterial cannulas pumping her blood outside her body and back in. The surgeon walked by and said, "Wow, that's a lot of tubes!" She still has all her IV sites (we've downsized from two brains to one), the arterial blood gas site, a PICC line, an NG tube, pulse oximetry, and a nasal cannula. She's been to cath lab for an atrial septostomy, had an MRI, done genetic testing, gotten daily xrays, EKGs, and more. In other words, I've learned a lot.

On the harder side, I've learned things I never wanted to know. I never wanted to know what it feels like to run into an ER and have security waiting to open the door where you find your child laid out on the table and coding. While the precision of resuscitation may be impressive with the regular rotation between compressions and shocks, when it's your own child coding there is nothing more horrific. Yet the worst part is not watching the horror continue, but the indescribable fear that they will call it and stop. I know what it's like to stand on a LifeFlight helipad and be encouraged to kiss your daughter goodbye, even though the hospital is just a seven-minute drive up the street. Multiple times I've watched my daughter's room be turned into an OR, pacing outside and scarcely able to breathe.

So when a mother's agonizing wail followed a Code Blue for the room across the hall, I understood. True empathy, while precious, comes with a terrible price.

Oh my, my apologies. I never intended for this missive to become so heavy. This is the first time I have written about our experience so far, and obviously there were some feelings I needed to let out.

Long story short, I still want to become a nurse. 

I then proceeded to ask for some accommodations related to this semester's clinicals which were promptly denied.  Can I just say, institutions suck at prioritizing the individual over policy?  Anyway, I decided that since there are only four clinicals this semester, it wasn't that big of a deal and I can still manage.  So, at the moment I'm still in school.  My first day of class was Tuesday.  While it was hard to leave Annie and I would have preferred to be at her feeding appointment, I also felt like I was in the right place to learn the things I need to know.  The first four weeks of class are focused on cardiovascular, and there is so much I long to understand and fix.