A chilly episode

Today was an interesting day. After all of our wonderful experiences with the staff at St. Joe East, we had a couple of rough moments. When Rachel went to visit Christopher this afternoon, she reached in and noticed that he was really cold. When she asked the nurses about it, they discovered that whoever was supposed to take care of him had neglected to move his temperature sensor from his front to his back when they turned him over. With the sensor now resting on the heated bed, it kept reading warmer and warmer, so the bed heated up less and less. This probably wouldn't have amounted to anything major, but a premature baby's system is pretty delicate and doesn't take well to having its temperature jacked around.

Then we had a short visit with him at around 5 before I had to leave to go back to work for a little while. Rachel went back up to tell Christopher good-bye, but ended up staying for over an hour to watch the "nursing students" give Christopher his care. Now, I understand that medical students of any kind need to learn like the rest of us, but it's not very confidence-inspiring when they are forgetting basic sanitary precautions ON YOUR BABY! They kept wiping his eyes with the same piece of gauze (you're supposed to use a different piece each time to prevent infection), then they jammed this thermometer up into his little armpit too hard (glad this wasn't a rectal one!) and finally one girl stood there twisting his head around for a few minutes before calling for help because she couldn't figure out how to TURN HIM OVER. So, what exactly were these students doing in the NICU? Were they accounting majors placed there by mistake? I was proud of Rachel - she said she calmly stood there and corrected each student as they cleaned his eyes, checked his temperature, etc. I'm glad I wasn't there =).

Thanks for letting me vent. I don't want to be a crazy overprotective parent, but it's an easy thing to do when your kid already has so many things to deal with already.

I think a bit of my current frustration and stress level is starting to come through in this blog post. Things are very busy at work, and I feel like I should be spending about 60 hours a week there. It's funny how your whole life you're told by very wise and well-meaning people, "don't take work home with you...just leave work at work." I know that's what I'm supposed to be doing, but I can't help but think that the people who say that about work must not care very much about it, or are much better about "switching gears" than I will ever be. =)

Sorry no post for awhile, but I know a short post is better than none at all.

--Andy