Really, except for a few things which cannot be helped (ok, minus one when I just wouldn’t have liked her under any circumstance) One in 4 months. I truly love nurses. All shapes, sizes and gender.
A nurse friend in Chicago area says that Moms of sick kids are crazy. I can see that. I am quickly approaching crazy. I was already pretty close before all this happened. You go crazy when your kid is crazy. Your kid is crazy because he/she is trapped in a room with his mother for days at a time with no light. Only the promise that someone may come to visit for an hour or two and they get bored and return to their lives and high-tail the fuck out ASAP. And you both look at the heavy, closing door and sigh. W669ell, See ya next week, maybe? If you have time? Cause I might die? Door slams shut. Another door slams shut with security. Not a psych ward, a cancer ward. You and me, kid. He is my responsibility and any help I get is gravy. That’s really the bottom line. We are far away from anyone who loves us.
I love gravy.
I know people cannot totally shut down their lives for us. People have husbands and homes and lives and other sick people and church and work and marriages and children and LIFE. I want everyone to live their lives, but I am jealous and guilty for being jealous. I almost get ANGRY when I see healthy children with parents on facebook ( my only link to the outside world) who are complaining they are bored at the water park.
Back to nurses. My link other than Fb because my phone is broken. My interaction. The ones who make sure everything is ok and if it isn’t they make it ok and they may think I am a crazy mom, but I doubt it because I strip the bed and clean up the pee and sterilize the room and give him his meds and bathe him and sterilize his mouth and soup him up every day. I don’t ask for a lot of help. Only if the beeper is beeping cause I can’t stop that.
I wrote this because we have so many nurses here. We rarely have the same one twice. We have more male nurses than I would have expected. They are the BEST at night. Every one of the males are super quiet. They don’t chit chat, they have that tunnel vision personality I have seen in most males: fix it. Don’t talk about it. Fix it.
Night nurses have to have a watch. If ya don’t have a watch, go home. I know they get paid the same but they get super extra points if they get in here before the beeping.
They get super extra points if they think Ashton is remotely amusing. I am not that Mom who thinks her kid is perfect. I do not fawn over him because he has cancer because I want a semi-normal kid when we get out of here. I respect the nurses and people in general who treat him like any other kid and don’t stare at him and while he drinks his medicine or make sure he swallows one French fry or gives him a present cause he did so. He’s still a regular kid and nurses are regular people and we all have/had outside lives.