Week 9

I've been given a glimpse of God's grace in my life, in the midst of my daily nausea.

When I have to work, my nausea lasts for a few hours, limited to the morning only. When I have a day off, I'm nauseated for most of the day. As I complained to Shan about this, he brought up this concept of being blessed on the days I have to work with less nausea so that I can do my work. It's true and always amazes me the effect of a changed perspective.



This week was a typical week for me at work and I've had a few people ask what that really means. So I'll describe it to you.



I get up almost every morning at 5:30 to exercise and am on the road by 7:30 to be to work by 8. I'll start by saying clearly, that I am not a physician. However, if you've never seen a nurse practitioner in a clinic setting, the best way to think about what I do is to think of me as a physician. I see patients all day long in an urban run down community clinic. Seeing patients all day long means seeing between 18-25 patients for reasons such as: a sore throat, diabetes follow up, numbness in the left arm, HIV, pregnancy, birth control, depression. I don't see children but I see male and female patients aged 13-old age. My two areas of specialty are HIV and pregnancy (together and separately) but I see the above patients in between seeing these two favorite groups. I share an office with another nurse practitioner and a physician. In between patients we chart, visit, run patients by each other in consultation and even have some fun. We are staffed by medical assistants, nurses, front desk staff etc who help with everything from check in, to rooming patients, to vaccinating, to monitoring of babies in pregnant mommies.



I do sit between patients but I rarely relax. The pace is fast with most patients given 15 minutes with me for a full visit. We often double book patients, anticipating some will not show up. But when they all do, all the more chaos as I try to see two patients in a 15 min time slot. Many unexpected events happen such as a woman showing up in labor, an old man having chest pain needing a 911 call and transport to the ER or an angry patient storming out because he was refused narcotics by me.



On top of managing patients in the clinic, I also manage my patients when they're in labor. This means calling in admission orders, managing their labor, catching the baby and evaluating the baby after it's born. Some of this can happen while I'm seeing patients in the clinic and some requires my presence in the hospital. Needless to say when the day holds a delivery and a clinic day, it's quite exhausting. When a delivery happens in the middle of the night, it affects my next day in the clinic as many hours are usually spent in labor management overnight.



That said, it's been an interesting ride this first trimester of doing my job and navigating a new pregnancy. Add the new burden of nausea for most of the morning, constant hunger therafter and fatigue that I've never experienced before, it's a lot to handle. It does remind me of my need: for sleep, for a restful weekend, for help from Shan and for "the peace that passes all understanding" that only come from Jesus (Phil 4:7).



Turns out our baby is the size of a date, has fingers and toes now and no more webbing, is moving it's arms, is gaining in it's immune system and is moving out of the embryotic phase and into the fetus phase.



Grateful for this little nauseating life and still in awe that this is even possible.



shauna