Rough night....all the way around

Tonight was quite the night. It is 9:46 PM and I am absolutely exhausted.

Chelsie's first patient tonight was none other than..her aunt Sharon. On Saturday night, aunt Sharon all of a sudden got very sick, and on Sunday, discretion was the better part of valor and she went to the hospital. As we were going down to OSU anyway, I took Truth and Larry down to see her. Truth missed her mom and her mom missed her - it was a happy reunion. Chelsie and I went to Dodd Hall after we dropped them off.

Sharon is pretty sick. All of her anti rejection drugs leave her immune system very compromised, so she is susceptible once she gets sick. As a transplant patient (2 kidney, 1 Pancreas) she requires a little different care, so she is in the transplant unit at OSU. After seeing her tonight, she is where she needs to be.

We had a good night at Dodd tonight. There were a lot of patients, and a lot of them wanted us to stop in and see them. The last room of the night was the roughest one. I walked in there, and this lady said "Bring this baby in here!" So I did, and the patient was getting up to get out of bed. She took one look at Chelsie and got down on the floor with her and started crying. I looked up in a panic and asked if I should leave - the lady said no, no. I got down on the floor with her and she laid down and let this lady pet her. THEN, I looked up and the nurse was bawling - apparently her dog passed yesterday, so of course, she was upset. I can't blame her - I was upset because both of them were crying. Thankfully, it was the last room of the night.

She did such great work tonight - we met all kinds of interesting people. The first lady we met was nice lady - of Japanese descent, she told us - who was quite grateful to see Chelsie. We probably met the funniest patient in our time tonight. His family had made his room "Margaritaville" but as the patient said, without the margaritas. They were all very nice, and very much enjoyed our visit.

Another patient that was memorable was an African American man and his wife. I am never sure how African Americans will react to Chelsie - I find they are most consistently afraid of dogs, so I try to be respectful of that. But this man and his wife were not. This guy had very obviously had a stroke, but worked very hard to enunciate his words, and most of the time I was able to understand him. They had a pit bull at home named Kane, who was a big baby. They said that if someone came in the house, he would be like "come on in!" I said they must be related to Chelsie - I am pretty sure she would be like "come on in, sit down, my mom said it is OK". We spent about 15 min with them and they were nice people.

On another note, today Chelsie was NOT A GOOD PUPPY at home. She went dumpster diving - and in the dumpster were corn shucks, corn cobs and carrot peelings. You can imagine the mess, and she knew she was bad. Mommy still loves her. :)

Hope this finds everyone well. I need to go pass out.