This morning was nice and calm because I got to sleep in a little bit later and actually eat breakfast. I left to head over to Scottish Rite, Children's Hospital around 11. I arrived very early and walked inside the lobby. As I sat at a table by myself, I found myself shaking and very nauseous. I was SO nervous. At first I was scared that I would either go to the wrong place and then I was scared because I had no idea what to expect. Would I have to see something intense? Would I have to see someone die? After psyching myself out, I decided that I needed some water and pretzels to calm myself down. When the time came I started to follow the signs to AFLAC where I was supposed to ask for the RN I was shadowing. I entered the huge double doors, still super nervous, and met the educator (who I gave all my paperwork to) and she introduced me to Caitlin, who I was shadowing. Caitlin is a registered nurse who graduated from TCU. She has been working at Scottish Rite for 7 months about 3 days a week doing 13 or so hour shifts. She was super nice, very informative, and knew what she was doing. She had 3 main patients today two 3 year old boys and one 9 year old girl.
The first 3 year old boy has cancer and was staying there for 5 days receiving chemo. The nine year old girl has cancer in her femur causing her to be on crutches. In fact, today they had to tell her that her leg was not going to be able to make it. Shaylin and her family now have to decide whether to amputate the leg, take out the bone and replace it with a metal rod, or have a surgery called rotationplasty. This is where they cut off the cancerous part of your leg (above the knee) and replace the knee joint with your ankle joint. In order to do so, they place your foot and ankle backwards creating a smaller leg. This allows the child to still have full movement in their leg. Caitlin, the RN, has a family friend who decided to have this procedure when he was diagnosed in middle school and now he plays lacrosse in college. The next three year old boy has been there for 15 days straight receiving chemo, but today we gave him his last two treatments and I got to see him leave. One of the saddest parts was that his parents were somewhere around my age, not married, and they have two kids; Benjamin the three year old with leukemia and the other one only 10 months old.
Overall today was super sad, but also an amazing experience. I learned that I think I have a huge interest in oncology and I definitely want to consider it as a future medical field to pursue. I also learned that I want to start out as an RN because they get to be more involved with their patients and get to know them a lot more.
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