Burned

Today started off as a cloudy, cold Monday(great motivation to get out of bed and get going for the day!!) Mondays are usually crazy busy, which is alright with me. We have a Pediatrician at the clinic on Mondays, so there are usually plenty of screaming kids the whole day.

We started out pretty busy for a couple of hours and then all the busyness and fun came to an end. It started raining and that was the end of our patients for the day. Sad since I'd much rather be busy than just sitting around for a couple of hours.

About an hour before we closed, woman came it who had burned both of her feet(pretty badly) about five days ago. I think she had been cooking? They were easily second or third degree burns. They looked horrible and the patient looked like she was in so much pain. I felt so bad for her.

As I started to clean the wound, and dress it, the patient started to tell me about the care she had received at a local hospital over the past five days and how she had waited for hours and hours each visit. She then went on to tell me about how they pretty much did a half done job for her wound care. Again, it made me sad to hear about the care she had received. I asked her how she ended up at La Fuente. She said that a friend had told her about the clinic and about how good the care was. It's always great to hear how people in the community see La Fuente in a positive way as we strive to give good care and serve the community around us. I'm glad that God has given us the opportunity to give this woman good care, minister to her, and walk with her through this time of difficulty.

The best part is that we will be going to her house every day at least for the next week or so to clean, dress, and look after the wounds. I'm super pumped to visit her and do wound care for many reasons, but one of the top reasons is that I love wounds!! It's just one of my things I've always enjoyed as a nurse(it's close behind Cardiac Nursing). I always enjoyed working with skin grafts, burns, and all other kinds of wounds when I worked in trauma. It's just so cool to see the progression of healing and such. Probably the only wound stuff I don't like is when skin grafts are failing and as a last resort leech therapy comes to the picture. That's one of the things I cant handle...

As I work more and more in the clinic, its been an adjustment getting used to the fact that it's just not as exciting as working in the hospital where I have spent my entire work life up until now, so it was pretty sweet to add some excitement to my life with a cool case and be able to be more directly involved in patient care for a bit.

So....in the end it was a pretty interesting Monday!!