Monday night/Tuesday morning 10/8-10/9

So instead of going to bed when they shut off the generator I decided to go to the recovery room and sit with Sonel for the first night after his surgery, so that if he woke up he would see a familiar face. When I got down there I was surprised at the amount of activity that was still going on at 1030 at night. Kim, the overnight nurse, was busy taking vitals and getting all the manual machines set up so that the boys could cut the power and the interpreters were chatting at who knows what, because I don’t speak Creole. So I set up my computer to begin burning CD’s for Elveus and talked with Daniel about Sonel and what all went on during his procedure. At about 1230 two of the interpreters left and it was just Kim, Henwing (the interpreter), 4 patients (and family), and myself until the am arrived. It is really amazing how much needs to be done in the middle of the night for people that are recovering from operations, I mean, Kim was bouncing from bed to bed for the majority of the night, I just kind of observed and consoled the patients and family member(s) when they did not understand what was happening. At about 2 Sonel woke up and was really confused and his dad was in the next room sleeping so mine was the only familiar face that he saw. He got himself so worked up that he began to vomit and have diarrhea. Once we cleaned him up, I talked and played with him until about 3, which is about when he calmed down and we gave him some medicine and he was out like a light. The other patients in the room consisted of an 11 yr old that had reconstructive knee surgery that is getting pretty good on her crutches and young women who in February had a colostomy done because a bull mauled her in the behind and today she had the colostomy reversed. She is having a difficult time recovering; the third person is the lady who came in for the emergency c-section and gave birth to a healthy 6 fingered baby girl. In the outside recovery room is a family with several burn victims, and an old gentleman who broke his leg and was in a great deal of pain and about 4 Kim had to put a catheter in because his leg was in too much pain to sit up. This was lengthy process because the first catheter did not fit due to the fact that his prostate was enflamed, so she had to try a second type of catheter which worked. At about 445 I met Erin in the courtyard and she, Maureen, and I saw Melissa off because Monday was her last day here for a while. After that it was breakfast time so I went upstairs and mingled with the coffee drinkers.