The nursing session has come to a close. I have mixed feelings about this session. Overall things went well. I was amazed at the endless supply of energy these nurses had. Not only did they have a jam packed schedule, but they were constantly singing and dancing through out their jam packed schedule. It was funny to see the locals react to their energy. I never saw any negative reactions, just a few “I don’t know that is happening “ faces.
Despite everything, they were endlessly
compassionate to whoever it was they were caring for-whether it be to the
resident in the colonies or the students at the medical clinic on campus. I am
confident they will be incredible nurses wherever they practice.
As coordinators we decided to have another cake made for
them. We pushed the envelope by requesting it say Nandri (thank you) BYU
Nurses. Even though we wrote it down, we were taking bets of what it would
actually come back as. Most of us were banking on it saying Nandri BYE Nurses.
But alas, it came back Nandri byu Nursess. On the bright side, I think it is
safe to say that our communication with the bakery is slowly but surely getting
better.
The plan was to give thank you notes to each of the nurses
and reveal their cake after our last dinner together—but there was some
excitement that arouse that greatly diverted our little going away party. It
still happened, I just didn’t really participate which was fine because there
were more important matters at hand. Thursdays are apparently fish night and we
had a nursing student (JesHi) that is deathly allergic to fish. She stayed away
from the fish itself but unknown to us there was chunks of fish in the curry.
She didn’t eat any chunks of fish in the curry either, but her allergy is
intense enough to have even the presence of fish juices start to cause a
reaction. She recognized the signs immediately and then she and I went down
stairs to get her some Benadryl and get her the epi pens out just in case. Her
professor (who is a NP) came down and we called the campus medical team, which
consisted of a doctor, PA and nurse, so needless to say JessHi (yes it was her)
was more then covered. She was given some steroids and that along with the
other meds worked well for the time being but there was huge concern about how
her body would react over the next 48 hours/when the medicines wore off. There
was point when she was advised to go directly home and forgo her excursion to
Delhi, both from the Indian medical staff and her professor, but she very
adamantly declined the options and relinquished all concerned parties from
being responsible for her care. The only really hard thing about that was that
with basically no connection to the outside world, we would have no way of
knowing if something more came of all this while she was flying or in Delhi,
etc. Ironically, one of my coordinators was standing over my bed and waking me
up at quarter to five in the morning a few days later saying that Dr. Susan
(The executive director) was on the phone and that it was an emergency. Luckily
that emergency had nothing to do with JesHi and it turns out that she was just
fine for the remainder of her trip but my first thought was Oh crap,
JesHi!!
One of the
most interesting things about that whole situation was the spiritual aspect of
it. While campus is not affiliated with one specific religion, it is a melting
pot of spirituality sprinkled with deities. We have everything from Catholics
to Mormons to Seventh Day Adventist to Hinduism, to Islam to Agnostics to what
I am sure are a few more religions I haven’t been made aware of yet. I
absolutely love it. I love learning about the different ways people strive to
better themselves. While we were taking care of JesHi, she was petitioning for
prayers on her behalf. Dr. Susan (who is a very religious person) offered a
separate vocalized prayer to/for JesHi, who also received a priesthood blessing
as well. It was all pretty powerful, and obviously some/all/at least one of the
God’s prayed to had JesHi’s back because she never went into full anaphylaxis,
which with a previous history of doing so is pretty freaking amazing. J
