Book of Nurses: Tamara.

Tamara works in the Emergency Department at Caloundra Hospital on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. I never wanted to be a nurse. I always wanted to be a mother. When my waters broke, I was ready. My bag was packed. My carefully crafted Birth Plan laid out all the options. Only, it hadn’t taken death into account. Death of my dreams, my hopes, my very definition of “mother”, and most of all the death of my son’s independence…. the birth of his disability. After life was carefully coaxed back into his heart, his lungs, his brain, his cells, we sat down with the paediatrician. The special care unit had become: for me, a milking factory; for my husband, a place of firsts. First cuddle, first feed down a nasogastric tube, first bath, first place of hope that our son’s death/life beginning might carry no cost. Neither of us will forget the paediatrician. He will forever be the man who was supposed to tell us what the hell had happened and what the future would hold. The span of many years allows me to hope he was merely incapable of brutal honesty. As we grasped at the straws he offered, he suddenly paused – brightened – and invited us to listen to the cricket scores on the radio in the background. During the ensuing years I became many things: therapist, disability advocate, centrelink paperwork expert, equipment manager and “CP Parent” (parent of a child with cerebral palsy). When Christopher was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 5, we learned...
Source: impactEDnurse - Category: Nurses Authors: Tags: ectopics Source Type: blogs