Sad days at our house

It has been a sad few days at our house recently.  As you may know I am a home health nurse and I work in the pediatrics department.  I take care of kiddos with major medical needs who may or may not be technology dependent.  This means that they are dependent on a ventilator or oxygen, or some other piece of technology to stay alive.

For the last 6 months I have been working with a young man going to school with him, and spending a lot of time in the summer with him and his family.  We even recently went on a Make-A-Wish trip to Florida and spent 6 days going to Disney World, Universal Studios, and Sea World.  We returned home from this trip a 10 days ago.

3 days later he passed away.  It was a huge shock to all of us.  Though we knew that he had a shortened life span because of his medical problems, no one had any clue that it would be this short.

He had a lovely funeral.  His family had a huge amount of love and support from their family, friends, and neighbors.  I was so glad that they were able to express the joy that he had brought into their lives, and the hope that they will see him again in the afterlife.  Their religious beliefs and faith added to the joy by knowing that he will be restored to a full functioning body.  The ability to walk, and talk, and to do all of those things that he wasn't able to do on this Earth sustained them thru the tears and the pain of laying his mortal body to rest.

As a nurse we are told over and over to not get attached.  We are to do our job with compassion, but we are not to let our feelings interfere.  I have been a nurse for 20+ years, and I can honestly say that I have never figured out where that line is.  The line between being compassionate and caring, but not being overly attached to the patient.  I can honestly say that this had been one of the hardest experiences of my nursing career.

I want to take this opportunity to remind everyone not to leave things unsaid.  Hug your loved ones.  Make that call and apologize to the person you have been meaning to.  Write a letter that you have been putting off.  Take time today, right this minute to do what it is that you have been figuring you will get around to later on.

Remember until next time:

Love the Seher Gals

School Picture Season

Today I was handed a school picture reminder flyer for the kiddo that I go to school with.  It got me thinking about school pictures that I have from my childhood, and my girl's school pictures.

I don't have any pictures to post for them.  I will have to look thru our picture bin and get some scanned into the computer.

I do love school pictures because we give them to our family at Thanksgiving.  It is fun to see the differences in the girls from year to year.  It doesn't seem like they have grown and changed a lot, but when you see last years picture compared to this years picture it really points out the changes.

I have school pictures from when my nieces and nephews were little, and my girls love to see what their older cousins look like when they were similar ages as my girls are now.  I will have to get those pictures out and post some of them to their Facebook pages.

I do love that you can pick from a large variety of backdrop colors and themes, and you can pick a different option for each sheet of pictures.  It can be a little bit overwhelming with all of the choices and then I have to remember what I picked so I the girls don't wear clashing colors on picture day.  

Luckily our school doesn't do school photos this early in the year, so I have another month or so before I have to worry about school pictures.  Plus if we don't like the first set we can always wait for retake day in November.  They even offer Spring pictures, but those won't be in the year book, so we never do them.

We need to do family pictures soon.  Our last set of family pictures was 3 years ago.  I am pretty sure that all of us have changed in the last 3 years.  The girls have gotten lots taller.  So maybe we shouldn't get pictures.  I can pretend that the girls aren't getting older (& taller) if there is no evidence on this on the walls, right?!?

We have had some really fun themes for our pictures.  We did a set where we were all in our jammies and holding our favorite stuffed animal.  We did a set in the local park.  We have had some where we were all dressed up fancy-schmancy in matching dresses.  Not sure what we should do this time.  I don't want out pictures to be boring, as I don't feel like we are a boring kind of family.  I better start looking at Pinterest so I can get some ideas.  Or you can leave a comment if you have any ideas for us. 

Until next time remember:

Love the Seher Gals