Rambles of today

Today some pretty amazing things happened.  Yesterday and today I was asked to help in Admissions as an admissions nurse.  This is an interesting job that has many good things and some challenging things with it.  The patients arrive in the morning.  One by one they come to the 3 nurses in the tent (think MASH T.V show kind of tent) and we go through the paperwork, vitals, history, and draw labs.   Usually I just appear for the last step in the process to draw blood for lab work.  Hearing the stories of travel to the ship, life, and what happened to bring them to us is my favorite part.  Today the translator kept asking me to keep writing but I was distracted listening to the stories.  I could write a book about the people I met today.  One little boy was 8 years old and loves to study English in school.  However, after much proding he admitted that he likes football (soccer) more than school.  Of course I pulled out my football stickers and told him that I did too and that made him laugh. There was also a little girl named Naomi.  Her story made me cry and soon I will share it will you, but not in this happy blog.  Naomi is an energetic happy 4 year old.  She reminds me of my neice Peyton and is very very smart.    It has to be scary to come to the ship.  It is a giant white ship full of crazy people.  People here spend quite a bit of time out of doors and the hospital is on Deck 3 with no windows.  It feels closed in.  Tonight I went into the hospital to see Naomi and draw labs from a few new patients and enjoyed looking around and seeing familiar faces.  Usually people don't want to see me coming since it is mostly for blood draws.
Ok on to the rest of the day.  A patient was in surgery and needed a lot of blood today.  While trying to help admissions I was paged back on to the ship several times to draw pints of blood from donors to give to the patient in surgery.  We gave 3 units and when she needed one more I donated my blood to her.  All of us have been screened and cross matched to the patient, but needing 4 is pretty rare.  There is something about giving your own blood to save someone that connects you to that person.
At the end of my day I went to one of the hospital wards and played with balloons and laughed with some of the kids.  It was a good end to a very long and exhausting work day.  Thanks for letting me ramble on and on, and I hope that you all are well.