First Day Volunteering!

Today was my first day volunteering at Saint Luke's. I was really nervous but it went really well. I spent 2 hours in the morning making the mail rounds with Alan, a retired architect who has been married for 64 years to his best friend. Then I ran a few errands - taking charts to admitting, taking baby blankets and caps to the Women's Center, and delivering flowers to a few rooms. Then I was asked to do a scavenger hunt (finding out where different units are in the hospital to learn the layout). The volunteer director set me up with Mary, the volunteer daughter (22) of one of the hospital's docotors. She's volunteered for a few months so she walked with me and helped me find all the places on my list. Then we went to the cafeteria to have a (free) tasty lunch. I finished off my day with putting labels on envelopes. I was there for 5 hours and by the end I was so exhausted from meeting so many new people and walking the hospital at least 10 ten times.

I saw Nathan's hospital partner (Saad) 3 times but I never saw Nathan. I kept waiting for him to sneak up on me.

While I was delivering the baby caps and blankets I was able to get some information about support from the nurses in the unit. I wasn't going to ask and I felt awkward about it, but the mother/baby unit at Saint Luke's is like Fort Knox and I didn't know when I'd get a chance to be up there again. To get there you have to use a special elevator, when you enter it, the intercom turns on and you're asked to state who you are, then you press the floor you want, then you enter a waiting room where you pick up a second phone to call the nurses desk. Then you enter second waiting room that has the nurses station and you can't get past them without reason. I asked Kay (director) if there's ever been a problem and she said no but that it was better to be safe when it came to the babies. I guess that's true but it sure is a big change from our small town hospital back home!

Nathan's aunt Kathy and her husband Bronn came to visit us tonight. They are on a cross-country tour and we were "only" 200 miles out of the way so they stopped in to see us. Of course, tonight it the first night this week Nathan wasn't home at 5:30pm (7:30) so I had to entertain for a little bit until he was ready for us to go and pick him up. Even though I've only met Kathy and Bronn twice, they were so relaxed and the conversation was easy and comfortable until Nathan was ready. We took them to the best BBQ place in Kansas and we had a great meal. Kathy was soothing and easy-going which allowed me to keep up with the conversation (in my tired state) and Bronn had Nathan laughing and joke-telling so that his energy levels rose even after his long shift. It was great to get to know them both better, it felt like we were meeting for the first time and it was a great double-date. I just can't believe we had to come to Kansas to make it happen!