Day Five
I’m not sure when it happened, but somehow, we have a Junior
in College already. As weird as the 2020 and 2021 years were – they were still happening,
and things were still progressing. Madison graduated from High School and
started her freshman year of college. It was interesting trying to navigate the
gauntlet of applying and choosing college, along with being able to figure out how
we were going to pay for it. She chose to stay at home and save that dorm fee,
and she wasn’t sure what her major was going to be. After her first semester,
she joined an internship at one of the local hospitals. She was hesitant at
first, not sure if she would like it or not, and she was still looking at
Forensic Investigations. So I told her to try it, if she hated it she could
quit – the whole point of this is to figure out if she wants to be a nurse or
not.
It took one shift, and we all knew that she would become a
nurse. It took her two shifts before she was absolutely certain. Spring of her sophomore
year she would change her major to something that was much closer to a nursing
degree. Her college doesn’t have a nursing program, but she is in a major that
has an emphasis in careers in the medical field. In the Fall of her Sophomore
year, I started to push her into looking at a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA)
certificate that would allow her to work in her field and start getting experience
and make her more competitive for a nursing program. She thought about and then
the Monday after she finished her Spring College semester, she started a CNA program.
She passed her test and started working in August.
In the middle of all that, she has continued her internship
at the hospital because she finally made her rotation into the NICU, and in the
NICU she spends most of her hours holding and comforting the babies. She
absolutely loves this job and someday she may be right back here as a paid NICU
nurse…or a labor and delivery nurse or something that lets her help the most. This
kid is pretty amazing.
And here is how life circles around and who you are and where
you have been make you ready for where you are right now.
When Madison first started in the hospital, her first
rotation was in Telemetry where she met a nurse that she would work with for
three months. Now a year later, she has been with this nurse again because her
little baby was born early and needed a boost so has spent some time in the
NICU. And because God works in mysterious ways and always has a plan, this sweet
baby that Madison has been comforting for the last few weeks – came with an extra
chromosome. And when Madison would walk in, the nurses there would smile and
ask if she wanted to hold him, especially if he’d had a hard day. Because you
see, a gift that Madison gets from her dad, is a very gentle presence that
babies love and respond to by calming and going to sleep. Having Bradley for a
brother has given her a deep love for all babies who need something more, but definitely
the sweet ones that come with an extra something making them better than
ordinary.
Sometimes it’s not about what he does, but how he does it. Just
by being, Bradley has Blessed the lives of his sisters, sometimes when they were
younger they didn’t see that. But now that they have both reached College, they
now admit that Bradley is a huge factor in how they chose their schools and
why. Trying to finish Bachelor degrees with little to no debt is a prominent reason
to choose to live at home and choose a school close; but financial burdens
aside, being in the life of their brother weighed very heavy as well. I have
always known that he needs these girls in his life, but now I am starting to
realize that they might need him just as much – for at least a little bit
longer.
As for Madison, she has a path and a plan, and everyday she
works to get where she wants to be…helping babies somewhere. And that is an
amazing gift.
31For21 Blog Challenge for Down Syndrome Awareness. There’s something
pretty special about that older sister of his.
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