Incredible Internship

I am LOVING living in DC! I have the most wonderful job and have met some great people. It is overwhelming to write about the past 8 weeks but since I have a snow day home from work, I am going to try to put this grand adventure into words.

Let's start with the job. Everyday I go to work at Children's National Medical Center as a Child Life Intern. I am finishing up my first rotation right now. I have been on the pulmonary and general medicine inpatient floor for the last 6 weeks. I have an incredible supervisor and I have learned so much about Child Life. Each day I check in with the patients on my floor and assess their needs. I offer to help prepare them for any procedures or treatments they may be receiving and I offer normalizing play and activity for them so that they are still a kid when they leave our hospital. I have met some incredible patients and families and have learned so much about God's sovereignty through seeing people deal with both acute and chronic illness in their children. God has a plan for each of us and he will give us the strength and grace that we need to deal with whatever we are dealt in life.

In the next couple of weeks I will start my second rotation which is in the Interventional Radiology Clinic. We will see both inpatient and outpatient kiddos here. Kids come to receive MRIs, CT scans, X-rays: really anything that they need radiological scans for. I am excited to transition to this unit because I know it will be very different from my first rotation and I know I will learn so much!

Overall, I love going to work today (though I was not mad about being told to stay home today because of the snow!) and I am excited to see what the second half of my internship holds!

I am still thinking that I will return to Texas (Austin or Dallas) after my DC adventure is over at the end of April. I am going to start looking for Child Life jobs in the next few weeks and I will be excited to be closer to home soon.