Hurricanes, Hot flashes and feather pillows

My duty!!

2011-10-31T04:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the Rooster and I went on a cruise in May. During that cruise, Osama Bin Laden was eliminated. Just got back from a cruise with my youngest, and during our vacation, Ghadaffi was dragged from a sewer pipe and killed by his own people. Want to get rid of a tyrant? How about the perfect weapon against a terrorist? No coup needed to make a dictator/despot disappear!!! Just send me on a cruise!! I am more than willing to volunteer for this service, for as long as it is needed. Apparently it takes about 5 months to get things into place for this to happen, and that gives me plenty of time to plan time off from work, but if we find that it can be planned with an accelerated timeframe, I can manage. I will even be willing to go on the very same cruise repeatedly, if that is necessary for the recipe, but we might try new cruise destinations to see if we can combine ridding the world of evil, AND installing a stable government in a week's time! Who knows? Could work.....we won't know until we try. And I believe I have the stamina to keep at it until we perfect the mission and achieve world peace! Who's next? Iran's Amwhateverhisnameis, some of them in South Africa? Pick one, I can be ready to go with about a week's notice. AND if my bosses find out how important my mission is, they are very supportive of service to our country, and I would probably need less and less notice!
I don't need any medals, or promotions in rank, am happy to serve, just call, I will answer!

WOW, I'm old!!!

2011-09-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the kid and I are going on a cruise in Oct. Invited him so I'd have an excuse to go again. My birthday present to me, and to him, since I contributed to the cruise fund he's accumulating for his birthday. He asked friends to do the same, don't know how many did.
Anyway, we have chosen excursions in Freeport and Nassau. The one in Freeport is a 12 mile bike tour of the island. I have always loved bike riding, hate running. But it's been many years since I was on a bike, and I've been wanting to get a bike for the campground....follow the thread, here. Yesterday, I bought a mountain bike with 21 gears. Never liked gears, cuz they were so hard for me to coordinate in the shift. Now, technology has gotten so that it is very much like having an automatic. Idiot proof adjustments on the seat, got my fatbutt a GEL seat (OHMYGOODNESS), a sexy cobalt blue bike helmet, and lockitup stuff. Got out this morning, stretched a moment, and started out after replacing chain that wasn't on the sprocket thingy. Before I even got around the corner, (maybe 100 yds) My shins were screaming, my butt was saying NOT ENOUGH GEL!!!, and my back was saying HANDLE BARS ARE TOO LOW!!!! But, I pressed on, no pain, no gain, right? Sides, can't let testosterone win, right? Oh, yes, I'm being so realistic since he's been riding a bike everywhere for at least the last two years. And he just turned 27 to my almost 59. It WILL be 59 when we do the island ride. Okay, so I AM the MEGACOOL Mom, so I gotta get this right!! I SO hope Freeport is as flat as I remember.

AHHHHH.....

2011-09-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

60 degrees. What a relief. On our bodies and our paychecks.
I LOVE summer. I think I have what is known as "Seasonal Affective Disorder". If we get too many days in a row of rainy, gloomy weather, I go into a terrible funk. A deficiency of vitamin D, my body doesn't absorb it correctly. Recently diagnosed as hypothyroid, and severely vitamin D deficient, I am now taking supplements that have given me my life back. More energy, less depression, less aches and pains, less chronic constipation (TMI?),improved memory (Had to come back and add that.....not quite there,yet), such a simple fix for deteriorating quality of life. It does explain, tho, one reason why I love summer so. That vitamin D on my face and body literally made me better. Our bodies' functionality is such a wondermous thing. I have not stopped learning, hope I never do. If I do, it is definitely time to quit doing what I do for a living.There is nothing like personal experince to bring home things you think you know. I have learned NEVER to say to my patients that I KNOW how they feel, and to squelch that thought in my peabrain that they SHOULDN'T feel a certain way about anything. Everyone's reality is just that, THEIR reality. No less real because it doesn't mirror mine.
Sometimes I have to care for patients whose reality has slipped even their usual criteria. That doesn't alter the fact that, for them, even tho temporary (hopefully), it is their reality. They teach us in school to reorient patients to reality. What if their reality sucks? What if it is gonna suck until we rebalance their chemistry? Why keep showing them that their reality sucks? If they are seeing little kids in the corner playing and giggling and have a smile on their faces watching this, why should I cruelly show them that their hospital room is mostly barren of giggles? Now, if they are seeing spiders on the ceiling, or hearing plots to murder them, yes I will, as quickly as possible try to pull them from their living hell. Before you tell someone that the person they are talking to doesn't exist, find out first if that person is friend or foe. If that person is their safe place to be, don't steal that away. When the chemicals balance, their reality will as well. "Orient them to reality" BOHOCKEY!!
My reality now is improved quality of life, hummingbird feeder outside the front porch, fallen tree from Lee just missing my rv roof by mere inches, a husband I wouldn't trade for anything in the whole wide world, kids I am so proud of I could bust, a living Momma (kinda like her that way, she's 86), a brother who I love dearly in spite of our differences, a steady and secure job I love, vehicles that run just fine, work family that is every bit as important to me as my blood family,and too many other blessings to count. "They" say you should list your blessings every day in a devotional of gratitude. I see the value in that.

Who'da thunk it?

2011-05-14T16:29:00.000-07:00

Never in a million years would I have believed our very first cruise to be as momentous and memorable an occasion as it turned out to be. I expected to have a great time, anyone and everyone we talked to about 'cruisin told us it is a complete blast.
We got to Cocoa Beach the night before so there would be no jitters about making the ship in time. The Comfort Suites we stayed in was a bit pricier than we were used to, but when we got there, we understood why. It was a block from the beach, looked fairly newly renovated. Smelled a bit musty, but not badly enough to trigger sinus issues or keep us awake. Can't imagine how hard it is to keep places like that from smelling musty. Had a bed, no signs of unwanted critters, away from the street noise, and that suited us just fine.
It also had free parking for the duration of the cruise, and a shuttle to the ship before and back to the motel after. Who knows how much that may have saved us? Will have to check into it.
In the shuttle on the way to the ship, we got a close up look at the Disney cruise ship. It's a monster. Was glad we weren't on it, tho. We have gotten old and crotchety enough that we time our vacays around avoiding things like spring breaks and school's out times. We found out we had chosen well, when all was said and done.
Carnival cruises has the boarding procedures down to a science, the only agony we felt was our excitement and time seeming to crawl at that point. We boarded about 3 hours before departure time and about an hour before room ready time. We went to the Lido deck first to find a good spot to watch our departure, and found a couple of deck chairs at the fantail (aft to the purists) and promptly laid claim. Of course, it was only moments before the "drink of the day" was waved under our noses (at $7.50 a pop)in a souvenir glass that would provide a 75 cent discount if we used it for refills. Hey, 75 cents is 75 cents, especially when it is times.....uh....nevermind. With that, it felt a lot like our cruise was officially underway. We were in the same general pier area as the Disney ship and the Freedom of the Seas. We departed first, saw 4 dolphins and a huge turtle on the way out, a windsurfer and several rich people in their seatoys wishing us Bon Voyage. Waving wildly and grinning hugely, we were off.
We had to leave the deck chairs we had dibbs'd to participate in the safety demonstration. When that bit of wisdom was imparted, we scurried back to our chairs to lay in the sun, sip our drinks and wonder at the very idea that we would ever be doing something like this! It wasn't very long before the land disappeared and we were surrounded by water. I had done 6 years in the Navy, but thankfully, got out a mere 6 months before they started putting women back on the ships. No, I don't feel guilty for not being a seagoing sailor. The majority of guys you ask would have told you they enjoyed aspects of their deployments, but wouldn't ask for it, if offered. I am a water baby, love the water, and don't have to be in it to feel nurtured by it. I can't imagine living anywhere away from a beach, even tho we rarely go to the beach. The tranquility I feel when watching and hearing the water moving is sanity saving for me.
The Rooster has always enjoyed fishing and such, but with a healthy, bordering on unhealthy respect for the water. He has since mellowed and grown to be as much a water baby as I. We were concerned about his propensity for seasickness, but I felt the ships movement more often than he did, and it was mostly when we were on the upper decks. Otherwise, it was just a self contained floating casino, mini shopping mall, food court, row of bars, and hotel. Service was beyond excellent. Food was great, drinks were great, company was all there to have a great time, and the stateroom was comfortable. Bigger than I expected, but I wonder if that is because I have had the experince of living for 9 months in a 24 foot RV with the Rooster, a dog and 3 cats!?
There, the toilet was so close to the back bed that you could sit on the pot, lean over and put your head on the bed and go back to sleep ( not saying this is a BAD thing, mind you!). At least there was a separate bathroom in the stateroom.
Freeport, our first port of call, was depressing for us. We had chosen to take a bus tour through residential areas and then to a shopping area. The tour guide commented the entire way that the empty houses (Maybe 50% or more) were empty due to hurricane damage and the fact that the residents likely had no insurance to fix them. Been there, done that, didn't need the reminder. More than half of the fast food places and many other types of businesses were also closed due to "the economy". I guess it was good for us to see this, but it's not exactly what we had spend our vacay money to see. Nassau was awesome, I now want to go and stay at their Sandals Resort. We took a jeep tour there, the Rooster successfully drove on the "wrong" side of the road without killing or injuring anybody! We shopped downtown for awhile before walking back to the ship, went to "Senor Frog's" for drink and eats. Much fun.
Spent the remainder of the time onboard, enjoying the deck and the open water, relaxing more efficiently than ever before.
We weren't ready to disembark when it came time, but we had purposely taken the shorter trip in case it wasn't as wonderful as we'd been told. Next time, it will be at least a week, and there WILL be a next time.
Our vacation wasn't over, yet, but the rest is for another post.
If you haven't cruised, and have wondered about it, you get our vote as a YEA, do it!!
The only caveat I would include is to watch your money really closely. You don't pay as you go on these things, you give them a credit card to charge to, then your boarding/room card becomes your charge card. Even easier than usual to go overboard. BUT, don't put it on a debit card. Just tally every night, and you should be okay.
While we were cruising to Freeport, the news declared Osama Bin Ladin dead. WOW. We were interviewed by Freeport news, asking how we felt about it. I would really have liked to see how badly they chopped up what we said to fit their positions. And what WAS their position? No local news for us to watch. While I never want to celebrate anyone's death, if I had a gun in my hand and was confronted with him and the surety it really was him, I could have pulled the trigger. I tell myself I don't want to judge, that is God's job, but in some cases, that is raving BS.
For me.....a gooey large ice cream sundae with a cherry on the top. Glad I was somewhere that would distract me with fun stuff so that I wouldn't get sucked in to the endless media coverage.
God knows what he's doing!!

A N T I C I P A T I O N .........

2011-04-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

This coming Fri, the Rooster and I are going to load up my beast, and start the first leg of our journey towards our first ever cruise. Everyone we talk to who has had this adventure say we are going to love it! I sure hope so. We have been semi reluctant because the Rooster gets seasick easily, but we have been told repeatedly that we will barely feel the ship move.
We are going to the Bahamas....Freeport and Nassau. We have picked our excursions already ( they are going to cost us as much as the fare for the cruise), and we have lots of advice on what to avoid and what is "don't miss this!". Thanks to everyone for their input.
One of the excursions is a 2 hour jeep tour. I dreamed the other night that Kenny was reluctant to drive because they drive on the "wrong side" of the road there. I'm not sure it even occured to him that the steering wheel is also on the "wrong side" of the vehicle. In my dream, I was telling him that I wanted him to have the experience, because I already knew what it was like to drive a vehicle like that. My ex ( thank You, God, for the ex part) and I bought a Fairlady Z in Spain. Sexy car with a nose as long as Pinocchio's when he was lying. Driving that car took some practice, you found out real quick how much weaker you are on your left side when you had to learn how to shift a five speed with your left hand. AND you shifted everything towards you, instead of away. It got VERY interesting when we had to get that thing to turn a corner in Toledo.....uphill, streets built for burro carts, behind you rock walls, and on the other side of those walls, a horrendous drop off the mountain. The nose of the car was too long to just turn the corner, so, in a fifteen point turn it was, brake, clutch, gas, brake, clutch, gas......with finesse we didn't know we had!!
They drive on the right side in Spain, so we didn't have that aspect of the adventure, but it was great fun to watch people when they realized the person driving was on the right side of the car. Even more fun was putting the dog on the left side and rolling the window down so she could stick her head out the window!!
We were able to bring that car back to the states because it had been registered in the US before the emission control rules were put into effect. Then, we had the fun of going through toll booths, wehad to learn how to toss the money in the basket over the roof of the car. We had to shout even louder to order from the drive through, and then get out of the car to pay and pick up the food.
Yes, we got stopped by the cops one time. Unspoken, he and I agreed to push the envelope and see how long it was before the cop realized that I wasn't driving. I handed him my license and registration ( got that out of the glove box in front of me, and he didn't even notice it then !) He went back to his vehicle to check all that out, and when he walked back to hand it all back to me is when it dawned on him that I didn't have a steering wheel in front of me. He got THAT look on his face, bent down to look at the ex, who DID have a steering wheel in front of him, scowled for a second, the grinned and said "good one." We busted out laughing then, which was a good thing, cuz I think we would have exploded, otherwise. He handed my license and registratioin back to me and said, "All right, you get this one, get out of here. " I think we made his day. Glad he had a sense of humor, or we could have been in real trouble.
I got to drive that car for 4 years before it became decrepit enough that we were afraid it was a hazard to our well being. So, I want the Rooster to have the fun I had. I will take over if it freaks him out, but I don't really think it will. He's pretty good about being up for getting his horizons broadened, and having a ball at it.
We are also going to do a shallow water snorkle jaunt. Shallow because the rooster thinks he can't swim. He had one of those &$(#$@ uncles who threw him in the water to teach him how to swim. I told him a long time ago that I hoped I never met the man, because there would be an explosion if I did. So, Rooster is very unsure of himself in the water. Because I am a water baby, he has grown to love being in the water as long as he can put his feet down and stand up. BUT, he has also taught himself how to swim better. Better than he thinks he can. I'll watch him, and he'll be swimming along, doing just great, and then all of a sudden he loses it somehow and flounders a little, then stands up. I taught him how to use a snorkle so that maybe he would start putting his face in the water, and he has done that well, as well. The shallow water excursion shows pictures of rays and other creatures of the sea, so we hope it is representative of what we really will see. I'm so very proud of him for teaching himself what he has, and being brave enough to try new things. I feel, and hope some of his willingness to try has been because he loves me, and wants to share my joys with me.
On the way back home, we are stopping in Orlando to go to Universal's Islands of Adventure. Actually, we will be going to both parks, but, the important one is Islands, because of the new Harry Potter area, AND because he's been challenged. We aren't roller coaster people. Neither is his son. We have been experimenting gradually with pushing our barf limits ( or maybe at our ages, our heart attack limits). We have always loved Space Mountain at Disney, and now the Rocking Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios (also Disney). Just in the last year, we have done the Tower of Terror at Hollywood studios....that's not one I thought I would ever do, cuz it's the drops that get to me. Turn me upside down, take me around in a circle, and I'm good. I have nearly passed out on the first hill of some roller coasters. There is this thing called a vagal response....it's why Elvis died when he did, and so many people die in the bathroom.It's probably also why many women died during childbirth. You clamp, bear down, and you pass out because your heart slows its rate and your brain doesn't get enough blood. I learned to scream instead. You can't clamp down when you are screaming. Anyway, Rooster's son rode the Incredible Hulk at Adventures and has challenged his Dad to do the same. And being the good rednecked Rooster that he is, his testosterone level won't let him let his son show him up. His insurance is paid in full and I have let him know that I very likely won't be doing this with him. My level of testosterone has nothing to prove to anybody. People HAVE died on the ride. Heart attacks.
As of today, I have 2 more work days to live through, Rooster has 4 and a half. Then, it's "On the road again...." Can hardly wait. Will let you all know if I come back married, or widowed. If it's the latter, send money, not flowers..........

Mo Betta

2011-04-12T04:46:00.000-07:00

Tired? Achey? Quickly deteriorating memory? Libido nonexistant? Gaining weight? Want something other than old age to blame this on? Getcher thyroid levels checked!! I work 12 hour night shifts. 4 nights on, 1 off, 2 on, then I get 7 days off.... mini vacation every 2 weeks. Sweet, right? Yes, very much so, until I found myself not recovering from my work stretch until just 2 days before I went back to work. What a waste!! Especially with summer coming up, and access to a river, 2 pools, RV park with good friends to enjoy my life with. This nonrecovery manifested itself much more dramatically than you would expect with the normal aging process. I was also getting extremely cranky and intolerant, which is not a good thing when you are in charge of a bunch of brand new nurses who are in a delicate self-confidence balance to begin with. I started to get a little scared. My Dad's side of the family has a high Alzheimer's count. One uncle, one aunt diagnosed, and I'm sure my grandfather was afflicted, just not diagnosed. He would go out for a walk and get lost..... My grandmother was diagnosed with ALS, which is a disorder of the nerve cells in the brain and spine, which affects the voluntary movement, and eventually, the involuntary as well. Can't swallow, can't move, and end stage, can't breath on your own. A frightening prison to be in, as your cognitive abilities remain intact for most of this progression. Related? Not sure....but pretty crappy DNA on that side, wouldn't you say? So, when I began to notice that from the recliner to the kitchen ( all of 6 steps), I was forgetting what I got up for, when I got in the shower twice in one week with my glasses on, when I walked out the locked front door without my keys two days in a row, I got scared!!! I began to make a list of all the physical complaints I had accumulated, and went to my doctor. When he walked into the exam room, he stopped short, looked at me and said, "Okay, what disaster brought you in?" Nurses come in 2 types....the ones who go to the doctor with every little twitch, and those who don't go until they are half dead. I fall in the half dead category. I laughed and told him that my list had gotten too long, and handed it to him. Time for colonoscopy, check (argh!), especially since my DNA in that category is also crappy!! Mammo, Pap smear (argh!argh!) check. Follow up chest xray to evaluate the spot they found on the last one that was determined to not be an immediate concern, but follow up was encouraged,check. PFT's to also follow up since 34 years of my life was spent smoking, check. Sinus and allergy diagnostics as my symptoms were increasing in severity, check. Podiatrist for the neuroma I had developed in my right foot, check. Busy girl. Blood drawn that very day...fortunate to have been fasting long enough to count, and to get to the lab before the runner picked up that day. This was on a Friday....Monday I got the call to go pick up my prescription of Levothryroxin, low dose, and to reschedule blood draw and primary MD appt in 2 weeks. Wahoo? Hope!! 2 weeks later, I am feeling better than I have felt in a very long time, I am not in constant achey pain, my memory has improved, I'm not as cranky, and my husband is very cute again!! So easy. Another pill to swallow...yeah, but the benefits are enormous!! You gettin old? Yeah, so what? You don't have to feel or act old if you can get as easy a fix as I did!

Long time gone

2011-04-01T05:54:00.000-07:00

Many moons. Have been inspired by a new blogger to come home and start again. Comment from new blogger was that he didn't know how many would be interested in anything he had to say. Don't we all feel that way to some extent? Wait.....no, I take that back, for I DO know people who think what they have to say is the only thing that keeps this ball on it's axis. Sometimes, sad to say, I could very well be one of those. I can get on a rant with the best of us. But, I DO SO love an intelligent, mature give and take of ideas, as long as I am not being bullied by someone who thinks they are the only one who has the answers. What a small world to live in. The world I live in has daily moral conundrums to explore, and the number of solutions to those can equal the stars in the universe, but sometimes seem like "no brainers" with only one, to those of us who live in this world. What we need to remember , is that few see the world we see, few see the results of what we consider to be poor choices that we know, and that many make their decisions out of pure selfishness, whether based in misguided love, or malicious self interest for it's own sake. Living with powerlessness over these situations, can make me , oh,so tired and sad, and I wonder why......why? Is it because people don't believe there is anything beyond this existence? Is greed that deepset in some people's psyche? Is a fear of being alone so terrifying as to be unbearable? I thank the combination of my DNA, my upbringing and my logic that tells me this isn't "all there is". I completely believe there is an existence beyond this life that is more glorious that we can fathom. I believe that the ones I grieve for are there, and will greet me when I make my transformation. I believe that there will be much more for me to learn when I get there, many more ideas for me to explore, and that the answers to all my questions will be there for my understanding. This belief is sometimes the only thing that keeps me plodding along, every day, like the poor working slob I am. It's the thing that keeps me from giving up when things just don't make any sense. I feel incredibly sorry for those who don't have this belief, for what is life without any hope? I thank my parents, my ability to sense what I believe to be true, and daily proof in even the smallest of things to provide me with the hope I need to make this all worth it. I also am grateful for the ability to revel in the beauty, love, gifts and security that I enjoy while I am still here....my blessings are many. Not that anyone would be interested........

Uh......What?

2010-03-02T05:54:00.000-08:00

I am supposed to listen to a man who still smokes' ideas on health care reform?

Auntie Em!

2009-06-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

Just like Dorothy,I have found myself being sucked into the tornado and deposited in a place that was fascinating, sometimes horrible, often fantastic, and usually a great relief from which to awaken. This has happened not only more than once, but many, many times in my life, because it seems, it was my nature to get too close to the vortex. I was Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, thinking I could slay the dragon if I just perservered.
There comes a time in your life, tho, when self preservation forces you to evaluate the situation and realize the terrible irreparable damage being done, and decide that you must distance yourself far away from the winds that would place you in range of the debris that flies as a result.
For the tornado, there is nothing but the wind, no other reason but to stir things up, and the world only exists to live within the circular motion of the tiny little world it has created for itself. There is no creature, no structure, no tree or field that survives its force, no matter how logical its placement. The tornado can't hear logic or reason, the noise of its own terrible force is too loud. It only uses one weapon to accomplish its goal, and doesn't look back to see the damage. The power it feels when it causes people to cringe in fear at the sound of it's winds serves to strengthen its belief that it's winds are all that matters. No one else can live there, at least, not for long. You are flung far away, broken and dazed by the irrationality of it all. Wondering why it does not see that if the noise just dissipated , its message could be understood, right or wrong, its purpose could be seen by a different form of strength, and what it thinks it is trying to accomplish might actually come to fruition.
Such is mental illness.
I grieve for the one who roars, but I won't get close.

Reset?

2009-02-17T14:56:00.000-08:00

Feeling more blessed than usual lately. With all the reports of the deteriorating economy, right now, my household is reasonably secure.
My job provides me with a security that many do not. That is not to say that I am bullet proof by any means. I recognize this very well. I am a long term employee, and as a result, cost my company more than new grads.
The Rooster isn't so fortunate. His job is in a company that provides what many would consider a luxury product, moderately higher end furniture. Layoffs have been coming in waves already, and he is all too aware that he isn't safe by any means. He also has a retirement check coming in from a civil service job, is that secure?
He and I came through a severe patch of high debt, and after 5 years, last summer, paid our debt down to a manageable level. Ironic that this happened just before the economy tanked, and while we are not what would traditionally be considered rich, are feeling quite rich under the circumstances.
As a result, I have been feeling the weight of having so much while many have so little. I went to the local food bank with a bag of food sometime before Thanksgiving, and asked them what items they tend to run out of first. Not only did I want to be a help, I wanted to be the best possible help. They told me powdered milk and peanut butter. I have committed myself to buy a box of powdered milk packets, and/or a jar of peanut butter every time I go to the grocery or Wally World, put it in a box in the back of my truck, and once a week or so, deliver it to the food bank.
The food bank is located in a not so great part of town, of course, and I pass many empty lots on my way. These lots are mostly areas where Ivan took out shotgun houses of people who had no resources to rebuild, and in two of those empty lots I noticed raised areas where there were neighborhood gardens, sponsored by the food bank. I couldn't tell what was growing, but whatever grows in the winter around here was flourishing. I don't know if the neighbors in that area were actually tending that garden, or if it is volunteers from the food bank, I will ask when I take my next load in. Of course, I am hoping I hear that the food bank helps them get started, then they take over from there.
We also have a very active Habitat for Humanity program in the area, and there is a sort of thrift store where they resell donated building supplies to help defray some costs of the houses they build not covered by contributors. Sounds like a good place for the Rooster and I to shop for items we need to continue working on our own Ivan ravaged house. (We got lazy, still not done, but completely functional.)
"Charity begins at home" means something different to me right now. My son, who is a plumber, is having trouble getting enough hours work to pay all his bills. Side jobs are keeping him barely afloat, and like me, just the nature of his job provides him with a certain security that many do not. But "home" to me has taken on a wider view. I like the idea of being able to see what my contributions actually help. Without the military in this area, we would be hit much harder. Not a lot of industry here to provide jobs. This is a tourist area, and have seen the effects the economy has had on that industry long before anyone was admitting we had a problem.
We daily hear about people getting nailed for big time fraud ...people who got away with it for years and years, greed run rampant, finally having to pay (?) for the Karma they were emitting into the universe. In scaling back our own consumerism, I am finding companies more and more willing to "work" with me to lower my bills to keep my business. It works much better when there are many other options available to you. The local utilities pretty much have you over a barrel, but it doesn't hurt to ask them to audit your usage. The local water/sewer company will lower your sewer bill if you point out your water usage is below average. The companies that provided poor service, charged for services that should be included as part of your purchase, seem to be some of the first going out of business. A good example for me is Circuit City, now having their "Going out of business sale". One of the first to charge a "restocking fee" for items you brought back, and reported to restock those items brought back even though they knew they were not functioning properly.
Are we going to FINALLY start being held accountable for our bad behavior? Are most of us going to demand that we get more for our dollar? Will prices that have crept up and up just because we showed that yes, we would pay that much for 'whatever" start coming back down to ensure we won't eliminate from our want/need list? Think of all the services we were provided as kids that we now pay for. People my age remember pulling into a gas station, getting our gas pumped for us, our windshields washed, our oil and transmission fluid checked each time we pulled in, and even our tires scrutinized to make sure they had enough air. AND if they didn't, the air was put in to top them off, free of charge!! I say bad words when I am topping off my tire pressure, because inevitably, the machine shuts off just a millisecond before I get to that last tire, in spite of taking off the stem caps ahead of time. I usually don't have any more quarters with me, and to drive to the one or two gas stations that provide free air is counterproductive.
I have long been one who would write that letter, call that 1-800 number and speak to the manager when the service I received was on one end or the other of the spectrum. (YES, you need to give the attaboys, too) Maybe now, I will see the result more often and more quickly. After 6 letters to a local restaurant, we finally found a trash can outside the bathroom to dispose of our paper towels we used to open the door of the bathroom as we exited. (Past blog). Maybe it won't take 6 letters any more.
This is my hope. While we have a terrible time yet to endure, if we are diligent and aware, we will emerge from all of this with the reset button having been pushed to transport us back to a time when service was provided with a smile and integrity was the norm rather than a surprise.
Pie in the sky dreams?

Rubber band

2009-01-17T02:16:00.000-08:00

"It's a small world"
OK, now, hurry and start singing something else, or you will hate me for the rest of the day!
Just got a "friend" request on Facebook from a relative that I would not have expected to be looking for me there. Made me feel good. I joined it because many of my coworkers and my daughter are on there, and after listening for a couple of years to people talking about My Space and Facebook and sites like it, I figured, what the heck, I'll check it out. As long as I don't put incriminating stuff, or personal info I don't want spread around on there, what do I have to lose?
It now occurs to me how the world is reconnecting using the internet and sites such as these. I knew that was a neat phenomena when my immediate family simplified our connection with instant messaging, but I am now reconnected with people I haven't seen in years. And I can send them messages in the middle of the night if I want. Which is very handy to those of us who crawl back in their coffins when the sun comes up.
The US postal service suffers of course, but I think they will be okay as long as Publishers Clearing House stays in business!
Families, years ago, lived within just a few miles of each other, or even sometimes in the same house. Then, when they had to move further fom home to find work, or go to school, the family constellations spread to the point where it became easier and easier to lose contact completely with people who were important to our growth and development as kids. People we really enjoyed, but forgot how much because we didn't have the stimulus to remind us. Too much other stimuli to be aware that this had happened, it now takes a "poke" or a nudge, or a surprise message for us to grab hold of these people again, and set up a network where, hopefully, that contact will remain available as long as we wish. Neat.
So, here I sit, at 0-dark-30 again, recovering in one of my "safe places to be", from a week of being in contact with way too many of those negative forces I refer to in my last blog.
We are supposed to follow our "bliss". I will have to include this connectivity in mine. My life continues to be enhanced in ways I never expected. Yippee!

Dear Mr. Obama

2009-01-12T05:37:00.000-08:00

I had heard on a newscast that president elect Obama was looking for suggestions on how to reduce costs in the health care system. I have, what I think, is a great one. ( But of course I would think it was great....you tell me what you think).

Little 78 year old Mr Johnson is admitted to the hospital with CHF, or congestive heart failure. He has no insurance other than medicare, which reimburses hospitals per diagnosis, a fixed amount. No more, no less. Mr Johnson also has diabetes, COPD, has had strokes in the past, high blood pressure and kidney insufficiency or outright failure. He worked most of his life at jobs that you and I would cringe at the thought of having to do, to put food on the table and clothes on his kids backs. He never had health insurance, picking cotton from the third grade on, or harvesting peanuts, he sent his children to school so they would not have to do what he did. He stays in the hospital for many days past what medicare pays for, but he only calls the nurses when he really needs help, thanks them for the help he gets, and treats his caregivers with utmost respect. He follows instructions, cooperates with his medical team and often has to be encouraged to take medication that will relieve him of his pain. His family members take turns staying with him to help in his care and make sure he is safe when the nurses can't be in the room with him. He comes in and out of the hospital several times a year, often because he ran out of his medicines and couldn't afford to get more, and his condition deteriorated to a life threatening level. We bring him back to his health baseline, and send him out the door again, hugging him and telling him to take care of himself, that we hope we don't have to see him for awhile. Knowing all the while, it is only a matter of time.

Now, here comes Mr. Smith. You cringed when you heard his name and that he was coming to your floor. You apologize to the nurse he is assigned to when you tell them they will be admitting him and they say "THANKS ALOT!!". ER personnel give you report, naming him a "frequent flyer", and while that term applies to Mr. Johnson as well, it would be said in a completely different tone of voice. Mr. Smith is being admitted for a chief complaint of chest pain, has a heart history several pages long at the age of 46, so can't be ignored for fear of a lawsuit. His EKG is , so far, normal, his enzymes that determine cardiac injury are , so far, normal. But he is having "unrelieved" chest pain. He has refused a nitro drip in the ER, has listed his allergies as Toradol, Stadol, Darvocet, Ultram, and Tylenol. He is positive for cocaine, marijuana, benzodiazapines and ETOH on his drug screen. He got Dilaudid an hour ago for his chest pain, and he reported that it brought him from a "10" pain level to a "7", and the ER doc wouldn't give him any more. He had been to hospital X yesterday, and was sent home with minimal treatment, and was just discharged from our hospital 4 days ago when his heart attack was again ruled out for the sixth or seventh time in the last six months. BUT, seven months ago, he'd had a cardiac cath and had required a stent to open a blockage. He has been receiving disability checks since he was 30 for a back injury received while on the job, and hasn't worked a day since. He smokes, and has been out "AMA", or "against medical advice" to smoke twice while he was waiting for his ER evaluation and a bed assignment.
He arrives on the floor on a hospital stretcher, and before you can even get to the room, he has pulled off his heart monitor, is stuffing it in a drawer, and heading down the hall to go smoke. You stop him, ask him to return to the room so he can be admitted, and he becomes hostile and belligerent. You quickly get him to sign the "AMA to smoke " form, supposedly absolving you of responsibility, should he "code" while out to smoke, and let him go. You know this guy and his game, and you don't want to play. When he comes back, his first request is for something for chest pain, which he reports is again at a level "10" out of 10, and when you try to give him a nitro first, as is protocol, he calls you a name you wouldn't repeat, says "that sh-- doesn't work", and demands the Dilaudid. You tell him it isn't time for the Dilaudid yet and he becomes more hostile and belligerent. He knows he has about 24 hours before his free high expires, tho, so he settles down. He then asks you when he CAN have it, and sets his watch alarm for that time.
So it goes. He's nasty to everyone who cares for him, noncompliant with all instructions, demands cookies, sodas, ice cream, extra food from the cafeteria, and smokes in the room because it's cold outside, then denies that he's done it. When the tests prove he has not, in fact, had an MI, the MD's discontinue all his narcotics. The next time he asks for them and is told they have been discontinued, he yells, curses all the staff, pulls his heart monitor off and walks out of the hospital AMA.
OK, Mr. Obama, here's my suggestion......set up a database shared by local networks of hospitals. When the frequent flyer comes through the door, and you find he has walked out AMA for the same diagnosis 3 times, make a law that you can refuse care without fear of legal repercussions. The little boy cried wolf, 3 strikes you're out, too bad ,so sad!! Billions would be saved in NO TIME AT ALL!!, AND we would have time to care more diligently for Mr. Johnson, who worked hard all his life, likely fought for his country, and raised his children to do the same.

Whew!!

2009-01-03T00:48:00.000-08:00

It's 0200 or so, one of those times when I can't seem to get my days and nights switched back around from my night shift job. I have 6 days off this stretch, which is rare for me anymore. I used to get that every 2 weeks, but events and change in units caused that to change as well. It was wonderful, and I miss it, but for other reasons, don't want to change back. I usually get 4 in a row off, max, and that is still pretty great. Age, I guess, stress of my job, and just plain " I LOVE to sleep", sometimes keeps me from switching gears back to the real rest of the world. Not fair to my husband, but he's a pretty good ol guy, and makes do. Much easier for him to do, now that we go to the resort every chance we get and he has friends here to play with while I doze.
It might also be that I think I am at the very tail end of a kootie situation going around that has been one of those that you get for 2 weeks, start to get better, then it comes around and bites you in the butt again, this time worse than the first. It started out for me like it might have been a sinus infection, mostly in my head, but throat sore and coughing because of drainage. I tried to get in to my doc, couldn't because everybody else in the area was trying to get in at the same time, so he called my in a script and told me if I didn't get better to get back with him. Suited me fine, I'm one of those who doesn't go to the doc until I'm half dead. Drives him nuts. But, if he wants to check on me, he can, just by showing up on the floor where I work. And he does. And he scowls at me. He has a pretty good scowl, but it doesn't work very well, because then he grins at me cuz he knows I'm not going to change.
So, I took my meds, started to feel some better, went back to work. Then about a week and a half later, I start coughing and coughing and coughing. This is different, so I make an appointment and go see him. Well. this concerns him, because here I am, actually IN HIS OFFICE. Must be bad. Gives me more antibiotics, then sends me to get chest Xrays to make sure I don't have p-monia. I am set to work that same night, so I pull my report off the computer, and it says there is a density in my upper left lobe that is of some concern, a spiculated area. I had to look up "spiculated", had never heard it before. One of our pulmonologists wandered through and I asked him to look at my report and tell me what it meant. I had already gotten the definition for spiculated, but didn't know a lot more than before about whether that was a bad thing or not. When this doc started patting my arm and writing down that I should have a CT scan, pulmonary function studies, a PET scan ASAP, I got scared. This was a couple of weeks before Christmas.
Rooster had an appt with our MD the next day, so I sent the report with him. I know how things work, knew this would be faster than him waiting to get the report. They started setting up all the aforementioned tests and studies that day. That night, I had another of the pulmonologists look at my report, because this was the one I would go to if it turned out I would need one. He is like nobody else! I choose him, not only because he is phenominal....to his patients, to the nurses, but also because if worse came to worst, he would let me have my Smirnoff Ice while I was in the hospital, AND ...he knows when to let go. Just for giggles, I will tell you his daughter is married to Steve Martin. I got to see wedding pics with Tom Hanks in them, etc. Cool.
He read my report, immediately went and looked at my xrays, and came back to me. He asked me what my plans were for Christmas. When I told him, he told me not to change any of them, this was not urgent enough to cancel plans, all could wait until after the holidays. He also told me that "whatever this is, it is tiny, it can wait".
I already had my CT scan scheduled, so I went ahead and had that done. And, of course, printed out my report for that as well. No mention of a MASS, just scarring and emphysema in my left upper lobe, recommendation to follow it for changes. I smoked for 34 years, so all of this was no surprise at all. I have not had a cigarette since Aug 3, 8 years ago, so I am almost halfway there to the time frame where docs consider you pretty safe after having smoked that long. I called the Rooster, read it to him and explained the big words and he hooted his relief. He was dancing on the front porch when I got home the next morning. I was still coughingcoughingcoughing, so I knew I still need to have the Pulmonary function studies, but it is not as urgent as before.
Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.
Maybe I'll ride a bull named Fu Manchu

HORT DORGS

2008-08-24T18:59:00.000-07:00

Too young.
Got a phone call from Mom the other day telling me that another person who spent a short, but significant amount of time in my life died of a massive heart attack. Another crush of my young life, but I sure could pick 'em back then. Shame that skill didn't show up again until much later in my life......
He lived with us, I don't even remember for exactly how long, but long enough to fall in love with one of our "cousin in laws". He married her, had children, and they remained together "until death do us part ".
Sad, that statement seems such an accomplishment nowdays.
Infectious grin, good looks. Practical joker.
My first pair of glasses were promptly smeared with mashed potatoes with his tongue. He and my Dad drove into town to pick up a pizza ( Did they have delivery back then? I don't think so). They got the people there to cut the pizza in one box, then transfer it to another so they could make us think Gil had eaten the whole thing by himself on the way home. He would have HAD to be the culprit, because in those days, my Dad wouldn't touch a pizza with a ten foot pole, said it stunk so bad a cat would cover it up!
Last time I saw him was at my Dad's viewing, or funeral, or both, not sure....still good looking, still with the infectious grin, probably still a practical joker.
Just what kind of tricks do you pull on God? He has either already pulled one, or is trying to figure that out for himself. I wonder of God eats pizza? I bet so. I bet he eats hort dorgs, too.
Bye, Gil, see you later.

Postscript last post

2008-06-29T02:34:00.000-07:00

He's doing very well. Long way to go, but on the right road.

Open Heart

2008-06-23T05:24:00.000-07:00

For a majority of my nursing career, I have been primarily involved with cardiac patients on a step down telemetry unit.
After you have recovered enough from open heart surgery to leave the intensive care unit, you come to us, where we make you get your sore self out of bed, walk down the hall on legs that have usually had part of their circulation stripped from them, deep breathe and cough from a chest that has had its bones sawn (is that a word?)open and pulled apart, then wired back together with something that looks suspiciously like chicken wire, and generally torture you in ways that will make you SO ready to go home! We remind you in very somber tones and with serious faces what will befall you, should you NOT do exactly what we tell you. We hand you this cute little heart shaped pillow when we make you cough and move, and we tell you to give yourself a hug. Open heart is not for wimps, but most people survive it and go on to live more normal lives, quality lives, for years to come. Some become cardiac invalids, we describe many of these as people who are "enjoying their poor health". Some quite literally kill themselves by not doing their share to recover.
Recently took care of a patient who had come back in with a sternal abscess 7 months post op. Kind of unusual, we generally see them come back in much earlier with infections. Others who had seen him before they took him back in to "clean" him out said his chest looked like an alien should be jumping out of his chest at any given moment.
When these infections occur, they have to remove part or all of the sternum, and for a while, we do what is called "wet to dry" dressing changes. This involves packing the wound with sterile normal saline moistened rolled gauze. You have to have timing and a certain "touch" to do this, as the chest wall is moving with the patient's breathing, and the ribs move away from, and towards each other with each one. You want to gently pack the wound so it touches all exposed surfaces, without putting too much pressure on the heart and lungs that are now pretty much RIGHT THERE! Everyone watches the heart beating for a few seconds before they repack, just because they can. You also have to have timing, because the ribs will pinch your fingers as you pack the dressing in, and bones are hard! You evaluate the drainage while you are doing this dressing change for purulent drainage, oozing of blood into the wound, and the quality of the tissues at the wound bases.This dressing debrides the wound, removing dead tissue and nasty drainage . After the infection is under control, surgeons with go back in and crate a "flap" to protect the heart and lungs and generally stabilize the chest wall again. Not a good situation, many patients don't survive long after they have gotten a sternal infection, and they go through an awful lot before the end comes.
Changed this patient's dressing, wound looked good, tucked him into bed for the night......an hour later, one of my coworkers heard a noise in the room , walked in and found him covered in blood, and yelled for me. When I went in the room, he was sitting at the side of the bed with his hand on an IV site in his neck that might have been the source of the blood if he pulled it out, as it was in a pretty good sized vessel. But, he had a lap FULL of blood, the side of the bed was covered, and a puddle the size of a large pizza was on the floor beneath him. The dressing on his chest was swollen with a huge blood clot, and the blood was still coming. I called a CAT team call and began directing my babies, all with eyes the size of dinner plates. We held pressure, got more dressing material and got him moved to the unit in record time. Not once did they falter, not once did they fumble, looking for what we needed. Like a well oiled machine, each one did what they were told, ignoring their racing hearts and brains and attending to the task at hand.
We got him to the unit with a very cute tiny nurse straddling him and pressing on this chest that had no sternum to protect his heart and lungs from the edges of his rib bones. The surgeon was called in, the open heart team was called in, four units of blood and two platelets was ordered, and the family was called and informed that their loved one was in big trouble and was going back to surgery. For two hours this tiny nurse held pressure on his chest while everyone involved watched closely, both patient and monitors, for the changes that could happen any second from the massive blood loss.
The surgeon told me that he thought the patient had torn his right ventricle, as they had found parts of the sternum adhered to the heart when they went back in to clean the infection. He very plainly told me "He's not going to survive this". HMMMMMM. But, you have to try.
Wife is coming from a little town far enough away she won't make it there before the patient goes to surgery, but it can't be helped, if we wait for her he dies, if we don't wait for her, he probably still dies. But, we had to try. I go back into the room and ask the patient how he managed to get a bunch of good looking women in the bed with him like that, he grins and says, "I'm not sure". Still somewhat with it, but he's beginning to pick "ticks" off the tiny nurse's arm, even tho she keeps telling him they are freckles.
Nothing for me to do now, I have turned him over to the crew who will help get him to the OR. All we can do now is see what happens. I go in the hall, and the patient's daughter is running down the hall. I stop her, take her to the waiting room, and get the surgeon. He gently tells her the truth about her Dad's chances, and she goes in to see him. She holds up very well, then comes back into the hallway and sobs uncontrollably in my arms. I call the chaplain to sit with her until her Mother can get there, and call security to keep an eye out for the Mom.
Then, I go back upstairs to my floor, where my babies have been holding the fort for over an hour. And we wait.
This surgery could be over in a matter of minutes, with the terrible expected outcome, or it could be many hours, and still with a terrible outcome, OR there can be a wonderful mixture of skill and miracle.....we hope.
An hour later, we get the phone call. Patient will be out of surgery in a few minutes, he had torn a major blood vessel, NOT the ventricle, and our holding pressure on his poor, unprotected chest wall saved his life!! My babies, not faltering, not fumbling, have been a team that got this guy safely where he needed to get to live! WE DID THAT!! Not by following a bunch of orders a doctor gave us, but by knowing what to do, when, and doing it! WE did it!
I couldn't have been prouder. We couldn't have been more pumped! I have gotten over the need for the adrenaline rushes that this job provides, I leave that to the new babes who secretly wish for it, while not wanting to wish bad stuff on our patients. When we have a code, unless it's my own patient, when the room has filled with the usual 30 people, all in each other's way, I go to care for the other 20 something patients they have forgotten are still out there. I let them have the excitement. But, this was something entirely different. Something none of us will forget, and will be a story we tell for the rest of our lives. We did it.
Experience, not including myself? Still less than a year. Competency? Quantity beyond sufficient.
Next time you are in the hospital and you ask that fresh faced nurse how long he/she has been a nurse and they say "Six months", don't fret. If they are part of the right team, it will be just fine.

Wahoo!!!

2008-06-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

How many times in your life has the anticipation of an event been more fun than the reality?
I am happy to report that the first annual girl's only weekend at Styx River met and even exceeded the anticipation!!
4 kayaks, tubes to rent, more GOOD food than we could all eat, and a tightknit group of coworkers who we now know, enjoy each others company at work AND play. We work together well, now we know we play together well. The behemoth is not such a behemoth that we can all be in the kitchen at the same time, so we set up an outside cooking station. I tend to do that anyway, because his airconditioner struggles these days to keep him cool, and cooking inside just taxes it more. Besides, everyone knows that food cooked outside tastes better anyway. Everyone had their jobs to do, and we did them well, without a lot of direction from anybody.
One of my coworkers, "Wee One" went with me on Fri to begin the setup. We have a humongous screen room we call space mountain because that is what it resembles when up. It is 30'x30' and octogon shaped. Very easy to assemble, 2 short women can put it up. Great for feeding a bunch of people, playing games, etc.
She and I got busy the next morning and filled up water balloons, and took turns watching for our other participants. Both were successfully greeted with a barrage of water grenades, and then allowed to pull from the ammunition stockpile, and to fill their super soakers. Wonderful in the 90 degree weather.
We played Farkle the first night, stayed up until past 0100, and slept in the behemoth because as soon as we had our air mattresses up in space mountain the wind blew a couple of gusts with rain sideways. The weather report promised more, and of course, we didn't get any more for the rest of the night.
The next morning, we lost one member to Father's Day duties, and gained 3 more for a day visit, one of which had to be declared an honorary girl. Daddy (the Rooster) came out for a short visit, played some Bingo, then went back home to chores and the Basketball championship game on TV. And yes, they were all greeted with water grenades, and allowed to borrow their choice of super soakers. We armed ourselves with our stash of handguns stashed in our bathing suits. A river trip with the 4 kayaks, and two tubes ended an almost perfect afternoon, then we ate like pigs again.
Got to sleep in space mountain that night, and the Wee One had to leave that mjorning, she had to work that night. Left with just 2 of us now, we got in another river trip on the kayaks, got back and broke camp with an hour's daylight to spare, and came home tired, relaxed and planning our next weekend as soon as possible. This time, tho, we will include our S. O.'s in the fun. They have to buy their own super soakers, tho.

First annual....

2008-06-12T00:36:00.000-07:00

Am so excited about the coming weekend.
If the weather holds, should be a blast! The event I so look forward to is the first annual Styx River Girl's weekend. First participants are 4 of us from the unit where I work, and part of the uniform of the day is a Super Soaker. There are also water balloons involved, kayaks, the game "Cranium" ( which I have yet to play, but hear it's a hoot) holey board, farkle, and whatever else suits our fancy at the moment. Will be sure to report on it, but I don't see how it can miss.

Imaginary friends

2008-06-05T05:26:00.000-07:00

When I was a little bitty girl, I had imaginary friends, like most of us do. My first one, I don't really recall on my own but have heard many stories about her from my Mom. One was that we were driving down the road , and my Dad had either come to an abrupt stop, or had turned a corner too sharply, and whichever the action, had thrown my friend from the back seat into the floorboard, and I began to cry.
The other "friend", or rather set of "friends" was my pet "Stunks". Not sure if they were skunks or squirrels, but they could fly and I kept control of them by having each one on a string, like a handful of helium balloons. They didn't, in my memory, do anything spectacular, other than keeping me entertained, but who knows what I have since dumped from the fantastical memory file to be replaced by more mature, mundane "reality". What a shame.
I may have mentioned in earlier posts that nurses are taught in school to orient our patients to reality. I become very selective about which patients I decide need this, as reality is often not so much fun. If their delusion is calming and soothing them, why fix it if it ain't broke? Especially since I work nights, and often come across what is known as "sundowner's syndrome." Reality fades and returns with the sun's fall and rise, but if the fantasy is nonthreatening, why remind them that they are in the hospital with very little control over what is happening to them?
I have spoken to athiests who label faith as equal to having imaginary friends, and provide us poor deluded souls with somebody else to "blame it all on". HMMMMM.....I, at the very base of this equation, would much rather be wrong along with the much greater proportion of civilization, than with them.
I may still have imaginary friends. I mentioned in a comment to another post that for a timeframe of several weeks at work, I would walk up to one of the elevators at work, and before I could push the button, the door would open for me. No one would be on the elevator, and a classmate of mine who is now long departed, would pop into my head. Hadn't had any reason to think of him, or talk about him with others for maybe years, but there he was, in my head, grinning at me. This was behavior that would fit his personality to a "T". When it happened so many times that I couldn't write it off to coincidence, I started thanking him out loud.
What is intuition? Is it nothing more than enough experiences in any given situation to provide us with answers to problems without our conscious thought? One situation I will never forget happened very shortly after I began working at my current hospital. I had not been there long enough to know any of the doctors well, or they know me. I walked into a patient's room for the first time, and alarms started ringing in my head. Vitals were good, O2 levels were good, patient was alert and oriented , and without any specific complaint. SOMETHING just wasn't right. That something was screaming in my head so loudly, that I ventured to make a fool of myself with his admitting physician by calling him.
"Dr. Tom, I don't have anything specific to tell you, but my gut tells me that something is very wrong with Mr. Jones. His vitals are good, cardiac rhythm is sinus without ectopy or blocks, sats are okay, he's breathing is okay......but something is just NOT right." The sensible thing for that doctor to have said would have been " Okay so what do you want me to do about it?" at the very least, or to have gone into a tirade about bothering him with my nonsense. To my surprise, he said, "I'm just coming into to parking lot, I'll come to you first." Within less than five minutes, he was walking in the door, and we were in the process of putting this man on a backboard to begin CPR. That MD and I bonded from that day on, and that trust in judgement didn't waver for the next ten years or so, until he retired. Who was talking to the BOTH of us? Sure, he knew much more about this patient than I did at this point, but if he suspected he was THAT critically ill, the patient would have been admitted to a CCU, not my floor, from the ER, where he had previously been evaluated. The patient survived, by the way, and with a future of some quality of life in his pocket on discharge.
Guardian angels? Imaginary friends? My daughter was hit by a car when she was 12. She was hit on the right side on her bike, flipped and took the windshield out with her left shoulder, went up over the top of the car, and landed behind the car,in a road that, on any given day, in any given moment, SHOULD have had another car right behind to run her over again. She was in middle school, and her schoolmates sent 3 full bags of cards to wish her well. One I will never forget when she read it to me,"Sorry to hear about your accident, God must have been busy that day.". May be, but there was Somebody there to catch her as she landed, and there was no car to take her out behind the first. Her worst injuries were a terrible loss of flesh on her left shoulder, a few broken ribs, a concussion, and multiple areas of road rash all over her body.
Some cynical yahoo will want to give me scientific explanations for all of these phenomenon. Save them. If these are all delusions, I will keep them, thank you very much! They make much more sense to me than there having to be answers for every question! And just like the bunch of "lil chilrens" over there in the corner who are giggling and playing, and keeping my patient entertained through a long night, they are doing no harm to you, me, or anyone else.

Kooties!!!

2008-06-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

We all have 'em. Some are more creepy crawly than others. Some are supposed to be there, some are not.
Right now, my Mom and I have the kind you are NOT supposed to have. The kind that make you cough and hack until your ribs and chest muscles hurt. Mom is in the hospital because of them. My little old grey haired lady tends to roll right on into pneumonia every time she gets these kinds of kooties, and could very easily crack a rib or two with her coughing spells. Viscious cycle.....
It amazes me how many people I talk to in the south give me the blank stare when I mention kooties. I haven't yet made it a point to pay attention to whether they are native southerners or not, I just thought certain things were universal. Like poop, booboos, and giving babies raspberries on their tummies to make them giggle. Some people only know kooties as that game where you put bug parts together until you have a complete bug. That game and Mr. Potato Head always seemed so pointless to me, what do you win? Maybe no one ever told me the right way to play them, or I just wasn't listening.
Kooties were something the opposite sex had until you began to notice that maybe they weren't so bad after all, and sometimes for awhile after, but only in public. In private, you were composing little notes that said " if you like me, check yes " and hoping like crazy you didn't find them showing the note to all their friends and laughing.
Family members and boyfriends have the same kind of kooties, that's why it's okay to drink from the same coke can. Babies kooties are harmless to everybody, so wet baby kisses are okay. Same thing with puppies.
Obviously tho, not all kooties are harmless, and whoever it was that gave these nasty ones to Mom and me , "GEE,THANKS ALOT!!!"
Please, before you go to work sick, consider the ramifications. You honestly could be killing somebody's little grey haired lady. Not mine, this time, Thank God, but no thanks to you, whoever you might be.
WASH YOUR HANDS often, cough into your sleeve or a tissue, then WASH YOUR HANDS. DON'T cough into the phone for the next person to breath in, and WASH YOUR HANDS before you push buttons. When you are done WASHING YOUR HANDS, turn the faucet off with a paper towel, and open the door handle with the paper towel as well. If you have a cold and have not been able to WASH YOUR HANDS, or notice someone who is coughing and hacking into their hands, then offering to shake your, politely decline, and cite the cold as your reason why. You teach people how to treat you. Teach other people by example. When in a public restroom, use your towel to provide the next person with a towel, and say , "so you don't dirty your hands on the faucet again." They might look at you oddly, but they will usually thank you. If they don't, screw 'em!

It's a wonderful life!!

2008-05-12T08:43:00.000-07:00

Again, no blogging for a long time. I go in cycles with just about everything I enjoy in life, and this is no different. I understand "writers block" VERY well, and I understand having a good idea for a blog, and not being able to articulate it to my own satisfaction. Sometimes, I have too many ideas with no idea where to begin. (Not as frequent an occurance as the others, I assure you). AND sometimes, I have a really great idea, only to forget it half an hour later....Most of the time things I want to blog about would have to be done anonymously to prevent hurt feelings of those I care about, or those who could possibly make my life miserable in one way or another.
Right now, I want to again voice my appreciation for the good life I am currently experiencing.
Sitting in the behemoth, with a river within walking distance, an indoor heated swimming pool, a hot tub, an outdoor pool, a clubhouse with 2 pool tables, volleyball courts, shuffleboard,horseshoe pit, clean bathrooms should I need them, and many more amenities I can't think of right now. I am married to a man who doesn't mind that I wanted to stay another day, while he had to go back to work this morning. I will most likely be IN the river somehow, shortly, either floating down it in my "recliner" float, with a "grabby thingy" to get the aluminum cans the a#^ho*@$ left in the river along the other trash going into 2 trash bags in the other float being pulled behind, or at the beach, here in the park. My tunes in my ears, the sun on my face, and running water on my body.
Later in the week, family and friend time in Destin with GB and Sara Jean, then back here for another 9 or so days with the Rooster and a revolving selection of friends and family as our guests. Cabins are $50 a night for 1 bedroom, $60 for 2 bedroom, and they even have some that allow pets. RV sites are $30 a night and have 30 and 50 amp hookups with water electric, sewer, wifi, also pet friendly. Great people run this place, and activities are planned periodically for those who want to commune with other happy campers here.
This is a membership campground, we are getting more than our money's worth, and we can have up to 10 guests at any given time.
Any time you would like to come play with us, let us know. We'll teach you how to play holeyboard, Hand n foot, and Farkle if you don't know how, or just let you be your own entertainment if that's what you wish. Just bring mosquito spray......no earthly paradise is perfect. But, it's close enough for me.

Things that make you go Hmmmmm

2008-03-04T06:04:00.001-08:00

Just left a site for info on pet health. Went there to make sure that neosporin ointment was okay for dogs. It is.
As I was looking at the list of meds used with dogs and cats, I saw one listed for Dementia in dogs.
Okay.

To Hell in a Handbasket

2007-12-18T04:32:00.000-08:00

Went out with the princess for our once a week "sanity returns" night. She and I both know without these nights on a fairly regular basis, we would not survive this world.
I told her that I had blogged about EN's plight, and our conversation from there inspired another blog subject, related very closely.
Why do we exhibit integrity in our chosen fields?
It surely isn't because our top administration demonstrates the same on a regular basis.....How many times have you found out about a life altering change in your work status that you KNOW will not work well, LONG AFTER it has already been implemented? One of my favorite comments is, "but they didn't Aks me....", (not a typo). They don't AKS you because the decision was not based on evidence of it's efficacy in solving the problem, it is based on cost savings! ALWAYS. Then, they lie to you about why and how and where, etc, usually beginning the pep rally with "We are SO excited about.....".
These are educated people, mind you, some up to doctorate level. Doctorate level in management, I mean. Supposedly smart people....supposedly VERY smart people. To do my job requires a college degree. So, I am supposedly ALSO a reasonably smart person. I have had some of the psychology classes that they have also attended. I also add to my bag some very important life experience of a personal nature and some even more important experience in the observation of human nature, as we are all different in how we react to any given situation. It is all a matter of perception. The people who DON'T have a college education in my workplace, bring to the table those same OJT experiences that are so very valuable to make the wheels turn at the proper RPM.
Do the "powers that be" ( No caps, you see.), not get that? Obviously not.
Do they also value loyalty in the workplace? Not if it is going to cost them money, or rock their very leaky boats. I work in a "right to work" state, which means I don't have to be part of a union to have a job. But, it also means I don't have anyone to back me up if "they" should decide to fire me, for whatever trumped up reason they choose. And believe me, there are enough snakey people out there who will go to the bosses with just enough truth about any given situation to make them listen. They can, and do, then implement processes to get rid of you based on those minimal truths, without allowing the whole truth to come out, BECAUSE THEY CAN. The snakey people love this, because they think it endears them to the bosses, and it gives them a false sense of power. And some bosses will use these people just like police use a confidential informant, just by dropping hints about what kind of information they would like to elicit. Paranoid? Before you decide this, think back on your own work experiences, and ask yourself if you truely have never seen this method at work.
Think about these examples of their tangible recognition of your loyalty.....Bonuses......holiday parties.....truely individual raises based on performance rather than your "fair" share of the pie once a year.
There is a saying that one AW SH** wipes out a whole lot of attaboys. This is even more true when complete perfection is the only standard, but is used on a situational basis....someone raised sand, and someone has to pay. The sand usually raised by someone who is just venting their overblown egos.
This is all in reference to a business that requires the best you can manage to get, because people's lives are at stake! HOW, I ask you, can we afford to apply the same stupid business tactics and "standards" that office supply stores and lawn care companies can?
Why should we have integrity? Why should we have loyalty? Because we have to look ourselves in the mirror the next day. AND because the people who depend on us to have those things, DEPEND on us to have those things!
When I was growing up, I had a friend who was not the brightest bulb in the box. We had a conversation about a character who lived in our area. He would dress all in black, Bat Masterson-style and just walk the roads all day. Same costume every season, same walk. My friend had also had conversations with this guy, and told me that this guy had multiple college degrees, but was really weird. No job, no goals, no interest in the rest of the world. My friend's comment was, "that book learnin will make you crazy!" I just smiled, and wrote it off to his level of intelligence, rationalizing his lack of education. Now, in hindsight, I'm not so sure. Maybe his bulb wasn't as dim as I had originally thought.

Verdict?

2007-12-17T05:22:00.000-08:00

I haven't blogged for some time now. Won't go through the list of my rationalizations as to why....
Want some feedback.
Hypothetical situation here......
You have a nurse with 24+ years of experience. This nurse regularly receives accolades from her higher-ups regarding her competency, commitment to her coworkers, willingness to adapt to new situations, and to assist her coworkers to do the same, etc, etc.
Now, the situation she and her coworkers are in has changed drastically. 80% new staff, babies just out of school. Have passed their boards, but still deer in the headlights looks on their faces most of the time. Licenses don't confer knowledge or experience.
They have moved the "unit" to a new location, a former critical care unit. Nicer in many ways, staff are able to see all patients from the desk, there are "hard" monitors....screens in both each room and on the desk, so that heart rhythms, bp, O2 sat, respiratory rate, and if necessary, other readings can be viewed quickly, or reviewed. The plan is to have the critical care unit nurses help with the transition, to teach them what they need to know to care for more critically ill patients. Not "unit" patients, but patients with more problems than they have been used to. Most are willing to do so, but they come with the attitude that it is beneath them to have to do so. Some are outright hostile about the situation, and while they would never allow a patient to be injured, they only help when specifically asked.
The powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, begin sending patients to the unit with things they have never seen before, even the experienced nurses. The word along the grapevine is that the department head was asked about the wisdom of sending those patients to their unit, and her reply was "They can handle it" Word is also that she asked the person transferring those patients to us to give them an inservice as to how to care for these patients. By the time the nightshift arrives, the translation has dwindled to "if this alarm goes off, you push this button to reset it". Hmmmm.
Fast forward, now. The experienced nurse is working with 2 brand spanking new nurses, the night has been a "hand you your butt" night. 8 patients, 2 getting blood, which is an involved process, especially with 2 nurses that have never hung blood before, and these 2 patients are on the opposite sides of the unit. This kind of night is disaster waiting to happen under the best of circumstances, and of course, the conditions are, shall we say, less than optimal. So, the experienced nurse is responsible for 8 patients, 2 very scared and stressed new nurses, all the BS busy work jobs they have decided are essential to the running of the unit. Most which should be done by a tech, which again, in the higher up's infinite wisdom, they have decided they don't need.
So, all survive the shift, all are still breathing. The babies are giving report to the day shift which consist of one more nurse than the night shift had, and unit secretary, TWO techs, and the doctors are roaming around, seeing their morning round patients.
Over the loudspeaker, they hear "CODE BLUE 2E, CODE BLUE 2E"......they all sympathize with their coworkers who are dealing with a terrible situation at the worst possible time, shift change.
Not 1 minute later they hear "CAT TEAM 4E, CAT TEAM 4E" Different animal, same responders. The babies are done with patient care, there are at least 6 people in the room besides the experienced night shift nurse who can handle any emergency that can arise, and the unit that has had the CAT call is right outside the door. EN turns to one of the techs and says," They aren't going to get any help, lets go see if they need us." They go out the door, to the room. It is a patient that has stroked, but vitals are stable. Nothing to do except move the patient to the unit for stroke protocol. As EN turns to leave, a member of the stroke team arrives, and the tech and she go back to the unit they came from. Report continues to its completion, and all concerned on the night shift eventually go home.
At some point later , EN is called to the "office" with a list of her infractions, a few which she has to bite the bullet and say, "yes, I screwed up, I am an imperfect human." Some of THESE entailed only being able to be in one place at a time, some entailed not knowing what one of the babies did or did not know because she hadn't trained them, and they don't ask questions, and reject any help that is offered. But this situation is on the list under the heading of "Leaving the new nurses in her care unattended to attend a CAT call when she was not part of the CAT team".....huh? On top of this paper with her crimes, is a counseling sheet with areas for her to explain herself, that will undoubtedly go in her personel record.
Now, I would like for some of you to let me know what her punishment should be.
P.S. The hospital concerned frequently vows to do whatever it takes to improve retention of staff.

Blues Skies

2007-06-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

I was in the hospital the day the towers were hit.
My best friend was at my bedside ( as well she should have been!) so that my other best friend, the Rooster, didn't have to take off work to take me home. I had, just the day before, had a "minor" procedure on my heart, which entailed microwaving an errant electrical pathway that was causing my heart to beat at 240 beats a minute for up to 20 minutes at a time. Now, if our alloted time on this earth should happen to be the number of heartbeats, I was burning daylight! Besides making me feel like crap.
We were watching "Good Morning America", when Charlie Gibson announced the show was going to special reports.......the first tower had been hit already, and they began showing the footage. The princess and I turned to each other in bewilderment as to how something like this could have happened. Coming from an aviation family, I could see no good reason weatherwise for this to happen...and with all the backup systems a monster like that must have, how could it have been a mechanical error so vast that the pilot could not have prevented it from crashing RIGHT THERE!!?? It wasn't until we saw the second one hit that we began to realize that it was being done on purpose. And even then, our naive and somewhat arrogant sense of security couldn't wrap our brains around what was going on. It refused to sink in.
When my cardiologist/electrophysiologist walked in, a native of Syria, we asked him if he had heard what was going on. "No, what...." About that time, they were repeating the shot of the second hit, and we told him to watch. He did, and without skipping a beat, he turned to us and said, "We are at war." Just that simple. Just that matter-of-fact. Good doctor that he is, he recognized the symptoms immediately and diagnosed the problem. But, in this case, his doctorate came from life experiences, not formal education. And just in case you are wondering, the "we" he was talking about was the family of people in that room, not the pilots of the planes.
Discharging me from the hospital, he told me to take it easy for x number of days, no driving for x number of days, etc. BUT, the princess and I were already wondering what we should be doing. She's a widow, so anything to be done was on her shoulders, and my Rooster was at work.
She took me home, and the more we talked, the more we worried about getting supplies, cash, gas in the cars, etc, JUST IN CASE. Her daughter was in school "across the big water"in P-colaspeak and she began to feel the pull of needing to be at home. After promising her I would behave, she went home, and I promptly got in my vehicle and filled it up with gas. She and I had already bought groceries. (She lifted the heavy stuff)
At any given time in Pensacola, if you don't hear SOMETHING in the air, you notice. It's like living near the train tracks and not hearing the daily 10am go through, at all. It was eerily quiet. For too long a time. Being a Navy town, we wondered if we would be considered a target, especially since the Navy Aviators start their careers here. The quiet was reminding us that we are not safe. And that we may never again be able to feel safe. That our lives as we had known them had changed. And that, no matter how you might feel about the military and war, it might be coming to our own world. Where we, through that school my MD had attended, would learn to recognize those same symptoms without a second thought. And maybe, our world would no longer be the best place to live, even with all it's faults.
The roars I had no longer consciously heard became something I listened for. My protector from the school bully had been told to "stand down". I was on my own. I hung my flags on my house and my car. And watched TV like somebody with OCD.
I know in my heart that the VERY INSTANT the air was cleared for takeoff, the BLUES fired up and took off, announcing to our portion of the world that they were ready for whatever might come. I went to the yard and watched them fly over, and cried while I felt a sense of pride you cannot imagine, unless you are a Navy Vet. Even Fat Albert was in the air. Waste of money? Sure. But, had I been able, I would have paid that bill out of my own pocket.

I'm BAAAAACCCCCKKKKK!!!!!

2007-06-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

So sorry, to those who loyally check and recheck to see if there is anything new here.

The month of May had something inked in for EVERY day, and we have been so shorthanded at work for so long that my checks have been nearly obscene (but only in MY frame of reference). Made for some really nice vacations......

The princess and I had another really great roadtrip to Gatlinburg, Tenn. I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful that part of the country is. We stayed at the Clarion right on the main touristy drag ( no cabins for us, I love her, but not in that way!) which was cheaper than I had anticipated, and very nice digs for the price. We were right across the street from some good eateries, and since we were right across the street, they became some very good drinkeries, as well. I am a very cheap date in that department, and have to check my nose regularly to keep a good evening's fun , a good evening's fun. When it starts getting numb, I have to back off, or I suddenly flip from everything is funny, to remembering EVERY wrong ever done to me, and I certainly don't intend to spend any money to go THERE!!! We were close enough to home that we didn't even need a DW. The desk staff would have come to our rescue, I'm sure.

We had a spa day......OH MY. My first spa pedicure!! Put my mp3 player on, and just went away while my tootsies were filed, sanded, decuticled and painted a very sexy color. Legs were defoliated, massaged and oiled, arches massaged.....all while sitting in a vibrating chair. It won't be my last, I can tell you. I should be able to claim these on my taxes, as I am sure they could extend my nursing career by a couple of years or so. We went for the whole shebang....facials, massages, pedicure, and I even got a haircut thrown in as I had been too busy pre roadtrip to get it cut, and it was at that frustating stage where I wanted to just put it up a la Pebbles Flintstone style.
Two full days communing with God's beauty in the mountains. We saw 2 male turkeys vying for a little girl turkey's affections. I would have had trouble choosing, I can tell you, they were both quite the magnificent specimens! At least if they had bags over their heads..... We saw several deer, and were able to come within just a few feet of them for pictures. They know they are protected...... We saw a black bear, seemed to me to be a young one, but I am not a black bear expert by any means. Now, I can answer a question for you, but not the age old one.....deer DO *&@# in the woods, I have proof. The bear didn't oblige us.

There is a tourist shopping area that is well worth visiting. I am not a shopper....I think I am more man in that dept than woman....I hate malls,etc. BUT, I DO like seeing the atypical sort of thing, and places like Nashville Indiana and this place are my cup of tea. We were parking to visit several shops, and saw a woman walking a canine type creature. The princess and I looked and wondered out loud if it was a wolf. We went into the shop where we saw the woman go, and yes, it was a beautiful Timber Wolf, named Shadow. She came up to the swinging door and leaned in to us as we scratched her ears, but split the second we pulled out our cameras. Shadow's Momma explained, "she's over it." Shadow's Momma was in the process of fashioning Native American wedding garb out of deer hides, probably Cherokee. Incredibly beautiful. She also confessed to being a former Northwest Florida resident, about halfway between my and Greybeard's abodes. We invited her to come stay again anytime she would like, and of course, Shadow would be welcome as well.

We also went to Dollywood, and while it is more shopping than I would like, not a waste of time. Got some interesting souvenirs. Saw a really good "Birds of Prey" show, with an onsite sanctuary for Eagles, Hawks and the like who have either been imprinted by humans, or injured so badly they can never return to the wild. Right up my alley.

I would like to take the Rooster there, probably would go for a cabin this time, but learned you need to be careful when renting the unknown. Saw many places that had cute little cabins, alright....they were smack up against each other, and blocking a good portion of those beautifully scenic views they advertise on their websites. Will have to "Google Earth" them to make sure what we are getting is as advertised. Ain't technology wonderful?

Upon returning to work, found that my world had been turned upside down, shaken, and dumped out in another area. My co-workers thought I would be doing a "Mommanurse dance", which by now are famous throughout the hospital, but when I heard the particulars, I think that IF they do it the way they say, it will be a big improvement. BIG IF.

Only worked 3 days, then went for our anniversay vacation. 13 years, and I still like him. A very novel idea, for me. We went to Adventures Unlimited, camped, kayaked and played. My best kind of world, I could live there. We take the behemoth, have some of the comforts we enjoy, and pretend the world is always this beautiful and this fun. If you ever decide to come our way, and it is the right time of the year, we will be suggesting a trip there, I assure you. They have everything from airconditioned bunkhouses to cute little cabins with screened in porches overlooking the creek, bathrooms and half kitchens, they also have tent sites if you are they really back to nature kind of folk. They will take you "up creek" for tube, canoe/kayak trips, as long as you want, pretty much. You can even do overnighters on the creek. Lots of fun. Anytime I can be near, on or in water, I'm a happy camper, so to speak.

Immediately, and I do mean immediately on return, I took my Mom for a very stressful trip to rule out an evil disease, which, Thank You, God, was ruled out. I didn't even have an idea how uptight I was about this whole deal until it was over, and we could relax. At 81, the outlook was not good if we didn't get good news. Even the best outcome would have been NO fun. She can now change her plans about the rest of her life, and include some fun in it. Me too.

So, there was my Month of May. I will try to do better. Didn't want to blog unhappy stuff, and didn't have time to blog the happy stuff.

Rocket J Squirrel

2007-03-06T06:14:00.000-08:00

We have lost another aviator in our family.
Uncle Rocky built his own airplanes. He built some things that many people wouldn't have thought of going up in, wouldn't even have wanted to watch anyone else fly in. He got my Mom to fly with him wearing a Rocket J Squirrel aviator hat, flaps and all, in an open air craft that was one of the precursors to ultralights. She was incredibly cute in it.
There are probably so many stories that could be told here about his life and flying experiences, we are all deprived children because I can't pass them on to you. I DO know he has landed planes in trees, he lived in a community build in a square around taxiing and landing strips, and every house had a small hangar to house each owner's planes.
We had a family reunion at his house one time. His neighbors and aviator friends provided us with rides, many probably to people who never before and never again will ride in anything smaller than a 727. It was hot, it was noisy, it was a blast!
His passing should be noted, he was a very interesting guy, as were/are all my Uncles. I know Daddy was there to greet him, and show him where the tarmac was.
See you later, Rocky.

Little black cloud

2007-01-22T13:41:00.000-08:00

Been offline. Amazing to me how out of touch I have felt because of it. 'Puter got sick, had to take it to the hospital and have multiple limbs amputated. They had apparently become gangrenous. So, bit by bit, starting over.
BUT, the day before the 'puter bit the dust, the big screen tv went "pop" (little "pop", not a big one) and shut off. When I turned everything back on, I had blinking timer light, and nothing would let me turn the tv back on. Tried to "reboot" everything....tv, dvr,unplugged everything, let it sit for 10 minutes, then for a couple hours. Called Cox systems support, then Sony techies. No help. Gonna call the tv doc and see if he makes house calls. This thing isn't the biggest one, but too big for me to want to haul it all over town. We have been very happy that we have had it for as long as we have, feel like we got two more years than we expected, because Ivan filled it with water and wet drywall (oxymoron?). We let it dry, turned it on and, VIOLA!!!! (As opposed to voila!) big screen tv!! This was still during the time we had NO walls, Troughs hanging from the ceiling so that when it rained, it would run the 50 drips into one big one, and 4 extension cords running into a window to run the fridge, fan, lights and YES!! the BIG SCREEN TV!! FOOTBALL!!!!! The rooster would sit in a lawn chair with an upturned "mud" bucket to put his ashtray and beer on, and he was a happy camper, quite literally.
SOOOO, we really can't complain much......not much.....but the timing really sucks, dontcha think? Doesn't it usually, tho?
Got a smaller tv we had in the bedroom that will do the trick until we find out if it is due for a code change....(medics will know). DNR may be in our future. We will grieve, but there ARE some awfully nice LCD's out there...............
Anyway, tv can wait a bit, 'puter couldn't. Glad to be back.

A Challenge

2006-12-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

TOO LATE FOR CHRISTMAS, BUT....

At this point, I don't even remember what turned me on to this, but somehow, I was directed to Anysoldier.com. It gives addresses to troops to send letters, cards and care packages. Go there, and see what you think.
Right this second, my floor is covered in toiletries, snacks, footballs, basketballs, books and magazines. We divided all this into 3 piles, and we have adopted three units to send this stuff too. I have gotten my units at work involved, and a few have responded with great generosity.
We have a used book store here in town. I went to buy a few books to send, told them what I was doing, and the "boss" asked me if I could wait a few minutes. I told her sure, and about ten minutes later, she came back with over 60 books for me to send as well. I got the hugs, wish I could send them in the boxes I am mailing.
You can't imagine how this is making us feel. The only way is for you to do it, or contribute to the places that will handle it for you if you send money.
In other words "ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS!!!" I know from experience you will get much more back than you give.

Star light, star bright

2006-10-26T03:32:00.000-07:00

I grew up around airplanes, big, little, real and model. My Daddy and all his brothers flew, I was told I was 2 weeks old the first time I was in an airplane. There was a time in my life that I could tell people we had an airplane in our garage.....I don't think they believed me. We did, but it was in pieces. Daddy was rebuilding it. It was a Piper Cub,and it had a fabric fuselage and wings. I hung out in the garage with my Dad alot, handed him tools when he was involved in something that required tool-handing. He wouldn't let me be in the garage, tho, when he was putting the fabric back on the wings.....he was using something he called "dope" to strengthen and shrink the fabric to the wings and fuselage. I caught a whiff of it a couple of times, and understood why they would call it such. It was a garage full of what kids would sniff to get high. Daddy smoked, but I'd be willing to bet that stuff did more damage than 5 years of smoking.
One of the things Dad and I would do to get out of the house was drive to the end of the runway and watch the planes take off from Weir-Cook airport in Indianapolis. I couldn't have been but 4 or 5 when we did this, and I enjoyed it as much as he, I think. Maybe he enjoyed it even more because I did.
The first time I flew in a commercial aircraft was the trip I took to Savannah to fall in love with OPD. It was so very strange to crawl into a plane and not be sitting right beside, or right behind to the pilot. Worse yet, I wasn't RELATED to the pilot!!! OH NO!!!!WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!! I hadn't thought to be nervous until all this occured to me.
I still love to fly. My favorite part is the takeoff. You sit in this tube....your ears are popping because the cabin is getting pressurized....you mosey out to the end of the runway and get into position. The jet engines start to rev, and the tube shakes because it's being held back when all it wants to do is GO. The the brakes release, and you are flattened back in the seat, racing faster and faster down the runway. The nose eventually lifts and all of a sudden the shaking stops and up you go. A few more ear pops and you start to level some. Here is where the excitement starts to wane for me. As long as I don't have to be on the plane for more than a few hours, I enjoy the whole trip, but as I get older, I seem to get number quicker. And numb begins to hurt. Not so bad if you are on the aisle.You don't have to bother people to get up. I still bump my noggin on the overhead compartment every time I get up,tho.
The last takeoff I was in was my favorite so far. Houston.....Dark. The usual rush for takeoff. Then I looked out the window at the little row of lights in the sky. Like a shifting group of stars taking their turns in line to drift to earth to turn into something more mundane. Another star takes it's place each time one makes it to terra firma, and another claims it's place at the end of the line. Maybe they aren't stars at all, but angels coming to earth to interact with us and leave us each a little blessing.
Don't ruin it for me,okay?

California Dreamin'

2006-10-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

Got back day before yesterday from a trip to Ontario California. We were choosing from a list that included Key West, Gatlinburg Tenn,and Orlando and it's playspots. We discussed it, and along the way, one of us mentioned visiting relatives again. It wasn't long before it was decided and phone calls were being made to make sure it was okay with the visitees.
Not only was it okay with the visitees, but plans were immediately made to accomodate us in the best way possible. Now, this is a family with four kids, two full time jobs, a college education, two soccer teams, two cats and a dog. One of the full time jobs is a one man job, so taking time off is not convenient at ANY time, but from the sounds of things , it was presented to the boss as a MUST situation, and, happily, granted. GOLF!!!!
The back yard provides a view of mountains that are close enough to still look mighty big to this flatlander, and for about half of the days we were there, easily visible. One of the golf courses we played had a mountain view, as well. Tough to deal with, let me tell you.
We were waited on hand and foot, almost to the point of uncomfortability, but I managed, thank you very much. The Rooster cooked his specialty dish, which was received with the request for seconds and thirds, and some for breakfast. Bad for his ego.
Two sweet cats and a very sweet dog kept us from pining for our critters too much, and ours were being well cared for while we were gone by family of their own. One of the cats is still a kitten, kitten behavior was a plus.
Trip from Pensacola was trying. They put us on the plane, took us out away from the gate, THEN told us we would be sitting, waiting on weather to clear in Houston. What's up with that? Am considering a lawsuit for unlawful incarceration. We sat just long enough to miss our connecting flight and have numb buns. We got to Houston, and were greeted by agents who handed us boarding passes for "stand by" later that night, and guaranteed flight in the morning, which I thought was pretty efficient. We went to the gate, checked in, and waited. And waited. Flight delays 4 times set us up to get into Ontario 5 hours later than we should have,but at least that night, and WAY past our ride's bedtime. In fact, I think they napped, then woke up to come get us. I couldn't have done that. One of our flightmates got a confirmed ride at the last minute, and we cheered her as she boarded. We waited some more while they continued to board as many weather delayed people as they could. While that was tough to take, I gave them credit for accomodating as many people as they could.
Hello hugs the next morning by a couple of the most beautiful and wonderful kids in the world started our first morning out just right. We got to see the older two of the brood for short periods, just as wonderful and beautiful, but the world will have them sooner.
Now, one thing I had failed to mention to this point is that one of the reasons we chose this bunch over tropics and mountains is that when we left them last time we visited, our faces hurt from laughing. That trip was stressed by a wedding, and travelling with family that I had just come to know ( VERY long story). It was still enjoyable enough that we quickly began to look forward to a trip without those stressors.
It was also my birthday time, and they made it about as good as it gets. Hubby took us out to a fine dinner at a restaraunt suggested by a workmate of the visitees (GOOD JOB whoever you are!). Very nice gifts, well thought out, and very appreciated. But still laughing and enjoying company of people we really wish didn't live so far away. If you wonder if the visits are better because they are rare, I would say NO. There is a connection with this bunch like you SHOULD have with family. Makes me so happy, as I am the Johnny-come-lately to this bunch but am as deep seated as I always hoped I would be.
The rooster started some new nicknames that are his to use ALONE.....taught a new card game(Hand and Foot....is this a theme I see developing?)that I hope will be a staple to our future visits, and began making plans for next summer, that, if they fall in place, will be only short of incredible on the Richter/fun scale.
The trip back came up too quickly. I am usually ready to head home at the end of a vacation like this. Not with this bunch. We got on the plane after many hugs and reluctant goodbyes, to see our Houston fiasco planemate also boarding. What are the odds that three people from P-cola would choose those exact dates and location for a trip to California? We decided that there is a reason we are suppose to know each other. The Rooster and I didn't get to sit together on either flight, according to our seat assignments, and while we were waiting to board for Houston to P-cola, I mentioned that it would be kind of neat if our flightmate sat next to one of us. Well, as soon as she saw she was sitting next to the Rooster and I wasn't there, she offered to change so we could sit together. Now, that was wonderful, but not enough for me. We exchanged e-mail addresses so we could find out if there was more to this story. Welcome home e-mails have already been sent, and I intend to try my very best to stay in touch. There are no coincidences......
Family can be the most wonderful thing in the world when it is loveable.
I am one of the lucky ones. AND maybe we have met adopted family as well.
Getting home was good. We haven't been able to get out of sight of the critters.
Life can be very good....right now it is. And I am grateful.

STIKFS

2006-10-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

You shouldn't eat ice cream with a fork.

Perspective

2006-09-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

I have long known that how I see myself, and what I know about me is vastly different than the picture others have.
I am "Mommanurse" to many who know me at work. That should conjure up a nurturing, loving entity, for if it wasn't, it would be "MOTHERnurse" (or maybe Mommydearestnurse). Notice I said KNOW me at work. I have often been told that until people got to know me, they were scared of me. I didn't realize I came across that judgemental and intimidating. I don't want to change that much, because what I do, and what the people around me do, all the way to the housekeepers and linen people, is a job too important to have anything other than a very serious attitude. That doesn't mean you can't have fun, it means having fun while taking care of business at the same time. But, I wish I had always made it very clear that I was always approachable and ready to be a resource person. My shift people know that, but they have had a chance to know me better in the first shift they work with me, than the other shift does in quite awhile. Our contact is brief, and filled with "just the facts, ma'am" because it is time for somebody to get the heck out of there and go home. Nobody is interested in social nuances at that point.
If you have never seen the series "Judging Amy", this will mean nothing to you. Tyne Daily's character, Maxine Gray, is somebody I can identify with, very closely. VERY flawed, VERY stubborn, VERY sure of her own truth and how that should be everyone's truth. Shaken to her core when she continues to learn those life lessons about how everyone's individual truth is still truth. Neglecting herself to take care of everyone else, when she is smart enough to know you can't take care of ANYONE else, unless you care for yourself first. She can't spare the time tho. Tilting at windmills repeatedly until she has to retreat from the frustration of it all. Leaving very little reserve for her personal traumas when they occur. Does not suffer fools gladly, and reacts to stupidity (other than her own) with temper tantrums. Still and all, deep down, has compassion for people who are just "poor slobs trying to get by in this world", as long as they are trying at all to be any kind of decent human being. No matter what their faults. Understands that "but for the GRACE of GOD" she goes. Her daughter on the show, Amy, said it very well....."Life wants to be a mess."
Oh to be as beautiful as Tyne Daily, especially when she smiles. She smiles with her entire face. I have no idea how far off I am in other's perception when it comes to relating to her character. Not sure I want to know, because in my mind, she is a hero. One of those everyday heroes who's name never ends up in the paper. Who just keeps trudging along, hoping she is leaving a positive memory on most people she touches. Who relishes most of her reputation as a tough bird, and WANTS to scare the poopy out of those who need to be scared. But, who knows how fragile she truly is. And is mortified when anyone else gets a glimpse.
Everyone who knows Maxine loves her. Makes fun of her flaws, but is safe in doing it even to her face. That's what I want to be. I have had enough people say things to me that let me know who THEY thought I was, to know that I am not Maxine Gray to hardly anybody. But I AM to enough people to make me happy. They are the ones who matter. They are the ones who have taken time to really get to know my inner workings. The others only listen to half of my sentences, or interpret facial expressions from their own frame of reference ( which is ALL they can do) and I am somebody to them that is SO foreign to who I really am, that I should have another name. Sometimes it is very sad. We could do each other some good, if we only took time to sort out what is common about us.
Who are you? Who are you to other people? How many times have you had somebody ask you "What's wrong?" when you didn't have any idea that your body language was conveying that something was? How many times in your life do you say something and have people take it completely a different way than what was meant? Is it their perception, or your delivery? How many times does that happen with someone you thought knew you better? How much leeway are we willing to give for these quirks in perception?
To put this in very practical terms, I now have two people above me in my chain of command who knew me before they were my boss. I am very fortunate they they know me well enough to have a favorable opinion of my work, and enough of a favorable opinion of my integrity and personality, that it isn't going to cause me problems. "There but for the GRACE of GOD...."
Perception. It is a much bigger word than it looks.

QIDKTAT

2006-09-08T06:29:00.000-07:00

Do big fat men think a full beard and moustache, along with a ponytail attached to a head balding on top, is a slimming look for them?

Some things I know for sure.....

2006-09-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

NEVER pass up the chance to pee.

Questions I DON'T know the answers to.....

2006-09-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

Why is it called menoPAUSE? PLEASE!!! Don't hit the play button!

Questions I know the answers to, but....

2006-08-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

Why do they only show women licking their teeth in the toothpaste ads?

SWEET REVENGE

2006-08-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

For many women, much of our adult life is spent explaining, being accused of, or trying to control intermittent irrational behaviors. Most men will never understand.....they can't. Some men use it as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for making their significant other upset, couldn't possibly be their fault. If he's stupid enough, he will even say something out loud about "her time of month". Some women use it as an excuse to behave very badly, "I can't help it, I'm hormonal!"
Thankfully, I learned to pay attention to my husband's body language, and tried very hard to not punish more harshly than the crime called for. I still have not made him understand that he was still committing crimes, I just kept my mouth shut the rest of the time. Hormones just lubricated the sharp edges of my tongue at the same time they made infractions intolerable that before had not been mentioned. He's a good one, he knew when to back off, he knew not to say anything most of the time. And,he tolerated me without holding it against me, or using it against me at some later date. I might keep him.
There are some men who have, and are finding out what it is like. Sadly, by the time they learn,it is too late to help their spouses during their suffering.
My Father went through it, my Uncle went through it, and I have a cousin who is going through it right now. And while I empathize and sympathize with his fears and suffering, I am getting a perverse pleasure out of his descriptions of his hormonal fluctuations. He now knows hot flashes,emotional lability in the form of tears and/or anger, and the feeling of loss of control that comes with all of that. He knows he isn't crazy, but there are also times he's not so sure, and he isn't enjoying it any more than we did, or do. For some men, the treatment is worse than the cure. I don't know if this is true in his case, I am not privy to his medical record. I am referring to treatment for prostate cancer, which is treated in some cases, and in part, with hormones. Hormones......make us crazy when we are teenagers, make us crazy once a month, make us crazy in our mid/old age, just when things should be getting easier. After all, don't we have most of it figured out by then? (yeah....right) "They" say, if a man lives long enough, he will get prostate cancer. The wonders of modern medicine are dooming a lot of men to that diagnosis, if this is true. Anyway, I hope my cousin is a smart enough man to have already apologized for ANY time he thought she was being a witch just for the fun of it. Whether he voiced it out loud or not. Because for him, it's not too late. It may be closing the barn door after the cows are out, but it is better than nothing. And if SHE is smart, better than nothing will be good enough.

Night shift

2006-06-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

We don't call it graveyard in my line of work......

I am sitting here at 9:47 in the a.m., drinking what some people would suggest rehab for, should they catch me at it. But, for me it's more than "five o'clock somewhere", it's actually about a quarter to eight in the evening for me. While I ate supper several hours ago, the bars were just closing, so I had to wait until I got home.
Nightshift workers live in a very different world. Thankfully, the rooster worked nights for long enough that he understands. Greybeard understands. My children learned very quickly.....observed it most of the time. If your name was NOT God, you did NOT get to talk to their Mom during the day after she had worked the night before. No, not even if your hair was on fire. My Mom works very hard at trying to understand,I think hers is more forgetfulness than anything, and not remembering my schedule.
I thought I was a night person for years. First worked the 3-11 pm shift, then would go home and watch old movies for hours before going to bed. Partly because I had to wind down, and partly because I always have liked to stay up late, sleep in late. Drove my Dad nuts! He was one of those guys who got up at 0 dark thirty, got to work an hour before he had to.....HE drove the rest of us nuts! But, when I started working the 11p-7a shift, I found out I wasn't the night person I thought I was. Very different! When you get to bed when it is still dark out, you can generally get to sleep before the world wakes up and starts making the racket that the daytime world makes. The world is VERY noisy when the sun is up. I had to leave the phones on while my kids were in school, in case of emergencies. I would answer the phone, obviously groggy. I didn't care, I worked NIGHTS for heaven's sake!! And I would get "Oh, you're still in bed?" This is at 10 am, I had been in bed one hour.
I don't even get to sleep....to an astounding number of people what I do is "nap". No wonder I feel like crap so often, if all I do is nap!!! Would wear anybody down!
I now do 12 hour shifts, 7p-7a. If they told me I had to go back to 11-7, I would tell them adios. I love it. Still no "suits" hanging around, the time goes fast because the first 5 hours is very busy. I can tuck my patients in much more comfortably, (but, don't get the idea they all sleep....they most certainly do NOT) and do my charting at a little more leisurely pace. I do 3-4 day stretches, and while that means all I get done in that time frame is work and sleep, that schedule provides me with more consecutive days off to recover, get stuff done that night shift workers don't get done, because they are sleeping when all the "productive people" are at work running their stores, offices, etc. It was a Godsend when my Daddy was sick, I had six day stretches off, and could go on my 700 mile one way trips to check on him and not take vacation days to do it. AND drive at night when the contruction crews were gone and traffic much better.
You pray for dayshift neighbors with no kids, or at least people who stay in their houses all day. I had a neighbor for awhile who would tune his Harley by ear during the day....his garage pointed directly at my bedroom window......POWPOW, POTATOPOTATO,POWPOWPOW, POTATOPOTATOPOTATO,POWPOWPOW!!! I would finally get up, hair sticking up all over, hounds from hell look on my face, in my nightgown, and go out and around the fence, screaming, TOMMY! POTATOPOTATOPOTATO, POWPOWPOW!!...Tommy!!!!.....POWPOWPOW,POTATO....TTTTTTOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYY!!!!!!!
He would look up finally, and with a stricken look on his face, nearly knock the bike over, apologizing profusely. We finally worked out a signal so he would know when his life might be in danger.
It's tough to switch back and forth sometimes from the nights I work to ty to have a "normal" family life, and I am sometimes unsuccessful. It takes a day or two to get there, quite often, so it's a good thing I get a few off in a row. Try to be at all the family get-togethers? Forget it!! It's against the law for them to occur on your normal days off. My schedule goes for 6 weeks at a time, so no impromptu plans for me, thank you very much! We try to cover for each other for the really important stuff, but we also try not to ask, because we know how badly it screws everybody's lives up for them to cover for you. And forget making a Doctor's appointment...not only do you have to contend with your six week's schedule, for them you have to plan ahead for 2 or 3 months. If you can't get an early am appointment, or one on your usual day off, you end up cancelling them. I need my brain, my brain needs sleep, or people die. Simple as that.
In spite of all the hassles that go with working nights, I still love it. If my patient is frightened, I am much more likely to have time to hold their hand and talk to them about what is making them frightened, or talk to them until I talk them out of it. I am much more likely to have time to really read the chart and be able to put 2 and 2 and 2 together and come up with 6. It has actually happened many times that I was the only person who did. Day people just don't have the time to read the chart. There is much we can't take care of, answers we don't have access to, things we can't schedule, until the "normal" world shows up again, but we are champions at leaving notes for people who follow us so they can do it. We tend to usher more people to the "ECU" (Eternal Care Unit) than days....studies were done that showed people tended to pass away more often between 2 am and 5am than any other time. (Don't look for the footnote and reference, it won't be there). I wonder if it is because the noise and chaos keeps them aware and tied to the world, and they are able to just let go more easily in the calmer atmosphere of nighttime?
Many years ago, my Dad got upset with me while I was visiting because I didn't get up and get ready for church when he thought I should. I was probably in my 40's....I knew just how long it takes me to get ready. I heard him mumbling JUST loud enough for me to hear "Dadblamed people stay up all night, and then expect to be able to get anything done during the day!!" Oh, boy. Hit me JUST wrong. I began to tell him in no uncertain terms that if it weren't for people like me, there would be no electricity during the night (something he could relate to), houses would burn completely to the ground in the night, stores and houses would be robbed at crook's leisure, there would be no one to fly people to the hospital after a bad car accident in the night, and PEOPLE WOULD DIE WITH NO ONE TO HOLD THEIR HANDS!!!! He never mentioned anything like that to me again. It had been one of his lifelong favorite themes until that day.
So, next time you get up in the middle of the night to go pee, think about us, but PLEASE, don't call us between 9am and 5pm to tell us you did!!

Ole Prairie Dog

2006-06-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

He's a Grandpa......and oh, boy, does he ever love the role. Father's day is coming. I have no idea what kind of Father he was to his kids....can't imagine that he would be a bad one. But, just like my Dad, I suspect being a Grandpa is at least as big a joy, and as big a lesson for him as it was my Dad.
The reason I can't imagine him being bad at either job is because when I think of him, I feel a gentle soul nearby. Gentle giant fits him, especially since I am only 5'(almost)4".
I was 14, going to Savannah Ga, to visit with my brother, who was stationed there in the army. He lived in one of the really old houses that later was part of a historical restoration project. Two stories, fireplaces in bedrooms. He had two roommates, one was Young Prairie dog......
My brother was pretty busy, so PD took over my care and feeding for a lot of the visit. He was in his 20's, I can't imagine that watching after me had been on his agenda. I remember that one of the places he took me was to the beach, a real treat for me, I had not seen that much sand or water too many times in my life. Then we went to a party at a beach house where there were guitars and folk songs, and a bunch of people who didn't seem to mind that there was a bratty little sister in the mix.
We rode around in a Mustang, "THE" car in my mind at the time, that or a camero....but 14, with a tall, good looking "older" man ferrying me around in a really cool Mustang? OH,MY! And, he was smiling and seeming to have as much fun as I was having. I was just a little bit in love.........
He told me of his true love, Flame. Showed me her picture. Yes, a georgous redhead, Flame fit her well. His whole body language changed when he spoke of her. Not too many years later, they were married, and they are together still. They have been through some things that might have torn others apart, seems to me like it cemented them even more. He helped care for her parents for several years, under circumstances that might have cracked them both. They both survived, and seemingly, very well. I hope I am right.
One time, I was chatting with my Bro, in passing, telling him I wish we could go play golf at the local Navy course here. He could get us in because of being a retiree. This conversation evolved into plans for a reunion of the Savannah bunch, and others they had known during their service time. OPD was broached about this, and being a nearly rabid golfing enthusiast, was all for it. OPD was coming to MY town! I was looking forward to it all, but my favorite part was going to be seeing him again, and meeting Flame. Flame was coming with him, then parental duties prevented that from happening. I hated that more than they will ever know, I wanted to meet her, how could I not love her as well, since he loved her so much?
He came, we golfed , we went out to eat, we had a wonderful time. I still loved him. Not the crushy love of a fourteen year old, but the love of a person who has chosen this person to be a brother of her heart. Chosen to make sure that the ties would never be broken. Chosen to celebrate with them everything that makes them joyous, grieve with them over everything that makes them sad. Checking every day through cyberspace for things that affect their lives. Makes them laugh, makes them mad, makes them think. I am thankful for the technology that gives us something that makes it so easy to keep in touch in all our busy lives.
I have other brothers....in laws and outlaws.....but, I have 2 favorites. This is an ode to one of them.

Father's Day

2006-06-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

Coming up, this Sunday.......I think about my Dad alot, all the time, but things like this make me think in more detail about what he was to me. I am finding it very interesting as the rest of the family and I talk about him, how different a person he was to each of them than he was to me. It has made me realize that I , too, am probably a different person to everyone in my life, and it makes me very curious to know how each person in my life might describe me.
I know I am different in big ways to each of my children, because I was in very different places in my life when each of them was born. Almost everything about my life was VERY different, except, ironically, both of their fathers were abusive to me. One, because he was a baby with too many responsibilities, the other was, and is, mentally ill, but functional enough in the world to not be put away. They were both physically abusive, but the worst of the two was the one who was more psychologically abusive, he left many more scars, changed me in ways that I'm sure, I'm not even aware of. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, in some things above average, but a recent discussion with my brother revealed,we both believe that being intelligent doesn't always mean you are smart. I will blog about this at some later time, mostly for those people, who, when they learn about someone who is living in an abusive situation will have answers to "why doesn't she just leave?".
Fortunately, my Dad was not the kind of person who would whop on his kids. I don't know how many times he may have lain a hand on my brother, but I only remember a couple of times he spanked me. The last time, we both had tears in our eyes when he did it. I had stood up for something I believed in, but because he had already told me he was going to do it, he had to stick to his word. I KNOW, tho, that when he had heard me out, he really didn't want to anymore.
My Mom had the dirty job of discipline, most of the time. Daddy was raised with the idea that the kids are the woman's job, and he came to regret that belief at a later time, and to his credit, admitted it. But, he didn't ignore us. He was around when my then teenage brother was working on his cars with his friends. He didn't take the work out of their hands, he was just there should they need some advice or help. They learned what they needed to know to fix their cars instead of having to stand back and watch "how a pro does it". I hung out in the garage with him for hours on end. We may not have said ten words to each other during those times, but I was close to him, knew he was close to me, and NEVER felt like he would rather I would go back in the house. I would be his "tool hander" when he was working on cars, airplanes, lawnmowers, and because of this, I know some (very) basic mechanics, and at least know what tools are what and when they are used. He let me play on the Gravely tractor for hours, let me till the garden, mow the lawn, haul stuff in the wagon when I was probably way too small to be doing such things.In later years I got compliments on my painting skills when I was in the Navy, and I knew even then it was because he had taught me how to do it properly. My co-workers now tell people, "give it to Mommanurse, if she can't fix it, it will have to go back to Biomed" Thank you, Daddy, I think. My blood pressure machine's tubes and wires are always curled properly and not all tangled up, because I am as anal about that as Daddy. My patients get tired of watching me untangle things, I think they would rather I just get their vitals, and get out of their hair.
He didn't suffer fools gladly, and nowdays,I say in my Dad's honor,"Dadblamed idiots" when I see somebody who is doing or thinking a foolish thing. If you are an idiot, that is one thing, if you are a Dadblamed idiot, there is just no hope for you.
There are so many things he gave me, but you have heard me speak before of a "safe place to be." He was the first, and the most important to give me a safe place to be. My Daddy "can do anything", and when I was with him, he didn't lecture me, he didn't probe me for info about where I had been or who I had been with. He was just WITH me. While that was not really fair to my Mom, it was wonderful to have. I was just ok, exactly the way I was. Much of my environment was of a judgemental nature. I was the kind of kid who took much of that to heart, so I really needed to have somebody that I could go to and feel like I was perfectly alright, just the way I was. I only heard him say a curseword twice in my life, once was in a joke, the other time was when I had broken my arm, and he felt I was not getting proper care. The people he said it to have no idea the importance of that curseword.... a shame, really. They didn't understand that the next thing on the agenda was probably a punch in the nose.
He didn't say the words often when we were kids, but we knew he loved us. At least I did. I was his girl, as most girls are, but I think I also became his friend.
All of the men in my life were measured by his yardstick, and came up wanting, in many ways. The rooster is very like him, in a lot of ways, and mostly the important ones.
Even tho we only saw each other a couple of times a year for many years, I never realized that when he was gone how I would miss him so terribly. Much of my safety is gone, and no one can replace that, because it came from a superhuman, in this little girl's eyes. He tried his best to teach us how to live, and very definitely taught us how to die...in God's arms, and with minimal complaint, with an appreciation for all the good things we've had in our lives. I know I will never meet the mark.
I miss him terribly, but, there are times when I feel his arms around me, saying the things I need to hear, the things he was learning to say when he learned his time was short. I ask him to meet my dying patients in case they have no one to help them adjust, and to take them on an airplane ride......he has the keys to every one ever made, and the keys to every that will ever be made, in his heaven.
On this Father's day, I will be watching my husband continue to cement his once broken relationship with his son. I will thank God for it, and be thankful that I had the one I had. I do, and will continue to tell people about him, until we meet again. And while I wish I could see him soon, I'm not ready to leave my peeps here to do it. I know it's not my time, and my Daddy will wait for us.
Happy Father's Day, Daddy, you're one of the great ones.

Forrest Gump and Strawberry fields forever

2006-05-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

Within a drive just far enough to feel like you've gone somewhere and pleasant enough to want to go, is a field of strawberries. You can pick you own, or buy ones they have already picked. The whole situation brings back childhood memories for me, as my maternal Grands had MILES of strawberries when I was a kid. At least it seemed like miles.
Every year, we would go at least once to pick strawberries, and come home with a crate of them. NOW that crate would cost about a hundred bucks. I would get the chance to pick my own, and get paid for it, 7 cents a pint. This was when you could get a candy bar for a nickle, and Double Bubble for a penny. I think an 8 ounce coke was still a nickle, and you got it from a machine that would make you run a maze with the bottle after you put your nickle in. Anyway, Grandma would cut up a pair of tube socks, put the tube part over my knees, then send me out to Grandpa. He showed me which strawberries to pick and told me how full the pint container should be.I would pick a pint, go get my 7 cents, then run down the hill to the little neighborhood grocery store to get my goodies. I'd eat them, then go and pick another pint. Didn't get fat, didn't get sick. Miracles, both.
Didn't get berries last year, no place to keep them. But BOY, did I make up for it!! Bought a total of 3 flats, 12 pints each flat. Then, Mom and I got busy. Homemade strawberry jam. Messy, but easy, and oh,so good! I made strawberry shortcake and froze some for later. I started with only 2 flats, then realized I could make Mom some jam, using Splenda, not fair that she should work so hard and not get anything out of it. So, I went back and got the third, made some for her and the next door neighbor. She said it was good, haven't seen the neighbor to ask him. Started giving it away to some neighbors, the rooster took some to work, put some away for the tall kid, and then I started taking it to work.
Another story goes with this one, be patient, I will pull it all back together. Working during Ivan, I had packed survival gear, and food. Our cafeteria in the hospital is on the ground floor, 5 steps below parking lot level, so even a bad rain floods the place. Knew that when we lost power, might not be any good food, and maybe no water. Brought all that. Brought the ultimate PBnJ sandwhiches, made from toasted Hawaiian bread, Honey roast peanut butter, and homemade jam. They sat overnight before they were eaten, soaked in REAL good! Offered one to a coworker, and she turned it down, saying "I don't like PBnJ sandwiches". She watched me eat one, then said maybe she'd take one. Has bugged me ever since,"when are you going to make me your PBnJ sandwiches?". Brought the stuff to work to make them, she had been called off to work the day shift instead........too bad, so sad.
So, by this time I have brought some jam in to eat, bought biscuits in to share with everybody. Shared containers with everybody, then brought the PBnJ fixins. They are now looking at me with these strange sort of indulgent smiles.....
I think now of Bubba in Forrest Gump....." I know everything there is to know about strawberries...you kin make jam, you kin make shortcake, you kin make sanwiches, you kin make strawberry pineapple dump cake, you kin make...."
Will any of us ever want to see another strawberry?

The Princess reigns!!

2006-04-29T06:19:00.000-07:00

Re: last post.
The princess pulled the wet handshake trick at the Sam's Club here in town. The person she spoke to told her to call 1-800- Wal mart to lodge her complaint, because "they don't listen to us". Figures. Either business as usual, or a lazy cop out.....
She did so. They told her there would be paper towels back in the restroom IMMEDIATELY. She went back in 2 days later just to check, and guess what they had in the bathroom. YES! Royalty is not just a ceremonial title!!

eeeeeeyewwww!

2006-04-27T06:02:00.000-07:00

I want to start a campaign.
Lately, my friends and I ( people who have taken microbiology and either don't want to touch ANYTHING, or stick our hands in all kinds of nasty stuff without flinching, as long as it is OUR OWN nasty stuff)are noticing that the public bathrooms in this world are maybe the most dangerous places to visit that there are. Either they don't have paper towels AT ALL, or they don't have a trash can close to the door you exit so you can open the door, then dispose of them.
We have been known to be very bad kids and throw our paper towels on the floor, or go to the manager with our hands dripping, introduce ourselves, shaking their hands with one hand while covering their hands with the other as we explain our dissatisfaction with their facilities (kudos to my friend, the princess, for this idea.)
Ever heard of e-coli? Pseudomonas? C-difficile? Ever just stood in a bathroom and watched how many people go out the door without even washing their hands? If you have to grab that door behind them, you are touching their nether regions without any thrill to go with it. AND, if the employees of a restaraunt use the same bathroom, they are touching it , too, even if they are diligent about washing their hands before they leave.
We need to turn off the faucets with the paper towel, so, if they ARE available, get your paper towel before you start, then carry the paper towel with you to the door, open the door and go out. If there isn't a receptacle for it, carry it to the manager to dispose for you, and tell them WHY they are doing it. If they AREN'T available, do the wet hand trick, it is fun to see the look on their faces when they feel your wet hands.......
Remember, crack kills! (get it?)

Post roadtrip blues

2006-04-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

Well, back home again, and while I would give the overall trip a plus report, there were too many negatives to ignore.
What has happened to service in this country? If I did MY job the way many do theirs, people would die, and at an alarming rate!
We stayed at the Royal Pacific, to the tune of $229 a night, and while that may not seem like alot to some people, to us poor working slobs, it is a chunk of change. I would not be able to afford it at all, if I were paying the whole tab, and it was painful even being split down the middle, what with room taxes, and all the little add ons. But, my friend and I save all year to do this. This year was to be special, as we had Ivan-itis.We had not been able to go last year because of that monster and we were primed to be pampered and play. There are benefits to staying "on property", such as "Express pass" riding which can save you an hour or more in line for the rides at Universal and Islands of Adventure. This time, that was wonderful, as we were there during spring break. Worth alot, all by itself.
I won't list the whole list of complaints we had, but some highlights were, the room was not as clean as it should have been, mold in the bathroom grout and filthy dusty areas, items were not replaced on a daily basis as they should have been, housekeeping woke us up on numerous occasions banging doors as they cleaned the other rooms. We had to call every day to fix things. Any one or two of the things that were wrong would not have caused us that much heartburn, but we got to the point where we began immediately looking for what was wrong the second we came back into the room. Fun, huh?
We didn't get read at the John Edward seminar, but we got to see him nearly throw somebody out. He was masterful in how he handled her. He started her reading by telling her, as she came back into the room from wherever, that the young boy he had contact with didn't want her there. Told her that her energy made the boy uncomfortable. She started to walk out, John asked her where she was going, and she said "Well, you told me I wasn't wanted." John then told her HE didn't tell her to leave, that the boy didn't want her. I can understand why that might unsettle someone, but it became evident that she was either a total butthole generally, or she was drunk. She became belligerent with John, until he finally told her he didn't give a rat's ass what she thought of him, he was just trying to get to why the boy would key him in on her. She then told him she would behave, but didn't. He finally asked her " have you done any acting?" And she said " Yes" He said "And?" she said "I'm acting right now, John" He paused and told her, "don't waste my time, or the 300 other people here will kick your ass!" The crowd went wild! Now that's something you won't see on his show!
The highlight of the trip tho, was on the last night. Walking back to the water ferry from getting a wonderful relaxing massage at the spa at the Portofino, my friend tripped on a cobblestone that was 2 inches higher than the others, and we spent 3 hours in the emergency room making sure the whack she got to her head wasn't more serious than just a bad bruise and that there were no broken bones. We went back the next day after having checked out, and found that they hadn't even put a trash can, or yellow cone or ANYTHING over the spot to prevent it from happening again!! Now, we are not litigious people, but their blatent disregard for their patron's safety, coupled with not a word being said about paying her hospital bill, made my friend rethink her position. We took pictures of the offending block and her bruises, and spoke to the consierge about the situation. To their credit, she received a phone call today from their risk management honcho, following up on the incident report that had been filed by security when it happened. She was able to relate her concerns, and was assured that all would be addressed. Okay, great. She was also asked "was the rest of your stay okay?" No. Not only no, but..... He told her we would be contacted by their guest services if she would send him a letter or e-mail with a list of our concerns......Okay, we'll wait and see what happens now.
Sure did mess up the benefits of her massage she had just paid for. But, that may have prevented her from being injured any worse than she was, kinda like a drunk. Thank goodness she wasn't. Drunk, I mean. At least not right then........(it's a joke....mostly).
Anyway, will update you as to whether their word is any good. Each trip is a learning experience, this one taught us a little too much.
By the way, if you wish you could ride rollercoasters, but can't handle anything wilder than Space Mountain, or Thunder Railroad, the new "Mummy's Revenge" ride at Universal is the ride for you! We got off the ride, and got immediately back in line, and rode one more time before we left the park. Fun. And different.

Baby Nurses

2006-03-22T01:32:00.000-08:00

My nickname in a couple of circles is Mommanurse. I am called this not because I care for new Mommas, or their babies, but because I have, for a majority of my career, taught the new nurses coming straight from school into their first work experience. I take them from "how it's suppose to be", to "How it really is" It is quite the culture shock for them. They are so regimented during school that things must be absolutely perfect, that they have the toughest time with understanding that it NEVER is, and how to work around that and still be safe. Sometimes, I am responsible for nurses who are still in school, but doing a sort of residency called preceptorship, and it is even worse, because they are still in the middle of their brainwashing. Scared to death, afraid they will break the school rules, the hospital rules, or their preceptor's personal rules, everything they do is done with trepidation and 50 questions. It's the ones who DON'T ask questions that we worry about. They are dangerous.
It is very time consuming to teach these babies. It takes four times as long to do things than it would if I just did it myself, but they won't learn if I do that. I sit on my hands and watch, and try not to guide them too much in front of the patient and/or family member. They already feel inadequate enough, without being lectured in front of the people who need to be able to feel trust in their competency. So, before we ever go into the room, there is a verbal runthrough of what we are going to do and when. By the time we get to the room, my babies have forgotten everything we said, and spend the whole time they are accomplishing their tasks, looking up at me with that question on their faces, looking for my slight nod that they won't kill the patient if they proceed. I have promised them that I won't let them, and they hope they can count on that promise.
But, it is very rewarding to teach them. If I do it right, there will be competent, caring people out there in my work force, and the older I get, it wouldn't be impossible for me to be training the very people who will care for me when I need it. My reward comes from the look that comes on their faces when understanding strikes, or something I say makes sense, or I show them an easier way to do something that is just as correct as the way they were taught in school. Nursing schools are really big on a thing called "critical thinking". For the rest of us, this is called "troubleshooting" and mostly takes common sense. The first thing I try to tell my babies is that the most important thing for them to know is that something is wrong. They don't necessarily need to know WHAT is wrong, just that something is, and be able to describe it to a doctor or their charge nurse.
One of the other rewarding things is that I always learn something in the process. They will always ask me a question that I don't know the answer to, so we go look for the answer together.
The best thing I hear quite often is that they learned more from me than they learned the whole time in school. It's not true, I just taught them how to apply what they did learn in school in a way that makes sense, so I get the credit.
They are frequently amazed at how much I can pop off the top of my head, and feel bad because they feel like they will never get to where I am. What I tell them, and it's true.....you show a monkey something often enough, it will learn it.
So, maybe I shouldn't call them baby nurses, but baby monkeys. They might not appreciate that, tho.
I can't imagine doing anything else.

ROADTRIP!!!!

2006-03-18T00:13:00.000-08:00

For several years now, my best friend and I have taken a vacation together to the Orlando area. It started out when we saw that John Edward was putting on a seminar there. This was just about a month after her husband had passed away of due to a massive heart attack at the age of 42.We did not get "read", but it was extremely entertaining anyway, and we then made it an annual thing. The plans have grown each year to include play time, luxury accomodations that we both have to save all year for and generally pigging out and pretending we are rich %*&#@'s for a few days. We have not come for the JE seminar every year, but we saw that this year, it would be a "gallery like" crowd, meaning 400 people, instead of 2500 people. I think we will find it very cozy.
We didn't get to go at all last year, I was shellshocked by IVAN, and she was shellshocked by the invasion of her sister and niece, also shellshocked by IVAN. Money, time, and inclination were just not available, so this year's trip is well earned, and well deserved. We are both pretty well along our way to recovery from our disaster funk, and ready to party.
It took me awhile to figure out this trip was really going to happen, for some reason. Usually by the time we are counting less than 30 days, we are revved to go. We went to Sam's Club last week, saw some pool floats, 2 for $20....nice ones. After about 30 seconds of figuring if we didn't buy them right then, we might miss out (that's the nature of Sam's, if you like it and you don't see it there every week, you'd better buy it). It wasn't until we were loading them in her car that it struck me.....WE ARE PACKING FOR THE TRIP!!!! Oh my, Oh my.
She's one of the few people in this world that I can be in a car with for 6-10 hours and not run out of things to say, OR that silence for many miles is not a problem. We like the same music, she has satellite radio in her car, and we are both going to do something we already know is going to be a blast!
We aren't getting to stay where we usually do, but we are always up for an adventure.We have given ourselves enough days to have several.
NOW we are counting down to less than a week, and I am getting pumped enough to have trouble sleeping. We call each other's phones and when the other answers, we both shout ROADTRIP!!! Many voice mail messages are just one word, as well.
I have been reading Greybeard's blogs on the fishing trip of the century, and am very glad I am at this end of my trip instead of the other. Sound's like he's having a good time, I plan on having as good or better, and mine doesn't have anything to do with fish, unless it is hot on my plate.
I am SO fortunate to have a husband who doesn't mind my doing this every year, not that it would stop me if he did. Well, chances are, he wouldn't be my husband if he were the type to mind. We miss each other, but I think he knows what a rejuvinating experience this is for me, and figures it's worth it. Besides, right after I get back , we get serious about saving for OUR adventure, in the fall.
Such a lucky girl, am I.

Just plain selfish

2006-02-27T06:27:00.000-08:00

In my line of work, we do so many things that hurt, or are in the very least, uncomfortable, to try for a better outcome. Sometimes the hurt is worth it.
But, so many times, we are doing nothing but torture people who have no chance of recovery. If we don't follow "Doctor's orders", we are in danger of getting "written up", or even losing our jobs. If the family doesn't complain, we don't have much of a leg to stand on with some doctors, to get the unnecessary orders rescinded, and reduce the patient's discomfort. Why draw labs every day, when you aren't going to do anything about them, or doing something about them won't make a bit of difference?
Frustrating for us. It happens, more often than people realize, that people beg us to let them die. More than frustrating, it's heartbreaking.
How, in the bible belt of the south, where people profess to be Christians, believe in God and Heaven, do we see so many people who just can't make the decision to let their loved ones go to the next step? Even if you DON'T believe in heaven, and think that when you go, there is just nothingness, how can you let people lie in pain, often in their own excrement multiple times a day, confused and scared? Wouldn't nothingness be better than that?
BUT, if you believe that there is a heaven, and that it is more glorious than anything anyone can imagine, how can you be so selfish to keep someone you love from that, when there is no longer any joy in life, no hope for joy in life?
I wasn't ready for my Daddy to be gone from my life, and since he's gone, I miss him more than I ever imagined I could, but he is where he should be, where he earned the right to be. At the very least, out of pain, without fear. And if his heaven is custom made for him, as I hope it is for us all, what wonderful things is he getting to see and do, and be?
Many think that a living will is a legal document that will prevent them from being intubated, etc. Sadly it isn't, it is nothing more than a road map to inform the doctors of what your wishes are. Your family can override it, and if they find you "down" in your home, it doesn't keep the EMT's or Paramedics from HAVING to try to resuscitate you!!! You need an actual "DNR" order for them to legally be able to let you go.( Do NOT Resuscitate)
Do you trust your family to follow your wishes? Do you trust some of them and not others? Make it crystal clear what they are, and pick one person, next of kin if possible and give them your health care power of attorney. You have a better chance then of things being handled the way you want. Make sure they know your tissue/organ donation wishes as well.
Back to baseline.....If anyone in my family keeps me from seeing Jesus when it is my turn, I plan on not only haunting them, but cursing them with plagues and locusts for being so selfish. If I'm not having any fun any more, and there is very little hope for any more fun...(my fun, not theirs), it is TIME TO GO....SEE YOU LATER!!!!
Guilt? NO!!! Feel guilty that you aren't saving me from lab draws, a sore butt, repeated sticks for new IV sites, being awakened every 4 hours for vitals signs to be taken, confusion, fear, possible hallucinations (I doubt very few are like Sean Connery deciding he can no longer live without me and coming to take me to an island he bought just for us.)
We would die for our children, we need to plan way ahead of time to live without our loved ones who are ready to move on, no matter how much it hurts.
Insist on comfort measures based on what you know your loved ones want, talk about it so you'll know what that is. Show them you REALLY love them by finding out so you can be prepared to fight for what they want. My Doc, who I love dearly, and trust with my life AND my death, tells me how hard it is for him to give up. But because he is an honorable man, he respects his patient's wishes. Some will not. Ego. Feeling of failure. Whatever, it is still a crime.
I have been in attendance to many passings, and without a doubt it is a sad time. It is also rewarding and an honor to be able to be a comfort to someone's last moments on this earth, and a comfort to the family in pain. The most rewarding are those where the family is in full support of the patient, and are at peace because they are trusting that they are placing them in better hands. When they have given them permission to go, have assured them they will be okay still here until they can meet again. What a gift. Most of the time, the greatest gift ever given to them.

Nicknames

2006-02-21T09:16:00.000-08:00

My husband likes nicknames. He gives one to anybody he likes. Sometimes they aren't always kind, but those he gives the "less than kind" nicknames to, usually know his heart and are not offended.
He has a few of his own. One is Grumpy, accompanied by a framed picture of his namesake. He also has a hat we bought last September when we were in Disneyland that has "Grumpy" in cheerful colors across the front. He thinks that being grumpy is one of his cuter traits. For me, it is my number one reason to throw his butt in a nursing home first chance I get.
Two weeks after Ivan....we have pulled a good portion of the soggy stuff out of the house. A couple of the local golf courses have reopened, nothing here in our little town, but a couple in the nearby burg that didn't have as many trees, or maybe a better landscaping crew to clean up, I'm not sure which.
For the rooster, playing golf is almost as important as breathing, and I felt like he needed the break. I didn't go, because we were expecting an inspector from the Small Business Administration to come look at the house and verify that, indeed, we needed the loan to help get our house back. We had gone through the incredible pile of paperwork, not really expecting to get approved, but what the heck, worth a try, right? So, off he goes, and on, I stay.
I get a call from the SBA guy, he's in the vicinity, and if it is convenient for me, he will be by in a half an hour. Fantastic....I had really expected to sit all day and not hear anything. Only thing that has gone well in this process so far.
Five minutes later, I get another phone call, this time from the rooster. "Can you meet me at the hospital?"
"Uh, okay....what's happened, are you okay?" ( not REALLY sinking in, and HE'S talking to me, so chances are, he's not on the verge of dying. I'm a nurse, these are assessmant skills I have acquired over the years.)
"Well.....I got run over by a golf cart, and they are making me go to the hospital."
PAUSE
"Yeah, I know."
"....okay, how did you manage to get run over by a golf cart, which hospital are you going to, and HOW did you get run over by a golf cart?"
This really shouldn't have been that much of a surprise, as he has, over the years, found some really novel ways to hurt himself. But, I do believe this one will take the cake.
The EMS guys told him they weren't real busy, so they could take him to the hospital where I work, it will cost extra, tho, as you get charged by the mile. Okay by the rooster, people know him there, he feels he will get better care, etc. Okay, so my hospital it is, but it will take awhile, as they have to go another route, the bridge is out.
"Okay, but the SBA guy is on his way!!!! Said he would be here in half an hour!!!"
"Well, that is too important, and I'm not hurt that bad, you stay there, it will be at least 45 minutes before I get there, anyway, maybe longer."
"Okay, see you as soon as I can."
Still don't know how he managed to get run over.
About 15 minutes later, I get a call from our daughter, she's coming into town to go to church. Wanted to make sure we were home so she could come by after.
"Well, call me before you do, you may need to go by the hospital....Dad got run over by a golf cart!"
PAUSE
"Yeah... I know"
"Do you want me to go there first? HOW DID HE GET RUN OVER BY A GOLF CART?"
"Don't know yet, but he's not hurt bad, because he chatted with me for about ten minutes before he got in the ambulance, and he made as much sense as he ever does."
She relays this info to her car mate, who I hear say "WHAT????A GOLF CART? HOW DID HE GET RUN OVER BY A GOLF CART????" She replied "You know my Dad." "Yeah... yeah I do."
"Okay, yeah, it would help if you go there first, because the SBA guy is coming and this is too important and I can't get there right away. It will help if he has somebody there."
SBA guy comes, takes pics, takes info, doesn't take very long. Goes away, and I head to the hospital.
When I walk in the room, the rooster has three big dents on the side of his head with the top layer and maybe the second, of flesh scraped off. LARGE amount of flesh scraped off his arm, bruises starting to darken a number of spots on his body. I look at him, and say "Only you."
He grins and says, "yeah I know."
Nurse are coming by at regular intervals, sticking their heads beyond the curtain and asking, "Are you the guy who got run over by the golf cart?" The rooster likes attention, so he retells his story multiple times.
The cart had stopped, they couldn't figure out why, so he gets out and looks underneath. He's on the ground in front of the cart, he sees a stick, good sized one, hung up under the cart, keeping it from moving any farther. Tells the guy he's riding with, "Wait a minute, I'll get it" reaches in, pulls it out, and now that the stick is gone, the cart can GO. Right into him, pushes him several feet, and before they can get it to stop, has torn multiple areas of flesh off, put dents in his head, and made him goofier than he already was. He told me he was not really with it for awhile, and wanted to go ahead and finish the round when he started coming back around, but clearer heads prevailed. They threw him in the back of a pickup, took him to the ambulance. He got a rain check from the golf course.
The ER is getting lots of guys who have fallen off roofs, cut off body parts from chain saws while cleaning up the debris, having heart attacks from working harder than they have worked in, maybe, their entire lives. And who knows what kind of stress the staff was enduring from their own losses? The rooster was without a doubt, comic relief.
Called my son. " Just wanted to let you know, we are at the ER. The rooster just got run over by a golf cart."
PAUSE
" Yeah... I know."
I tell him the story, and he says they are on their way, he has to see this for himself.
They have scanned the rooster from head to toe, found out he does have a brain, albeit a little rattled. They give him a script for antibiotics and creams for the scrapes and such. Before we get out of there, tall person comes in, looks at the rooster and says,"HEY, SPEEDBUMP! HOW YA DOIN'?"
Speedbump it is. He's Speedbump to all who know the story at the golf course. Before we put the drywall back up, we all "tagged" the concrete block walls with our own special graffiti. SPEEDBUMP is now forever part of the makeup of this house. I can't imagine anything before the wrecking ball comes that will make that disappear.
It is also forever part of our Ivan lore. And, I doubt the nickname will ever go completely away. At least , I hope not. That would mean he would have to top it, and I am afraid he has the skills.
(This story is as true as I can make it, not having been there. I have left out some of the related details that were told to me, but they don't change the flavor of the tale.)

MY Heaven

2006-02-04T05:14:00.000-08:00

One of the girls I work with just lost her horse. I haven't gotten the details as to how and why. I just know she has to be in terrible pain. She raised him from a foal and talked about him often.
"They" say that animals can't go to heaven because they have no souls. Why not? I believe that heaven is custom made for each and every soul, and MINE will have every animal I ever loved in it, or I don't really want to go.
John Edward, from "Crossing Over" says they are there, and Sharon Renae, from Navarre, says my Dad has a dog at his side. I told her he probably has 40 of them, but I also think I know which one she was talking about. Well, maybe two dogs to choose from in my brain. Depends on whether it's the one I want it to be, or one of the ones HE would want it to be. I think they are all there, this one happened to be at his side at that moment.
If they can't go there because they have no souls, then I think the small print must say that every one we love gets a tiny little piece of our soul because we love them. Just enough to get an invite in. Kind of like the Velveteen Rabbit. All his fuzz was loved off, but he was loved enough that he could become a real rabbit. And Pinocchio, he was loved enough to become a real boy.
The theme here is love.
Alzheimer's patients may forget who they are, how to swallow, who their kids and spouses are, but the last thing they forget is love.Comatose monitored patients have been seen to have high blood pressures and heart rates, but when spoken to or touched by someone they love, both will settle down to a more normal range. That is some powerful energy. And energy doesn't die, it just transforms and adapts.
A heavenly body is another form isn't it? And if they DO get a piece of our souls, just enough to gain admittance, do they also get their heavens tailor made? I hope so. In most cases, they really earned it. And especially if they don't really want to go if WE aren't there.

Greybeard's birthday horrorscope

2006-01-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

This is stolen from the P-cola News Journal horrorscopist Holiday Mathis......

Aquarius ( Jan 20-Feb 18) Too much emphasis on moneymaking is a complete and total drag. Call friends even if you don't feel like it.

Today's birthday ( Jan 25) This year has its soft and pleasant moments, but make no mistake- you're here to accomplish a few things, and that's what you do.
You're sought out for advancement on the career front, and it's nice to have your spark recognized. Something new and beautiful envelops your personal life in May and July. Your love signs are Gemini and Libra. Your lucky numbers are 9, 10, 4, 22, and 29.
Happy birthday to my MUCH OLDER older brother. Love you...........Sis

Behemouth

2006-01-23T06:22:00.000-08:00

I have had it pointed out to me that I have misspelled this word.....Not at 8 miles to the gallon, I haven't. I stand by my spelling.

I thought I knew me part deux

2006-01-21T15:04:00.000-08:00

I am nearly finished with a job that has been hanging over my head for a long time. I'm finding that I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Didn't expect the feelings I'm having.
For the last 16 months, there has been a behemouth parked in my driveway. I haven't, in that entire length of time minus about 6 days, been able to park my own car in my own driveway. We share ownership of this behemouth with my son, but we haven't "shared" him in all this time. The weekend before Ivan, we picked him up from my son's house, and brought him home. Took him to Florida Caverns for a weekend, then parked him in the driveway. The rednecked rooster ( my husband, a GOOD redneck....yes, Virginia, there ARE good rednecks.) moved him to just in front of our bedroom window to protect it.(the window) When he did this, if I had known, I would have protested, I think. In retrospect, it's probably a very good thing I didn't get the chance. You just never know when two inches might make all the difference in the world. Just "aks" anybody who grew up in tornado country.
Ivan came and went while I was at work. I kept in touch with the rooster, heard the terror and grief in his voice as he informed me that he was "bugging out" to the next door neighbor's house, that the "roof was gone, water is coming in everywhere". He said it took him ten times as long to get next door as it should have, because of the winds. He was able to only get one cat and the dog, and only because they were the ones who came to him. The other two cats were nowhere to be found.
I had a chance to grieve over what I figured was the total loss of my house before I got home, because I didn't get to leave the hospital until the disaster level came back down, and they were sure they had enough staff. I took my time getting home, partly because I was dreading seeing my home in ruins, and because I was taking pictures on the way. When I got home, I first looked through the house....terrible, heartbreaking, but not as bad as I had expected. The rooster is a bit of a drama queen, but I suspect he thoroughly expected it to be completely gone when he got a chance to look again. We had lost 2/3 of our household goods, if the water coming down didn't get 'em, the water being soaked up from the carpet did. Porch half gone, wiring too dangerous to hook up even when the power comes back on, nasty smelling wet drywall everywhere, in everything.
But, the behemouth was there, seemingly untouched.
If you don't believe there is a higher power, watching over us when we are too frightened, too stressed or just too plain stupid to look out for ourselves, don't mention that to me. I know better. There was now our home, and a fairly comfortable one at that. We were familiar with it, knew where everything was in the cabinets, and it was already stocked with alot of things we might need, if we found ours didn't survive.
And to me, it proves the saying that if you don't bend, you will break. I suspect the reason he did survive was because he was on wheels and was able to rock with the winds. (Wouldn't it have been fun to be inside when THAT was going on?)
The redneck was just SURE he had killed our scaredy cat. When he came back to the house, our old black guy just moseyed out the door, looked at him and wandered off. No big deal for him, this wasn't his first rodeo. But he couldn't find our scaredy cat, and was feeling grief and guilt that he might be dead under some debris. For you see, it was his job to lay ON the roof , keep it intact while he held onto 4 terrified animals. He failed.
I had told him he was in the recliner. From a kitten that is where he went when he wanted to get away from all the monsters. The rooster said "he's not there, I looked"
I told him to look again. About 36 hours after things settled down, I had a chance to look, myself. I wandered through the house softly calling his name in my Momma voice, hoping he would come out. He didn't. I picked up the edges of what debris I could, and looked under it as far as I could, no scaredy cat. The rooster was out, doing what he could to the behemouth to get it ready to live in, for who knew how long? I looked up in the recliner finally, and there he was, up in it as far as he could go...problem? He was the same color as the recliner. I pulled him out, clawing the insides all the way, and took him out to the rooster. When he turned and saw what I had in my arms, we hugged him between us and cried. This was the last our two leggeds/ four leggeds to account for, and all were okay. We threw him in the behemouth, and he found another place to hide. By that night, the cats were settled down enough to be thrilled with all the new places to explore. When the rooster and I sat in the chairs with our legs propped up on the bench seats, scaredy did the dolphin thing, bouncing up and rubbing his back on the backs of our legs. UP, Dad's legs, DOWN.....UP, Mom's legs, DOWN. Fun time was had by all.
Three weeks with no power in the neighborhood, no water for about 5 days because the treatment plant had been hit hard. About 10 days in, we got a borrowed generator from the rooster's boss, he had power, and NOW we did. It ran EVERYTHING! The only thing we couldn't do was run the a/c and microwave at the same time. WAH!
We didn't have to stay anywhere else, we didn't have to wait on FEMA to assign us to one of their concentration camps, we could be in our own comfort (?) zone, keep an eye on our wounded home, and be right there to work on it.
When things started coming back, we were able to put them in our cropped living space. TV, phone, we went out and bought a web tv unit so we could have e-mail and the internet. We had our electrician hook us up so we could have power from the box at the side of the house, even tho we didn't have it TO the house. Our plumber had already, in the past, put us a pipe above the ground so our outflow was easily accessible. We just took the cap off and put our sewage hose in it. VOILA! "All" the comforts of home. We had from the very beginning. counted our blessings, but this had to be right up there, in the top 2.
Our only home for 4 1/2 months, then when we got a good roof, we moved a bed into the house. I slept in him during the day, when there was "progress" happening and I was working. Pretty soundproofed, too.
Haven't had to sleep in him for awhile, except when we had company over New Year's weekend. I didn't want them to have to keep the kids quiet to not wake Granny. The house is done to the point that the work left to be done is being done mostly while I'm off. If I need a place to sleep where it is quiet, I can wander over to Mom's.
So, I am cleaning out the last of the "living here" stuff, making sure the "playing here" stuff is in place, and "tall person" ( my son....grow them tall so they can get the stuff off the top shelf for you) will take it home with him to prepare for the next Talledega trip.They go twice a year and have already had the opportunity to find out that IS the way to go.
Figured I'd be SO glad to get my car back in the driveway, be able too look out the door at the road and stuff to the left on the house without walking to the end of my driveway to do it, be glad to be getting even more back to normal.
I'm having separation preparation anxiety.(Like that? I'm planning on filing for disability under that diagnosis!) He survived when everything else went to hell in a handbasket. Was there to shelter us when all our worldly goods were soggy, or completely ruined. My sense of security is being sorely tested. I KNOW it will be worse when he's gone. He's going to good hands, better than ours, because he's going so some repairs can be done. But...........
Xanax is a very good drug.

Some stuff from the past

2006-01-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

5 Oct 2004

This house is like me.
Not very pretty, but passable and with the potential to clean up nicely.
Neglected over the years with just enough maintenance to keep her going, usually done in chaos management mode.
Absentmindedly loved by all but one, who loves her fiercely and protectively.
Tough and resilient, often abused, she stands now, wounded almost mortally, BUT she still stands.
Now, having gotten the attention of all who loved her in the most haphazard manner, she wants to be rebuilt with new awareness, new respect. Her always present, never acknowledged dignity will reign and be noted by all who see her.
She will never again tolerate being ignored, neglected, and especially, abused.

Date unknown

I now know, without a doubt, how it is some people end up in life without a mate or other family member in their lives, but with a house inhabited by 30 cats. Something that purrs in pleasure instantly upon being touched can do nothing but make you feel as though you have a reason to be in the world.

Jan 13 2005

Everything I want?
Oh my.
You do realize, don't you, that this contradicts the world renowned philosopher, Mick Jagger?
Maybe my list should start with that I want that my wants don't hurt me. "History repeats itself" is a phrase that puts fear in my soul.
An ace at troubleshooting the problem when it has reared its ugly head in my life, foresight is not a club I often find in my bag.
Having said all that, my priorities have recently shifted to another solar system.
Sitting in a clean, comfortable recliner with my feet up, watching tv with a warm purring cat in my lap, would now make me feel rich.
Sitting in my house, listening to rain hit the roof, and knowing that unless it rains for 40 days and nights, it most likely will not come inside, makes me feel rich.
Walking into a patients room for the second night, having them look up and see their face brighten as they say " Oh, there you are!" has always, and will always make me feel rich.
Knowing that a large portion of my son's waking moments are taken hostage by my needs and situation, both makes me ashamed and feel rich. It is what I taught him.
What do I want?
More of what truly makes me feel rich.

May the fretful pass quickly and the joyous slow to a snail's crawl.

(Since this was written, my riches have grown exponentially)

AAARRRGGGHHHH!!

2006-01-10T06:37:00.000-08:00

Can I please vent again??? Please,please please?
In the last two days I have had some teeth grinding experiences that I didn't mention in my previous rant.
Case study #1
73 year old woman, looks early sixties, we suspect she paid a pretty penny to look that way. Comes to us from the unit (we are a step down unit....too sick for the regular floor, not sick enough for the intensive care unit....supposedly)where people are frequently spoiled by the staffing ratio and attention they get to almost every need and want. It is much easier on them to come to our area, because the staffing ratio is still much more favorable than it would be on the regular floors, but for a number of reasons, we cannot cater to every whim. The night goes fairly well for her, she is getting her sea legs back, still weak, but able to motor mostly on her own. Just needs help with the IV pump and such. I assist her to the bathroom, then place a chair in front of the sink as she has requested to brush her teeth. I then assist her to the chair so she can brush her teeth safely, as I am not able to stand by her side for the whole event, nor do I need to. She then asks me if someone will be able to help her bathe later, and I tell her yes, there will be a patient care tech available to help her with her bath. Later, she asks another nurse "When will you be able to bathe me?" This is AFTER she has motored herself to the bathroom, sat for 30 minutes while she brushed her teeth, AND THEN applied her 40 pound duffle bag full of makeup to her face and who knows what else. The nurse again told her that a patient care tech would be there to help her set everything up so she could bathe. She then says "she won't bathe me?" and the nurse replied,"No, you are capable of bathing yourself, but she will be glad to help." the patient then gets a very pained, very pitiful look on her face and says,"oh, I don't think I have the strength to bathe myself, and they bathed me every day in the unit!" The nurse then tells her that she will have a chance to rest up from her morning strain and maybe she will be able to bathe, if not the PCT will evaluate the situation with her. The patient seems somewhat mollified, and 5 minutes later is observed putting a bra on, reaching around in back to fasten it! I CAN'T DO THAT, HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO, MY ARMS DON'T BEND THAT WAY!!! But she needs help to bathe..........Just issue me my little black polyester uniform with the little ruffled cap and white apron, so I can get on with my work....would you like me to start in the upstairs bedroom, or the downstairs?
Case study #2
65 year old man, noncompliant in every way in his life, confused just enough for staff to write off his bad behavior for several days. Now able to tell us where he is, what day it is, why he is there, and in the last 2 days has grabbed body parts that our mothers told us was off limits to anyone that we didn't want touching them, of at least 3 staff members, all female. Then commenting on what body part he got to touch, and laughing.
Now.......if I reacted the way I would react out on the street to both of these people treating me that way, I would be fired in a heartbeat!!
I want somebody to tell me why this is okay. I know no one can, but I feel better after having put it "out there" for the universe to deal with.
Thank you very much, and I still can't imagine doing anything else with my life.

Tis the season

2005-12-21T08:14:00.000-08:00

In the midst of all the stress, celebration, and hubbub of this season, memories are thick in the air. Songs, smells, traditions observed give us visuals of past experiences that have embedded themselves in our psyche. Hopefully, we are kinder, more tolerant, more forgiving and willing to put away, for the time being, our hurts, gripes and complaints so that future memories are not tainted by them.
Memories can be any degree of good or bad, have had any degree of impact on who we become at a later date, and quite often without the knowledge of all involved. Perception is the key. We may all speak English, Spanish, Farsi, how many thousands of different languages and dialects, but even tho we speak the same basic language of the person we are interacting with, the message spoken can be completely different from the one hearing it. So many times, what is said colors what we perceive that person to be, believe, and practice, when all we should put faith in are the actions we see that person perform.
The season also sees many reconnections of relationships from the past, our memories of the season make us remember people we have not interacted with in a long time. Sometimes years have gone by, and we don't know where they are, if they are married, have children, what they have grown up to be. In my case, it wasn't the season that made me remember the person, he popped into my head periodically over the years. It may have been the season that made me do something about it, tho.
Fortunately, in this day and age, we don't have to hire a detective to find people for us most of the time. If we are computer savvy, we can Google and find the path to reconnection. Or the white pages/yellow pages of an area we think they may be in. It doesn't always work, but for me it was google, two more clicks, and a snail mail letter to find out if it was really him. I didn't have much doubt, because the last name wasn't one you find in every town, or even many in a big town. I sent my e-mail address, and to my unending delight, got an e-mail within a few days with other names that brought up even more memories. Sangria in a galvanized tub, recipe of which was the imagination of probably at least five people, with no regard to Spanish traditional formulation. Fun day that day, for some, not so good the next day. Trips to the Spanish Riviera, with many more of us in the car than was legal, or safe, sharing expenses to escape the regimentation of being in the Navy for a weekend. Keeping secrets that might have had lifelong impacts had the Chiefs found out.
I worked with this guy for a long time at a remote receiver site, just the two of us. We got close, but not too close, it wasn't that kind of connection. A relief for us both, I'm sure. He had to carry me, I really was in the dark about the intricacies of my job. In the Navy's dubious wisdom, they had put me in a job I didn't have the prerequisites for, and they only trained me enough to make me dangerous.He never let me know that he knew I didn't have a clue, never showed any frustration at being the one to do most of the work. Maybe I was able to fake doing enough that it didn't bother him. I don't know, and not sure I ever want to. The equipment we worked on was OLD even then, had grunches of vacuum tubes, so sometimes you could fix it by smacking the side of the case. I was the smacker, he was the technician. And we visited with each other all day. Had fun conversations, serious conversations, and fixed our worlds the way 20 somethings do. Told enough about our significant others to sometimes make us want to "fix" things, I'm sure, but never got so involved it was a problem. It was a connection, and it was a good one. He was okay with who I was, I was okay with who he was. Oh, he made me laugh.
He moved on, I moved on. When I got the e-mail, I was pleased that he reported what sounded like a reasonably content life, not so content that it was not believable, but overall, a pretty good place to be. It was pretty much what I had hoped and expected. I had been around during one of the more trying times of his life, the death of his Father, with him thousands of miles away, his Father still a young man, and his death totally unexpected. He came back, confided in me some of his feelings that I don't think he would have been comfortable telling just anyone. I have since had that experience, not at his young age, and not unexpected, but I have a new respect and understanding of some of his feelings. Thought of him when something very specific happened after the death of my father.
Just having the relationship I had with him made me feel good about myself in ways that I didn't in other areas of my life. I cherish people who allow me that safe place to be, no matter how big it is.
So, finding him is one of my Christmas presents to me this year, and if we don't do anything but send cards from now on at this time of the year, I'm glad I took the time to find out he's alive and well and out there for me to "touch" now and again.
If you have been thinking of somebody but haven't put the effort to find them, give it a shot, especially if there is no reason to think the experience won't be a good one. Give yourself that present this year.
And by the way, Dave.........E.G. Marshall!

You Gotta Be Kidding.....

2005-12-07T02:25:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season. Our patients are more depressed, crazier, short tempered, noncompliant and just generally bigger pains in the butts than usual. So am I, so I'm going to vent. Maybe it will help. Ready? One, two, three, GO!

NO! I'm not going to call the doctor at 3 am to get you an order for a laxative. I don't care right this second that you haven't pooped in 2 days. You'll live until 0700!

Don't bother showing me what you have every time I come into the room. I have been doing this for over 20 years, how special do you think I would think yours is? Is it lime green? Can it sing the national anthem while smoking 5 cigars? Then forget it, I'm not interested!!

You will NOT starve to death! You have been here 4 hours, you weigh 325 pounds, you will survive until breakfast. No I don't have any cookies.

Listing your allergies as Darvocet, Talwin, Toradol, Ultram is a dead givaway. I don't care that they gave you Dilaudid in the ER, that was before they looked at your tox screen and saw your two and a half foot tall stack of old charts. Besides, it was ordered in the ER, it's not ordered here! You're gonna leave? Fine. Don't let the door hit you in the butt . First , sign this AMA sheet for me.

Where were the 15 of you when Granny was lying in her own excrement for two days in the floor? Don't threaten me with a lawsuit if I don't give you her medical info! Want me to spell my name for you? And I don't care if you know Frank Lewis personally! (Guess who Frank Lewis is!)

Oh, YOU are a lawyer? And just how does that apply to my treating your pancreatitis?

Your Adrenal glands hurt? Okay, I'll get right on that.

If you "don't want to be a bother", why have you hit the call bell 8 times in the last hour for no good reason?

The reason I haven't gotten your juice to you within the last 5 minutes is because there is a patient down the hall who is trying to stop breathing. You don't care? Okay, let's see what you think of the rest of your care while you are in the hospital!

Your sister won't tell you anything about Mom's condition? Maybe that's because the last time you visited Mom, you stole her jewelry and pawned it to buy crack! Yeah, go ahead and hit me, there are 6 very large security guards who will be glad to keep track of you for me while we call the cops. No, I can't tell you what you sister won't, there are laws against it.

I just walked in the room for the very first time to meet you, why are you yelling at me?

Do you hawk your loogies on the floor at home?

For the seventh time, you are having a test in the morning that you have to have on an empty stomache, so I can't give you anything to eat and drink after midnight. You don't feel good? You want us to help you feel better? Then let us run these tests to find out what the problem is....NO, I CAN'T GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO DRINK!

Excuse me, Doctor, but did talking to me like that help? We have a hospital policy about calling critical lab values. Ok, I'll be glad to wait and call you back when they code!

( you know the difference between a surgeon and God, don't you? God doesn't think he's a surgeon!)

Dr. X ordered that. Ok, I will change it. No, I won't tell Dr. X......that is your job. He is the attending.....yes, I know he shouldn't have consulted you just to change all your orders.....well, I don't know if he is an idiot or not.....HEY!! HOW ABOUT YOU TALKING TO HIM, I'M JUST A LOWLY NURSE HERE! THAT'S WHY YOU GET THE BIG BUCKS!

(And along the same lines....)
No, I don't know why the ultrasound wasn't done today. I got here three hours after that department closed. No, I don't know why the dayshift nurse didn't call you the lab values you asked for, I'm calling them NOW because I saw something that needed to be addressed.Yes, I will be glad to pass that on to the supervisor.

(And...) I'm calling you for pain medicine at 10 oclock at night because the patient asked for it. No, they didn't complain of pain at 8pm, if you would like to have had this handled before 10, maybe you could have written us an order to keep this from happening?

(And this is a true story)....Oh, you run between 0700 and 0800, and are not to be disturbed, ok, I will try to get through to your patient who has just been put on the ventilator to let them know that when you are done with your morning run, you will come see about her.

Laundry? We have 7 patients, 5 of which who are pooping the bed every hour, may I have a wash cloth or two? Well, I expect they used them all during the day. Do we have a quota?

No, you can't have another snack, your blood sugar is 380. Who's Churches Chicken boxes are those?

There is no smoking in the hospital! You weren't smoking? Then what is the cloud coming out of your bathroom?

You haven't had a drink for a couple of days? WOW! Then you must have really been drunk then, to have the smell oozing from your pores still! GOOD JOB!

These next 2 set off alarms in my head that I have learned to listen to.......

You "just don't feel good"? Okay....well....don't pay any attention to the crash cart I have just put outside your door.

You are " just SO tired"? Okay.....well....don't pay any attention to the crash cart I have just put outside your door.

No, I can't let you loose, you have pulled out 5 IV's tonight, and given yourself a prostatectomy by pulling out your foley. Your family won't stay with you, and your doctor won't order drugs to settle you down, you are just going to have to learn to like the blue bracelets I have put on you. Yes, they DO have to be tied to the bed.

Well, we had to replace his IV 5 times last night, he pulled out his foley twice with the balloon still inflated, that's why his urine is bloody, and you and your brothers and sisters all told us there was no one to come and sit with him. No, the doctor wouldn't order anything for him to help him sleep, because of his respiratory status, and that is why he has wrist restraints on.He kept pulling his oxygen off and turning blue. You are going to call your lawyer? Want me to get you a phone book? My name is spelled.....

There is not alot of exaggeration here, and of course much of this is only said in my head, while I am smiling at the patient/doctor/visitor, becasue none of them are worth losing my job over. I DO love my job. And sadly, while my job has alot of these examples every shift, it only takes one little old lady or little old man to reach out and pat my hand and say "You're a good nurse" to make it all worthwhile. The best of all is when you have been there the night before and you come back into the room the next day, they look up, smile and say, "Oh, THERE you are!" and an hour later they are sound asleep when they didn't sleep at all the night before.

We are NOT overpaid waitresses. We get sucked dry on a regular basis, and after a couple of days off, regroup to start again. I can't imagine doing anything else in my life.

A Safe Place to Be

2005-11-27T01:18:00.000-08:00

"I want to tell you about my best friend".....Isn't that the theme song to some show?
More and more, as I get older and less tolerant, I realize how she is sometimes the only thing that keeps me sane. She is absolutely and steadfastly that friend who would be unable to bail me out of trouble because we are looking at each other and saying "Damn, that was fun!" She is that friend who, after witnessing an event, I can turn to and ask "Is it me, or do I have good reason to be upset?", and she will give me an honest answer, AND get away with it! She will get away with it because she knows me well enough to be able to make me see how internal situations might skew my reactions. She does it from my frame of reference, pulling herself out of the emotional inflexiblity of her own opinion of the situation, and gently gives me my due while pointing me towards logic. Because of this, I have a chance to evaluate the validity of my own reactions before deciding upon an action. Or inaction.....as that is quite often the more legitimate choice.
She is neither a "Yes man" for me, or my devil's advocate. I don't go to her to hear what I want to hear. She also doesn't always subject me to "the other side of the story", if it isn't therapeutic and productive to do so. We have differences of opinion on some very basic and very important issues that cause heated debate between those who think they will be able to change someone's opinion if they just show them the "error in their thinking". We just don't debate those issues. Our bond is more important to us than that. Besides, we enjoy the stimulation of not being exactly the same. It isn't a threat in our relationship, it is something that keeps it new and fresh.
She knows how important she is in my life, and I am just as important in hers. Some people are fortunate enough to have such close relationships in their family lives, we are who we would choose if we were able to choose our families.
She is the person I can let know that I am about to go off the deep end because my psyche has endured too much in one sitting, and she will be an unobtrusive presence until I regain my equilibrium. She is the one I call first to share my triumphs, she knows just what they truly mean in my life.
She knows quite a bit of my history, and it is very different than hers. She doesn't hold any of it against me, she values it as a large part of what has made me who I am today, and recognizes it as learning experiences in my life. She doesn't assume that because I reacted a certain way to a certain set of circumstances in the past, that I will react again the same way, as I have learned from the past what was ineffective. She watches and celebrates my growth with me, and shares hers as well.
God willing, we will be the most enduring influence on each other's lives. I have had other friends in my life who were very nearly as important, but she is the one who is here, now, has been here, and as I said, God willing, WILL be here. I have NO doubt.....when you have that in someone, that is your safe place to be.
Being a nurse, I take care of crazy people sometimes. I am not a psych nurse, but it is the nature of the job that you see all kinds, and have to integrate all aspects of your patient's needs into their care to be effective in achieving your goals. I always wonder when I care for someone who has no real grasp anymore on reality, who doesn't take any responsibility for their actions, who sees and hears things that aren't there, how they got so far? Maybe it's because they didn't have anybody in their lives like my friend.....they never had a safe place to be.

Live until you die

2005-11-18T23:07:00.000-08:00

I REALLY love what I do. Yes, it can be frustrating, stressful, depressing and a whole bunch of other adjectives that I could name, but even after 20 plus years, I still find it more rewarding than you would think.
You cannot imagine some of the things I have learned about life from this job. We see people at their very worst, their most scared, sometimes at their most manipulative.
I have a phrase I repeat often, and that is "I'm going to the woods!" This means there are certain diseases that the cure is worse than the illness, and I would not want to go through what we put people through trying to fix them. It would be better to go hide in the woods, make myself as comfortable as possible, and when it is time, become part of the food chain. (Are you listening, Michael Valentine Smith? This job has taught me to GROK.)Not being actively suicidal, I still have a plan in mind.
But, unless I come down with something that I know I will not survive (like life?), I plan on living unil I die.
I remember a little 94 year old lady I cared for several years ago. She was four foot nothing . 88 pounds, 50 of which was her smile. She was "noncompliant" and saucy about it. At 94, I tend to have the attitude that you should get to say and do anything you %#@* well please, so I let her get away with alot. One time, she had gone to the bathroom, and I took that opportunity to remake her bed. I put it to it's highest position, which was at least 3 and a half feet from the floor, and got through most of my remake before she came out of the bathroom. The topsheet that I had picked up had a big rip in it, so, leaving the bed in it's high position, I went to get another top sheet. I came back to the room to find this little bit of nuthin with one leg slung up in the bed, climbing in. I said "what in the world are you doing?" "Getting back in bed!" (DUH) I laughed, and said,"You just can't stay out of trouble, can you?" She looked at me with a half smile on her face and said, "Well, I look at it this way honey, I'm going to be dead a LONG time!"
Yupper.

I thought I knew me

2005-11-16T11:41:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my family is still recovering from Hurricane Ivan. We are now 14 months, and I expect, several more months, and maybe years, before we can say "DONE!" Money has run out, thankfully, not without the necessities being installed. AND without really scrimping badly in the process. We didn't go top drawer on many things, but we didn't get junk just to have it done. We reconfigured the house to maximize storage and room space, the new roof cost a third of the available money ( we found that the term "rolled roofing" means it rolls off to your back yard during a hurricane).We wanted to avoid, as well as we can, doing this again next year. We brought many things up to code that had been limping along for over 50 years. Complete new wiring, complete new plumbing ( trust me folks, don't raise your kids to be doctors or lawyers, send them to Votech school, you'll get a much better return!), replacement of termite damage that had been there for 20 plus years, hidden.
We lived in the house before it was livable, thanks to family and friends with that votech kind of training, with extension cords through the windows, and at one point, "rednecked indoor plumbin'" consisting of a garden hose through the front window to the toilet tank for more convenient flushes. We had been blessed with a nice sized camper that had survived, which provided us a place to live for 4 1/2 months. And a place for me when I was working my night shift and needed to sleep during the day while progress was happening in the house. We lived in the camper full time at first because the Army Corps of Engineers "blue Roof" program created more leakage than we had with just a regular tarp stretched across the roof. We had to fashion funnels to make one big leak from 10 or so by stapling up drop cloth to the ceiling beams, at an angle, to direct the water into collection buckets. The moment we had new good roof overhead, we called for delivery of our new bed. You should have seen the looks on the guys faces when they delivered the bed! They were carrying boxes THROUGH the wall studs. When they asked how I was going to power the bed ( we bought one of those sleep number beds, air system, needs 'lectric), I held up extension cord #6. I would frequently wake up in the morning, roll over, look through 2 walls to my husband,very engrossed in the sports page, on his throne. TMI? Okay, but it was our comfort zone, no matter how primitive.
Every bit of progress towards normalcy was noted, one of the biggest was when the kitchen was finished. I am so proud of my kitchen, I could pop, but just having functional sinks in the house was a HUGE deal! No more hauling water from the crick!
The biggets surprises for my husband and I are the small things that we are finding increase our comfort level enormously. One for my husband was when we brought the big screen tv home. It worked, thankfully, and that was great. It wasn't the tv that was the issue, tho. We, in the same trip, brought the dog's toy box home. It had been in the storage shed for over a year. When we brought it in, she circled it a couple of times, sniffed it, and when she decided it wasn't dangerous, began counting her toys. Later that night while watching the tv, he looked around the living room. She was in the floor, on her back with a toy between her paws, very efficiently killing it. On the floor, scattered over the entire living room area, was about 10 of her favorites. He looked at me, smiled and said, "feels like home now."
For me, a moment came today when I went out to survey progress on repairing the front porch. Enough was done that it looked like a porch again, and it is possible it will be finished today. If not today, then tomorrow. Then, we can let the great lizard/palmetto bug hunters out on the porch again without fear of their losing the cat/car wars. Squirrels again will have to decide whether they are really in danger or not, and they will do their best to convince them they could "get out of here if we wanted!".
We are coming to realize how much of our own comfort is tied up in the comfort of our animals. While many would say that was a waste of time and effort, my husband and I will just call it...........Home.

2005-11-08T05:06:00.000-08:00

There has been quite a bit of discussion lately over the argument about "intelligent design", and this has reminded me of an instructor I had while I was going through Nursing School. He taught Anatomy and Physiology, and did it well. He made the class fun, did this trick of tossing the chalk from behind his back over his shoulder and catching it in front at waist level. Did it forty or so times during the course of a lecture, seemingly, without even thinking about it. We laughed out loud several times during the course of the lecture, and on every exam, at the end was a nonsense question that had no right answer, so it never counted against you.
I don't remember what brought the subject up, but he was discussing animals and whether they had emotions or not. His contention was that they did not, that every thing animals did was either survival instinct, or learned response as in "Pavlov's dogs". He discussed examples of his own dog's behavior, so we knew his opinion wasn't from an animal hater's point of view, and he had a ready answer (ready, not satisfactory, to many of us) for every question that came his way in attempts to cast doubt on this belief.
There are many people who feel the same way he does in varying degrees. I read many articles from vets, animals behaviorists, etc, that say animals, especially dogs, have no concept of time. Oh yeah? Then why does my dog stand at the front door every day, with her nose to the wood, as if she has x-ray vision, starting at about 5pm? She will stand there for an hour or so before she gives up the staring through the door routine, but it is replaced by nearby vigilance, until her Daddy gets home from work. A dog we had as a child would wake my Dad up if he overslept in the morning, which was a very rare occurance and usually involved a power outage which would mean that no alarm clock went off, to alert the dog that it was "time".
If you have animals, you know that they have to go with you to save you from the bathroom monster. It's the law. They will have to answer to the head beagle if they don't. Even cats, and answering to the head beagle is MUCH worse for them! Our dog would frequently jump up into the tub while I was still busy, and lap up the water around the drain. Not as disgusting as drinking out of the toilet, but if you have taken Microbiology in your lifetime, and know what we know, disgusting enough! One day, she was, for some unknown doggy reason, lagging behind. Our black cat came into the bathroom before she arrived, and jumped into the tub and hunkered down. This was a rare enough occurance that I just sat and watched to see what he was up to. The dog came in, and as soon as she was sure I was safe, put her paws on the side of the tub, preparing to jump in. POPPOP!! A left and a right to each side of her face, before she knew what hit her, and off like a streak, the cat escaped before she could retaliate! It was a good thing I was already on the pot, I would have peed my pants laughing otherwise. My dog just looked at me with a confused expression, like "What Happened?". To her credit, she didn't leave her post to get revenge, at least not right at that moment. Now, this was premeditated....how LONG had the cat been planning this, just waiting for the right moment, the few minutes that the dog was distracted by something else so he could get in the bathroom before she did, without her seeing him do it? This is an in-out cat too. It's not like he hangs around the house all day, with nothing else to do.
This happened long after I had graduated, but not before this professor had quit teaching. It wasn't important enough to bring to him to evaluate, as I had decided he was somebody I wouldn't want to have a debate with on any subject. He was suspected of abusing various substances, especially in his last few years teaching, had taken "sabbaticals" on a couple of occasions, that most of the students assumed were stints in rehab. He had been a bit of a hound dog always, he liked the sweet young things in his classes, and liked to party with the "in" group of students who were in his class at the time. He had also let it be known that he was an athiest, was proud of it, to the point of writing editorials in the paper on the subject to enlighten believers of their folly.
Within the last year, word got around very quickly, since many of us in the health field had taken his classes, that he had arrived at one of our satellite hospital's ER and had died there of a massive heart attack at the age of 62 or so. When I heard, it occurred to me that NOW he knew the answers to things we disagreed about, he NOW knew the truth, and I said out loud, with a snicker "What do you think now (insert name)?" I quit snickering when I suddenly realized the implication of his knowing the truth.

Surviving a hospital admission part 1

2005-11-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

Oh, boy, have I just opened a bag of worms!! This could take years and a jillion posts to even come close to having a comprehensive list.
I am forever perplexed at how many people come into the hospital with NO idea what a dangerous place it is! And I am not talking just about the kind of knowledge that only insiders would have, I am talking about having basic knowledge about their own condition, medicines, family histories and any other issues that might impact what happens to them while they are in our care.
So, let's start with the basics:
BRING A LIST OF YOUR MEDICATIONS
Include in your list ones that you may not be allergic to, but did not sit well with you, such as, made you sick at your stomache, made you feel jittery, etc. Make sure this list goes with you when you leave the ER to go to your hospital room.

ALLERGIES
To medicines, food, scents, lotions,cleaning supplies, on and on. If it makes you sneeze, itch, breaks you out, makes you have trouble breathing, gives you a headache, we want to know about it.

SURGERIES
We don't want to waste time looking for your gallbladder if you don't have one. We don't always tell you what we are looking for in the x-ray we are taking. An MRI can't be done if you have metals in your body, pacemakers, defibrillators.

WHO WE SHOULD CALL
Give us more than one contact, but keep in mind that we will be telling these people your business. Things happen very quickly, and if we cannot reach your main contact, we need to get someone else, preferably someone who might know how to reach your main contact. We need to know who it is okay to give your info to, as there are laws that prevent us from telling anyone how you are, even if they are family. We get cussed alot......

IF YOU HAVE A LIST OF ALL THESE, KEEP IT UPDATED!!!!
If your doctor took you off a beta-blocker because it slowed your heart too much, but it didn't come off your list, you may get it before your primary doc knows because the ER doc saw it on your list and ordered it for you.

IF YOU HAVE ENCOUNTERED A SPECIALIST THAT YOU WOULDN'T TAKE YOUR DOG TO, ADD HIM TO THE LIST, WITH A NOTATION "DO NOT CALL OR CONSULT".

IF YOU HAVE A LIVING WILL, FILE IT WITH YOUR MD, HOSPITAL, AND KEEP AN ABBREVIATED COPY ON YOUR PERSON.
You need to understand that a living will is not, at this time in many, maybe even all, states a legal document that would prevent the paramedics from doing CPR, it is only a form that lets your MD, your family, and anyone else who sees it, know what your wishes are. Legally, unless we have a valid "DO NOT RESUSCITATE" order, we have to do what we can.

ASK QUESTIONS
Don't put anything in your mouth unless you know you are supposed to have it. Don't let any procedures be done unless you know what, why, what it is to accomplish and what may happen after. Many procedures can't be done unless you sign a consent form for them. Don't sign any papers until you have had a chance to read them, or have a complete explanation of what they say, should you not be able to read at that time.

AND MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL!!
Remember that the doctors work for you, you have hired them to direct your health care. The nurses keep you alive, comfortable, fed, clean, and hopefully, spiritually and psychologically content, based on the MD's orders and their good common sense. If you hire someone to mow your lawn, and you look out the window and they are leaving a 3 foot swatch of unmowed area between each row they mow, wouldn't you say something about it, or even fire them? Your health care is no different. Don't go shouting "off with their heads" unless you have a good idea that you need to, but don't suffer suboptimal attention to detail because you are intimidated. YOU ARE THE BOSS!

Remember that the people caring for you are human. And usually overworked, undersupplied, and who knows what personal baggage they brought in the door with them that day? I tell my patients, "I walk into my kitchen, stand there for a minute, and think ' now, what did I come in here for?' JUST LIKE YOU DO!"

Greybeard's pain

2005-11-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading his lastest post "Monsoon Season In Viet Nam". Made me wish I could hold him for awhile and have the right words to say that would put this pain where it belongs. I can't and don't. The only people who might are people who have "been there and done that" and burned the t-shirt when they were done.
I know this man, not as well as some, and better than quite a few. There is a breakthrough occuring here for him to post this, and I hope it is a healing one. For many years, his family didn't hear many of these stories. We heard this one, because it was a name we were familiar with. But pain prevented him from relating the stories that haunted his sleep.
I am a nurse, have been for over 20 years. And I firmly believe that there are worse things than dying. While Greybeard's pain may not quite fit into this catagory, what causes him pain is his imagination of this CHILD'S last moments. And those moments DO fit in this category. Dying was the easy part. And his Mother's pain just very well MAY fit into this category.
So, I ask that you not only pray for those who are out there now, fighting for us, I ask you to pray for those who did in the past and are carrying many hidden scars from it. Especially those who had the fortitude to come back from hell and remain, (or in some cases, become) valuable assets in our lives. Have compassion for those who didn't, we have no way to comprehend their psychic burdens.
I have been caring, for the past 10-15 years, for guys who come in with hugely swollen stomaches, orange/copper skin, orangey/tea colored urine and all we can do for them is get the ammonia levels in their systems down low enough to keep them from seeing spiders on the walls. They didn't have to be drunks for the amount of alcohol that they drink to exacerbate the damage done by agent orange to their livers. And in some cases, they didn't drink at all, it happened anyway. Spiders may very well be the most benign thing they see.....
I see guys who come up to you and the first thing they tell you is that they have PTSD, just before they ask for a cigarette, or some spare change. I struggle with my judgement system just like any other human when this happens. But, now, I have been through something in my life that has made me go "Oh!" when I think about what trauma and stress does to people. I still don't have the right or the wherewithall to say I understand, I never will. But, I now know for certain that if I expect compassion and understanding, I have to give it. And I will pray for them just as hard as I do the ones who are currently creating monsters and nightmares and demons they will carry for the rest of their lives......if they are lucky.....or not.

Finally!

2005-11-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

I originated this spot while my family was enduring the recovery from hurricane Ivan. A family member had begun blogging, and I found it interesting. Problem was, house was demolished, camper wouldn't hold a computer (weren't sure at that point if it would have been usable, even so) and my connection to cyberspace was an MSNTV2 unit. Now, that was a wonderful critter as far as keeping me connected with the rest of the world was concerned, but was limited in many ways. I could log on, name everything, set my password, etc., but when it came time to put the curser in the area to begin typing, I hit a brick wall. Frustrating, but very small potatoes when compared to the other things we were enduring, and to a smaller extent, still are.
Here we are, more than one year later, and we have just reconnected a new computer (Old Bessie survived, but with too many glitches to deal with). Some around here haven't even really begun their recovery, and I feel if I were in their shoes, I would load up a car and move north, even without a penny to my name. I can't wrap my brain around what Katrina's victims are dealing with, and WILL deal with. Ivan was a disaster, one that has inflicted varying degrees of PTSD on us all, and it was not near as bad as the mess Katrina left behind. Not because she was that much worse as a storm, but because of multiple factors that would have come into play with very similar results, had Ivan hit where she did. And for that area, the trauma has just begun. More on that later.
Explanation for the name of this blog......you ever wonder if God has a sense of humor? Never fear, HE/SHE does, and it is extremely warped!! Timing is everything. The hurricane/recovery from and menopause are occuring at the same time! Not as cruel as could be, tho, for when the hot flashes would become a true factor in my sleep patterns, we had air conditioning in some form to use. The feather pillow reference is thrown in because I wanted a source of comfort amidst the thorns.
So, here we are, and I hope to connect with some of you in the future!

Why

2005-05-01T11:23:00.000-07:00