In Response to Kelly's Question

it's now doubling as a handy storage unit that my bedroom otherwise didn't have.

without further ado...

if only i had something exciting to share

it's 0500 and i have 2 more hours left... for tonight at least.
back on nights, which actually haven't been so horrendous as they normally are since i have one of my fellow cohorts with me to pass the time. and by fellow cohorts i mean that she also speaks english as her first language. seriously, when some of the other nurses get together and start talking...i just have to laugh. i suppose that they are speaking english because that's what they insist it is, but i honestly have no idea what they are saying.
tonight a full 15 minute conversation passed in which the only words i could catch were ".....lucifer....made her cry....Praise You Jesus!" there was a lot of laughing and "Praise You Jesus" was repeated multiple times...i find most of the time it's best just not to ask.
so life updates, i am officially another year older. my birthday came and went quite quietly. i know that sounds lame to most people my age but if you have a histoy that includes being tear-gassed on your birthday then really you're just happy that you got through the day in one piece.
next big event was the new couch. my apartment is absolutely adorable now. love it. it's cozy and actually looks like an adult lives there as opposed to the recent college grad who used to live there. i promise to post pictures soon so that everyone might bask in its loveliness.
i think i told most everyone but for those of you who didn't hear my last day on the floor is feb.28th. mark it on the calendars folks because that is a day to celebrate. it's a little weird that i will be changing jobs, i'll soon be in an entirely new atmosphere and pretty much a new hospital. the PICU is in our new tower so everything there is brand new, it only just opened up in November. then on top of that i'll be working with people i don't know, kind of makes me feel like the new kid at school and i have no one to eat lunch with. scary thought.
these are the kinds of things you ponder when you've been up all night and you're tired and there's nothing to do.
however i suppose that i should at least make the effort to look like i'm doing something productive. although i'm pretty sure my patient's all think i'm a crazy stalker because i have nothing better to do than check on them every 15 minutes.

King of Glory

this harkens back to my steubenville days, those were good times. more than once, i have to admit, i envisioned something similar to this while going to the FOP's. (if you know what a FOP is then i don't need to explain why i would be choreographing dance routines in the middle of one.)

It's All Relative

But wait, really.....

it's THAT SMALL!!!!!!

Oh How Crafty

so i realized my blog was getting a little wordy so i took a picture of my recent craft projects.
on the right is my legging i am currently knitting, and on the left the ornaments that i am making (courtesy of Martha Stewart)
both clearly still in the first stages of developement but i'm hoping to have both done for christmas.
my roommate moved in, it's odd to always have someone around now. always there, in your stuff, there, it's just weird. i mean i like it, but i'm still adjusting.
the good part about it is that today when i said "mass is at noon and there's confession before" she responded with "perfect then we can get there at 11:30" having that extra support/encouragement is so awesome and i didn't even know how much i missed it. but a lot of our college friends came in so i should get back to my guests, just wanted to update you on my crafting status. oh and by the way kell, i have recieved more than one compliment on my little sewing maching. everyone thinks it, and consequently me, are adorable. so thank you.

My Monthly Newsletter

well guys, no more 3 am blogging for a few weeks. last night was my last night shift till sometime in the new year.
thank goodness
i HATE night shift with a passion.
i hate having to tiptoe in and out of rooms, i feel like i'm sneaking around. half the time these kids come in overnight and the doc orders medications and treatments for them after the family falls asleep and then what do you do? do you wake up this sleep deprived parent to let them know what you're about to do even though 9 times out of 10 they are so out of it when you do wake them up that they don't understand you. or do you just hold your breath and hope you don't wake anybody up?
i usually just hold my breath.
i was going to steal a blood pressure cuff from the hospital today so that i could take a picture of it for you all, but it was the only blood pressure cuff small enough for my patient who was transferred out of the NICU. seriously, around my thumb, it fit around my thumb.
sometimes the central supply people for the hospital accidently send us blood pressure cuffs that are really supposed to go to the NICU, when we get to many we'll give them out to kids for their stuffed animals so that they can take their stuffed animals BP. unfortunately today we only had the one so i couldn't steal it.
funny story, the other day i had purchased a bottle with a little spigit at the top for my dish washing soap, it looks prettier than bottle of dawn (actually i got that idea from kelly) anyways, it was a cheap bottle with a cheap plastic top that eventually popped out unbeknownst to me and fell down my garbage disposal. long story short i bought a new (nicer) bottle and poured the soap from old bottle A into new bottle B. not really wanting to wash out the bottle i just tossed it in the dishwasher, thinking i had cleverly averted an obnoxious chore.
uhm, not so. i walked into my kitchen about 15 minutes later only to find the floor COVERED IN SOAP SUDS!!!!!!! and more pouring out from the bottom of the dishwasher. my heart absolutely stopped beating and i was pretty sure that i had broken not only the dishwasher, ruined the floor, but i would most likely be evicted from my apartment for causing so much damage in so short a time.
it was horrible, and rather like a cartoon, all at the same time. i tried jumping to the little mat in front of the sink (the only dry spot left in the kitchen) only to find that it wasn't dry and i went flying across the floor. thankfully my refridgerator is very sturdy.
i battled my way back to the dishwasher and grabbed a giant mixing bowl to scoop the suds into the sink. it was a losing battle though. eventually i had to find every towel i ever owned to use to barricade the bubbles in the kitchen and then i just started scooping bubbles, once the sink was filled i got a bucket and started toating loads out to my bathtub while the sink was being rinsed free of bubbles. hindsight is 20/20 and i now most sincerly regret that i didn't take a picture of it but at the time i was freaking out more than a little and i had to leave for work in the next hour so i didn't really feel like i had that kind of time to be photo-logging the latest adventure in Kate's Adventures in Domesticity.
in other news, today is my last day as a single care-free girl living alone in the big city (ok, the big suburbs) today, Dec 5th, 2007 i get a roommate.
i was thinking about it and it's been almost 2 years since i last had a steady kind of roommate. i was living in Ecuador...wow, it's kind of a little bit scary to think about having someone else move into my apartment, scary but i'm excited. and actually this is a good friend of mine from college and we lived in a house together there so i'm not to nervous.
anywho, it's now 1 in the afternoon and i actually worked last night so i should probably go take a nap. i've had a hard time inwinding from this last shift, i think because of the new roommate and also it's snowing like crazy outside and i get a little nervous driving in the snow so i've been running around trying to get as many errands as possible done before the snow gets to bad.
but i went shopping, the post office and target so i think i'm set for the next few days.

how to have fun in virginia

i decided to go on an adventure with friends and hike up Old Rag one last warm weekend in october. "a 5 hour hike with "rock scrambles" and "panoramic views"."

i should known better that when people use phrases like those to describe something, then more than likely they have never experienced it themselves.

it was actually a lot of fun, but i did truly think i was going to die the next day. i hurt so much... down to my very finger tips that i had used just the day before to grip for dear life and scale boulders during part of the famous "rock scramble" (i may be exagerating that last part but there really were some parts that i was more than little concerened about, i felt like people like me probably shouldn't be allowed up without a safety harness)

me, victorious at the end of the "scramble"



i don't really feel like the picture needs any explanation.

i'm not asleep

still on night shift, hence the 3am blogging.

the heat is broken here on our floor...it's so cold!!!! i have been begging the engineering dept. to bring us up some space heaters for the kids but they keep claiming that they will have the heat fixed in a few more minutes. this has been going on for the last few hours though so i'm growing less and less convinced that this is true.

i felt so bad because i had to change a diaper and the poor little guy was so cold, i went and got him a little knitted hat and booties and bundled him up good afterwards but still, it was a cold 3 minutes.

i have perfected my diaper changing skills so that i can change a poo filled diaper (or any kind of diaper really) in about 60 seconds. factor in the re-bundling and outfit change it's almost like a superhuman power.

i know i'm writing to an audience of mostly moms with multiple children for the most part but hey for a 25 year old single girl these are some "mad skills" to possess. that's street lingo for "an impressive talent" which i learned from the last 10 year old i hung out with (the last 10 year old and also my sister).

i have also fine tuned my hearing to that of mothers who can distinguish their child's cry apart from an entire screaming room of children, now i can hear a pump or monitor beeping and just by listening i can tell you if it's mine. and my super ears are telling me...yup, that one's mine...and the baby's hungry. seriously, i feel if you have to eat every 3 hours you should at least have the courtesy not to burp like a 20 something frat boy who just won a beer chugging contest.

it's 3:30 am, what are you doing?

so i'm actually currently at work, probably shouldn't advertise that but it's 3:30 am and i have no meds to give and everyone is alive and breathing so for the next 30 minutes i have nothing to do. and actually in 30 minutes i'll have a full 15-20 minutes of work and then nothing until 6:00 am at which point i will give my last medication of the night and then sit around and wait for the day shift to show up at 7:30. i truly dislike night shift. it's all a bunch of hurry up and wait.

so yesterday i talked to the PICU manager and she as formally as she could, she offered me the job. she told me i'd need to contact nursing recruiting to find out my new salary but i'm pretty sure it's more than i make now so that's kind of exciting. she did tell me that i'll need to become chemo certified which freaks me out. i am terrified of taking care of oncology patients let alone putting toxic chemicals through a central line. one thing that made me feel better though is that she told me that if there is ever an really sick kid in the PICU with all kinds of drips and pressors and tubes and such then they will assign 2 nurses to that patient. life is much less scary when you have a buddy.

work here is horrendous right now. the burn out rate for nurses is something like less than 5 years...i'm shocked it's that long. seriously, if our patients were always like the ones we have right now i would quit. i would be back in Ecuador before you could even say "¿Dónde fue ella?". last night i cried when i walked it every one of my patients' room. you really need to remember to pray when you work in a place like this otherwise....it would be unbearable.

well, my thirty minutes are up. i have extremely important work to go do...that will hopefully take longer than 10 minutes! it's all about killing time on night shift.

Keeping Up Appearances

Lately i've been feeling a little worn down, the spirits have been somewhat depressed you could say. after going to confession at work the other week i've really been trying to not let the difficulty of the job affect the care i give. like fr, anthony told me, i'm bringing something special to these kids, something that not everyone else in the hospital brings them, i just need to keep reminding myself that, otherwise i end up coming home looking like this picture!

so life has been quite busy lately, i know i'm horrible at posting but i promise to try harder. there's a lot of things in my life i'm going to try harder at. one is that i have finally joined a gym.

HIGHLY overrated this being "in shape" what is that any way? when the trainer at the gym asked me what my goals were i told him that it was to have the strength and endurance to hike through the jungles of third world countries. that seemed like an acceptable goal but it seems that Bally's Total Fitness does not have a specific exercise plan for training future missionaries. odd.

i have had a lot of visitors as well in the last month or so, first a good friend from college, then erin and lucia (which was so much fun guys!) and then just this past week my friend who had lived with me down in Ecuador. i love mary dearly but we always have the worst luck when we're together. i swear, if only MTV made a reality show about us...let's just say Real World's got nothing on us! and this past week was no exception. my car got towed! we were leaving the museum of natural history to go back to my car when i noticed oh so many cars along constitution ave. being towed, i started to become a little nervous and so, started walking a little faster. we were finally within eyesight of my car... and the tow truck in front of it, and i started running screaming "that's my car! where are you going?!!" the truck driver was good enough to stop and give me the address of the place it was being towed to. i asked him "what am i supposed to do? i'm not even from here?" and he told me "catch a cab, they all know where we are located" evil bastard. reason number 5,679 to hate DC. and so it was that as i watched my beloved daewoo being dragged through the streets mary and i hailed a cab driven be the nicest jamaican cabbie ever. when we got to the place he insisted on giving us directions back to constitution and then waited at the side of the road until i had my car back. he even was going to wave half of the cab fee when an oversight led us to hand him a $5 instead of a $10. the first truly nice person i've met since i moved here. he said it was because he's really from jamaica and not DC. and so, a $100 ticket later and a trip to the SE portion of DC later, the daewoo and i were reunited hardly the worse for ware. and mom, dad, if there is an inexplicable bill for towing sent to the house please direct it back here and i'm sorry for the inconvenience

also i have noticed that there are far to many smells in my life, i go to the hospital and am exposed to all kinds of foul repulsive smells, then i come home and it seems like i have a different cleaner for every different object in my apartment, and lotions and perfumes and laundry detergent etc. why? there is no need for so many different smells in one life and so it is that i have decided to simplify. i've just become so overwhelmingly nauseated by smells that this has become an necessity rather than a choice. so there it is, i have developed an allergy to smells.

in the work aspect of life i am still very much as i was. over worked and under paid. just kidding, to an extent. i do love my job but it can be very trying at times. i have heard from the PICU here and they have told me that i would be able to make the move in febuary. this is exciting but very intimidating. can i really be a PICU nurse? this means a lot more than i currently deal with. this means life and death and vents and ECMO and serious ethical questions. the question that most frequently comes to mind though, is am i smart enough? but i know that this is a ridiculous doubt, a fear of the unknown more than anything else.

tomorrow is anther day and i have to go to work again. i had off today which was wonderful, highly unusual but a welcome change of pace when i usually have to work every other weekend and this time around i only have to work this sunday.

no hables espanol?

it's october and i haven't posted in a month, guess it's about time to make my annual appearance.
tada!!
that's right, i'm still alive.
was at work today, made it to mass which is always a plus.
you never know when you work in the hospital whether or not you're going to be able to make it to mass or not. sometimes i don't. it makes me pretty sad when i don't, but today i did.
i even got to go to confession which was awesome.
i love the priest at the hospital. he really takes the time to get to know people and offer spiritual direction and tries to call all of us heathens on to be better people.
i do have to go back to work in exactly 7 hours though, so i am off to bed.
just wanted to let everyone know i'm still alive.
adios mis amigos.

From the Mouths of Babes

the explanation behind this photo is that Finney was generously sharing his lunch with me...after he had taken it out of his mouth...and chewed it.

what you can't see, although perhaps have already inferred, is that he was quite successful in his attempt. the pre-chewed Gerber meatstick is in fact in my mouth. how sweet

When Moths Attack

So i had a horribly frightening experience the last time i left my house.

a large moth flew at me and tried to attack me, luckily i was on my work and had my stethoscope handy to use as a weapon.

though this is not a picture of the exact moth that attacked me it is a good representation of how truly hideous he was

the moth did escape unharmed but i'm pretty sure he'll think twice before coming near me again.

To Lisa:

I'm still alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but i have to go to work in 5 hours so please enjoy this picture of a giraffe

~me

Deep Thoughts, by Finney

"When we consider how the Fibonacci Series relates to music you must think of our "octave":
It's made up of 12 + 1 (13 including the octave) chromatic tones.
We consider the semi-tone (1) and whole tone (2 semi-tones) to be building blocks of diatonic scales.
Pentatonic scales are 5 tones.
Diatonic scales are 8 tones.
The 1st, 3rd, and 5th tones in the diatonic scale are the building blocks of root chords.
I could go on to demonstrate the influence that the Fibonacci series has had in music...but it's likely better (if you're not convinced) to trust me that i know what i'm talking about"

A Journey's End

Maggie fought the good fight, she finished the race and yesterday evening Maggie passed away.

I was able to see her to say goodbye and mourn with her parents and family for a short time this morning.

We will all miss Maggie but we take comfort in knowing she's no longer suffering and is now up in Heaven praying for us all.




“He called to Him those whom He desired, and they came to Him"

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July!!!

So we went out to Annapolis for the 4th and not only were there fireworks but there was a parade....WITH CAMPER VANS!!!!!! i now believe that a 4th of July parade cannot be complete with out a string of camper vans, especially vans with white bear skin rugs, champagne glasses and pillows that say "Big Mac".

beacuase nothing says American pride like a 1/2 mile string of campers vans

Updates

so it's been a month...my bad yo. in my defense, i have been THINKING about blogging.

as many of you know, i've been a bit preoccupied lately by one of my patients at the hospital. she's actually no longer my patient since she's now in the ICU but i've become close with the family so i've become somewhat territorial of them. Maggie is still very sick and the family is asking for all your prayers. she's been close to dying more than once now and she still has a very long road ahead of her, not only does she need to recover from this last open heart surgery but she will need a liver transplant in the very near future. so please pray for her and her family.

other than that not to much has been going on, i went to New York a few weekends ago. I went to both visit one of my good friends and also to look into a possible job at the Children's Hospital there in manhattan. it was a great visit with mary and i had so much fun but all my plans for going to the hospital totally fell through. it's still a possibility for the future but for right now i think i want to go into ICU nursing and if i moved to new york i'd have to take a position on a med/surg floor like i'm working on now. not a bad thing but it would throw off my 5 year plan.

oh that's right folks, i have a 5 year plan. 1 year of med/surg nursing, 2 years of ICU nursing, 2 years of OR nursing and then volunteer again. i'm hoping to go back to Ecuador to volunteer but i would go anywhere really. after that we'll see. i was thinking of going back to school for anesthesiology but that will depend on how well i like the OR. actually all i really want to do is work around the world volunteering. i hear the sudan needs nurses...

nothing else new, Kelly, Dan and the boys are coming out on friday, 5 of us in my 1 bedroom apartment... things should be very interesting! i'm actually really excited because i love getting to spend time with them and there are plenty of things to keep us busy outside the house so that we won't be on top of each other all the time. and as an added bonus for us all i finally got my air-conditioning fixed.

the A/C has been broken for close to a month now, basically ever since the weather started getting hot. but i've been out of town on the weekends and working so i really haven't thought about it too much, then the other day it was about 85 out and oh so humid and i decided to go for a run and walking back into my apartment felt a little like walking into my own personal sauna and it was then and there that i called to have them fix the air. i just envisioned hot cranky babies all weekend and it was not a good image. but as things are now a comfortable 78 degrees i don't have anything else to do except possibly clean my bathroom

my latest adventure

so as you may know i have to rotate days and nights. not my favorite thing but thankfully only two weeks out of each month. anywho, on my last night it was about 4:30 almost 5 in the morning and i had to run a blood sample down to the lab (usually during the day we have specific staff who go around picking up samples to take back down to the lab but overnight we have to run it down ourselves, that said, i often wonder who are the people who apply for a job where their sole function is to run samples of bodily fluids from one place to another?)
so as a general courtesy i let everyone know i was leaving the floor and would be able to run whatever errands they needed. i was instantly bombarded with requests and so off i went with my list in hand:

*central supply for a dressing for Korri
*diet coke from the vending machine for Emily
*lab for me

i decided to go to central first as it was on the first floor and i could just work my way back upstairs after getting the supplies i needed.
opting to take the elevators instead of the stairs for safety reasons i absentmindedly got on the first one that opened on my floor (first mistake of my ill-fated journey). as the doors closed i had this vague feeling of uneasiness as i realized that i was on the "slow" elevator but i shook it off and told myself it was fine, i had told everyone if i wasn't back in 15 minutes they were to come looking for me, a joke of course but at the same time i meant it and they knew it.

as the elevator neared to the first floor i noticed a funny sound, kind of like a chinking/grating type noise. not being well versed in elevator maintenance i wasn't entirely positive but i was pretty sure that this was not a good noise.

then i noticed that i was no longer going down, but back up.

what was this?

i started hitting buttons in an attempt to stop the elevator but to no avail, it just kept fluctuating between floors but not stopping!

i had no idea what to do, i pushed every button i could and the elevator kept going.

after what felt like an eternity but in reality was about 5 minutes i was reaching for the phone in the elevator when i saw that i had not pushed the button to the 4th floor. i closed my eyes, said a little prayer and hit 4. i sensed the elevator moving now upwards but with what seemed like a purpose. the doors opened and i lept out feeling a sense of freedom i've never experienced. i was still a little leery of taking the steps in a dark hospital in the middle of the night so i hit the down arrow and waited and in a bank of 6 different elevators which one came back up? the one i had just escaped from. after that i took the stairs regardless of the creepy factor.

oh but wait, it doesn't end there.

once i finally made it down to central supply to pick up the dressing Korri needed, i couldn't get anyone inside to open the door. i kept ringing the bell but nothing. eventually some of the guys who were cleaning the floors a little ways down the hall told me i could get inside but another door.
this other door opened into a part of central supply i had never seen before, i kept calling out but no one answered me. as i walked on into the labyrinth of various medical paraphernalia the thought that i should probably just give up and call it a night did cross my mind but after the adrenaline rush of my earlier brush with death i just couldn't. so i kept going. and going. and going

so there i was, lost in the hospital's central supply at 4:30 in the morning. i kept calling out but literally only heard my echo in return.

i could not believe this was happening, first the elevator now lost? as i wandered through the sections of diapers, i couldn't help but see what an opportunity i had in my hands. to be unsupervised in central supply was like turning a fat kid loose on an all you can eat buffet.

eventually i did wander into the section i knew so i picked up the supplies i was asked to get and then just a few more i felt would be useful to us nurses on the floor. after that i headed to the vending machine for Emily and then to the lab.

as i finally walked back onto the floor a full half an hour after i said i'd be back, i felt my pager go off. i checked the message and saw that i had been missed. evidently i had been gone for 45 minutes and a search party was being organized if i didn't call them back.

next time i think i'll just wait till someone else volunteers to go off the floor.