6/21 Stuff on my mind...

Officially finished maternity today! (YAY!) Took the final exam - I know I passed, but I don't know what my final score was. I think I'm in the mid-80's, but I don't know exactly where. The grading scale for it is so fouled up, that I could fall anywhere on the scale. Check this one out...

A 95-100
A- 93-94
B+ 90-92
B 88-89
B- 86-87
C+ 84-52
C 82-83
C- 80-81
[Below C is not considered passing]

Point is, I passed, so I guess I shouldn't care. Right now I'm "celebrating" by relaxing and cherishing the fact that for once I don't have to be in Charlotte at 0645 on Wed AM. (and I'm relaxing with a big fat glass of V. Sattui wine!! Mmmm...)
Yeah, I'd love to go back there right about now and have a picnic on their grounds. Hey, Kace? How 'bout lets set a date?? I know we're both overdue for some more yummmy wines. And hey, remember that little old guy, the owner's uncle that was feeding us "The Babymaker?!?" Wasn't he a cutie pie?? *sigh* well, ok it's not practical for us to be going out there if there's no deaths or weddings. K, let's order another big shipment, and have a picnic in the woods at your new backyard!! :) (psst... if anyone we know is dying or getting married, call me though!)

God I'm awful!! I have a feeling I'm going to look at this post and regret it in the morning!!

I had a patient ask me last weekend if I was in school. I grinned, and said yes. (yeah, believe it or not, patients ask this a lot. I guess they start to notice a pattern in the fact that all the techs are nurse wannabe's!) Anyway, this one shocked me... she then asked me what grade I was in! I was like, "Um, I'm 27 ma'am". She just laughed and said, "oh, so you aren't in a grade anymore! You're in College!!". I'm thinking I'll take that as a compliment! Hey, at least I'm not an old hag! :)

Ok, something I'm falling in love with all over again: The Sklar Brothers. It started with dear ol' Kace... she caught a special like a hundred years ago* on Comedy Central and told me I just HAD to watch it. Holy crap, we laughed till we cried, and damn near pissed our pants! Ok... so that was like a hundred years ago*. (*kendra-speak for a long damn time ago) Then, while I was living in Sebastopol, I caught this new show, Cheap Seats. (hey, at the time Sebastopol only had like 20 channels... I never would have tuned to it if I knew it was ESPN!) I fell in love with it immediately! Laughed so hard I hurt my sides. It was the episode with these triatheletes competing with dogs (and not even THEIR dogs) that sold me! I watched it faithfully, until shortly after I moved, when my schedule started getting too crazy to keep up with tv.
Well this weekend, I had to play "sitter" at work. Being a sitter, is pretty much just what it sounds like... ya got to sit in the patient' room to make sure they behave. (in this case, we had a patient going thru DT's.) Anyay, she slept a lot, and I was able to catch like four hours of Cheap Seats! Gawd, I love that show... and as I told Keri on the phone earlier - I decided Jason Sklar is HOT. Mmmm. Hot, buttery Sklars! *grin*

Before I go, one somber thing I just want to get off my chest: we've got this lady... sweet as can be. She's got full blown AIDS, and is Hep C+. She's been in and out since before I started working there. It's getting worse, and I don't know how much longer she has with us on this earth. I think about this each week before I come back to my shift. I know she's in pain, and she's fighting an amazing fight. We know she will not get better. I root for her, and each week I creep in slowly and ask if she is still around - not sure whether to root for her to stay, or for her to pass and free herself. She's committed herself to fighting every step of the way, and I applaud her for the courage and strength that she's shown.
She's got the most amazing son.. he stays with her and takes care of her almost all the dang time. Whenever he's not at work, he's pretty much at the hospital with his mother. He's a living angel... Truly. Beautiful both inside and out. I know she knows how special he is. I don't know how he does it, and I hold him in the highest regard.
I wish I could say more.. but honestly, I'm not sure where to draw the line, so I'd best not say anything. More than anything, this family wants their privacy, and I will give them that. I hold this family in the highest regard... and there's really not a lot of point to this story other than putting it out there... I think about these people a lot. Her passing is inevitable - it's just a matter of when, and I know that I will feel a deep sorrow when she goes. Fuck anyone that says not to get too attached... when you take care of someone for this long, you get to know them and their family. They are amazing kind-hearted souls that show the greatest devotion and respect for each other... I wish more people were like that.
*whew* Damn near started crying here... Time to end this thing... written a whole book practically! Going to hafta make a point to come back online in the AM to see if I need to do some major editing here. (my guess is probably so!)

Allergies: not just an urban legend

I don't know why people refuse to believe other people have allergies.
I have allergies. I can't tell you how angry it makes me when people trivialize them, or tell me that I'm making it up, that it's all in my head. *eyeroll*

I'm allergic to cats. Bad. Send me to a house with a housecat, and we're in for trouble. My eyes water, and itch and get all swollen and puffy... my asthma kicks in, and I begin to have trouble breathing. If I don't get out of the situation quickly, a full-blown asthma attack is sure to ensue. My grandma, rest her soul, never seemed to believe the seriousness of my allergies. Guess nobody ever understood why I always had to leave halfway through Christmas dinner to go grab my inhaler... or why I was otherwise lethargic, drugged to the max on Benadryl!

I'm also allergic to dog spit. It's taken forever, but I've ruled it down... used to think it was dogs, but it's just their slobber. I do well with non-spitty dogs, like poodles and labs. Play fetch with a spitty dog, and my hands get red and itchy and break out in hives. Get a dog to "kiss" me, and it's all over. A lick to the face makes me look like I've been in the room with a cat.

A guy told me once that it wasn't POSSIBLE for me to be allergic to dog spit because a dog's mouth has less germs than a human's... and therefore any allergies I have are all in my head. Some people are retarded. Thank GOD my allergies are not so life threatening. I wonder how many people have died of anaphylactic shock because someone didn't believe their allergies were real..

Unconscious Mutterings 6/15

Saw this and just HAD to add it to my blog. Just randomness

1. Wally:: Lamb, author
   
2. Phantom:: Costume
   
3. Slippery:: When wet
   
4. Fungus:: Those dang toe commercials -eew
   
5. Slot:: Coin
   
6. Type:: A positive
   
7. Discharge:: Lochia - Rubra Serosa & Alba
   
8. "We need to talk”:: Fight a brewin
   
9. On the spot:: Pressured
   
10. Liquid:: Metal
    

From Unconsious Mutterings

The Facts of Life

My phone just rang, singing out the theme song to "The Facts of Life". Yeah, it's cheezy, but it's 80's retro-cool to me, and I've had it programmed there for a few months now. But today it just seems kinda fitting..

It's been a while since i've posted anything new. Mostly I've just been preoccupied - school is taking up a great deal of time. But there are other things too... I think last time I posted I was getting ready to spend my clinical rotation in L&D (Labor & Delivery). I spent two days there, and in those two days, I watched two births: a vaginal delivery, and a cesarean section. (is that how you spell it??) Anyway, it was pretty amazing. During the vaginal, i was completely amazed. Wanted to cry for about a half a second, but knew better. (have to keep your composure in front of the patient & family!!) The C-section was amazing as well, but an altogether different experience. .... I found myself more watching the doctor perform the surgery, and how the mother was tended to & sewn up than watching how the baby was cared for. *guess that's the med-surg gal in me!*

I'm not even going to talk about high risk... it kept me busy, and there was a lot to do. But I wouldn't be able to start to talk about much because the #1 patient I had was a story in itself. HIPAA, ya know. *shaking head* But I will say, when you hear "there really are people like that out there"... that's one of THOSE that I had! (*ha!)

Last weekend at work, I got to see the other side of life... DEATH. We had two patients die on my floor during my shift Sat/Sunday. It was both my first, and my second postmortem. The first one happened just as I was walking onto my shift. I had never met this patient before. The second occurred at the very end of my shift... I knew this patient a little bit because I had been helping take care of her the last 2 weekends. I walked in the room to perform oral care on her when I realized she had gone. (I'll have to post the whole story in another post ... started to type about it the other day on my home computer, but never posted it).

So yeah... that brings me to today - I just spent the last 2 days in the newborn nursery with brand new perfect babies, after cleaning up and toe-tagging two others over the weekend. "The facts of life"

for those not retro-cool enough to remember it:
The Facts of Life
You take the good,
You take the bad,
You take them both
and there you have the facts of life.
The facts of life.

There's a time you gotta go and show
You're growin' now,
You know about the facts of life.
The facts of life.

When the world never seems,
To be living up to your dreams.
And suddenly you're finding out,
The facts of life are all about you.
All about you.
You, All about you.

It takes a lot to get em right,
But you're learnin the facts of life.
Learnin the facts of life.
Learnin the facts of life.
Learnin the facts of life.