a quick succession of busy nothings.

I wrote a novel in a month :0)






...Now what?

If you want to get a hold of me today you will be disappointed. You won't be alone though, I'm disappointed my iPhone turned into a paperweight. Blame Jer. Well, don't blame Jer, but it's really funny that the damn screen died right after finding a cute picture of us I had completely forgotten about on my phone and making it my wallpaper. Destroydestroy. Huzzah for Applecare.

Wow...really people don't get pneumonia.

This all seemed to start the week I got home from Reston after Thanksgiving. It started as a sinus infection which I ignored because I ignore all sinus infections. Then I apparently angered it and wound up with a temp of 102 and some green and black gunk in my lungs. At the same time I had just used up all my leave time for my glorious 2 week vacation, so any time away from work was work unpaid. So...maaaybe I came back too soon. Though I did feel a whole lot better. I kept coughing but that was to be expected.

Then last week I tried working out again and started wheezing. Admittedly, I probably should have thought more of it than I did. A couple days later we had a patient stop breathing and I noticed I was wheezing then too, just a little. Now I'm back to full on walking pneumonia, but since they scared the crap out of me thinking I had a blood clot in my lung walking pneumonia doesn't seem so bad. Now I'm on enough meds to kill a horse. As long as it kills the pneumonia and not me I'll be happy.

While I was feeling better In Concordiam, the chamber group we started up in 2004, went on it's first retreat to Joe Wheeler State Park. The park is beautiful and the cabins we were in sit right next to the river. Definitely had some plumbing issues though. The first night one cabin had a clogged sink and the other had the toilet overflow into the hall. So we dried what we could and stopped the toilet from being able to run. The next morning after the 5th or 6th person took their shower we realized that the water from the shower was going down into the toilet that was turned off and part of the hallway was an inch deep in water. There was Dirty Santa and twister and hiking and relaxation and a heavy discount though so all was well :0)


Now I guess the plan is to relax, actually get better and try to enjoy the fact that I'm not on my feet for 12 hours at a time for a few days. And make scarves, so I feel like I've at least done something. Anyone want a scarf?

Pneumonia sucks. Don't get it.

I flew back to Huntsville Monday. Usually I use Dulles Airport because it is so close to my house but they wanted 650 bucks to fly through there so I took Reagan National. Definitely the more interesting airport. I saw:

- A bunch of annoyed red-ties who couldn't talk about anything other than the economy and politics

- What I am guessing was a senator, it was a circle of people dressed in all black with someone walking in the center that I couldn't make out.

- Morgan Freeman. No joke. Squee :0)

While going through security I was nervous because I had too much stuff and had to leave a lot of stuff with my family. I was trying to make a list in my head of things I would need to buy when I got home when the security officer said -

"Well hopefully you won't blow all of us up."

That stunned me back to the present while people were staring at us nervously. The security officer pointed sheepishly at my shirt. I was wearing the "Stand back, I'm going to try science" shirt. Oops :0)

I'm on vacation this week... :0)

So I've been in Reston visiting the family and friends. It's good to know that whenever I come home there will be at least a couple friends still lurking around to bug :0) I still get a little lost driving around which is a little depressing since I lived here my whole life. Herndon is still one of those towns where I instinctively know how to get places without ever being sure I'm not horribly lost til I wind up at the correct destination.

6 years ago I tried telling my parents that my mom's car makes a squealing noise when it's going less than 15mph. I would roll down the windows when it did it and they both thought I was batshit crazy. Now Mom has new hearing aids :0) So I came home Monday and she warns me "the car started making a couple weird noises a few weeks ago..." it's the same noise! Proof that hearing aids are worth the money...and I'm not in fact batshit crazy...in this case anyway.

Seeing these places again makes me remember weird conversations, usually funny or sad. I don't know if it's necessarily the exact location that triggers them, I'm not even sure who some of the conversations were with. But most of them are ones I remember for being very open and vulnerable. Like when I was in 7th grade and a boy told me he couldn't be in the play because he was sick with something he seemed embarrassed to tell me about and of course when he did I had never heard of it. Only years later in nursing school did I realize what it was he had told me and how much it can mess with a person. My conversations with him at this point are cyclical, we'll go a few weeks with a couple good conversations then it seems like few people will hear from him for months. I haven't gotten a hold of him since August. I hope whatever he's up to he's ok.

The conversations with people are changing now too, we actually sound like grownups. Instead of everyone being in school they teach or streamline organizational frameworks for companies or plan events or are computer programmers. It's a pretty cool thing.

The whole time I've been here I've been fighting my mom's unstable router. Tried giving it a passcode since it was obvious someone had gotten into Mom's computer through it, then the damn thing died completely and I had to brave going to the only electronics store in town on Black Friday. Never. Again.

I come home Monday, hopefully the netting from the clementines that Xiphoid ate will be out of his system by then :0( The ways that cat tries to commit suicide just get more and more creative with every passing month. Thank God I have good people in my life willing to shove antibiotics down his throat while I'm gone. That's friendship right there.

I ordered something through allposters.com on the 18th with 2 day shipping from DHL. I've used DHL once or twice and though I had heard bad things I wanted to suspend my judgement...

I judge them to suck hairy donkey balls.




It's stuck in an infinite loop of suckballs :0(

I almost got into a car accident today.

With a covered wagon.

A horse-drawn covered wagon to be exact with American flags and a message painted on the side "Jesus Saves, Just Ask." This thing was crawling at about 10 mph right at the merge between 565 and Memorial Parkway (for those not familiar with Huntsville these are both major highways, one of which is a 70 mph road. Two cops came upon it with sirens, honking their horns for them to pull over but at this point they were starting to climb over a bridge. Puzzled, one car started driving behind it while the other went along side it, also at 10 miles an hour, asking just what the hell they thought they were doing.

Apparently the driver's name is Randy Bohemer, a traveling preacher.








You can't make this stuff up. I would have killed to get a picture with my cell phone.

So I haven't posted in almost a year. All I can say to that is...

Anyway

This week has been rough. One of our patients suffered a stroke while on our floor and passed away two days later from complications. Then last night another patient's condition quickly deteriorated without much explanation and they had to go to the ICU. The big difference between the two (other than the obvious of one surviving while the other not so much)? For one of them their surgery was elective.

Three employees on my floor have had gastric bypass in the past couple months. For employees at our hospital the entire procedure costs all of 75 dollars. Two of the three had real health problems related to their weight, one to the point where she made several trips to the hospital to get her blood pressure under control. Complications have included more surgeries, dehydration, gallstones, more hospital stays and two of them are under 30 years old. All three of them stated before the procedure that they were never able to lose weight any other way...then after their surgeries stated other programs like Weight Watchers did help them lose weight.

My point? Surgery is not natural. It's harsh, it leaves your body in a state of shock and several systems in your body vulnerable. A knee replacement can shut down your heart and your kidneys, setting a bone can throw a clot to your lungs or your heart or your brain. Stapling your stomach can cause infected blood to shut down your organs, or dehydration, or gallbladder failure.

Surgery should never be the first option, should never be something you're idly toying with in the back of your mind. It should be the hard choice. The last choice.

Similar to Kerry I have some holiday cards and I was wondering if instead of holiday emails anyone would prefer a card :0) If so email me your address at eeegeee@gmail.com.

From a bunch of different people...

WRATH
Who did you last get angry with? Staffing office at Huntsville Hospital for letting me be charge nurse.
What is your weapon of choice? The pen...tis mightier than the sword...and easy to get past security.
Would you hit a member of the opposite sex? If provoked.
How about the same sex? See above.
Who was the last person who got really angry at you? I have no idea, no one recently as far as I know.
What is your pet peeve? People changing plans without telling me ahead of time.(Me too!)
Do you keep grudges, or can you let them go easily? Never been able to keep them more than a couple days, don't tend to forget though.

SLOTH
What is one thing you're supposed to do daily that you haven't? Wow, I just realized I didn't eat today...
What is the latest you've ever woken up? 9pm...not fair to ask that though since I work night shift.
Name a person you've been meaning to contact, but haven't? BT. I miss you!
What is the last lame excuse that you made? When I was sick I found myself saying "uhh...let me see when I wake up" a lot.
Have you ever watched an infomercial all the way through? Nah.
How many times did you hit the snooze button on your alarm clock this morning? Just once then Xiph decided he wanted to eat my necklace off my neck.

GLUTTONY
What is your overpriced yuppie beverage of choice? ::deep breath:: Grande nonfat peppermint white mocha.
Are you a meat eater? Indeed, though mainly chicken, least they tell me it's chicken...
What is the greatest amount of alcohol you've had in one sitting/outing/event? Enough that should have floored me though somehow it didn't.
Are you comfortable with your drinking and eating habits? Night shift messes with my eating habits, I don't get hungry as often and go longer than I should without eating.
Do you enjoy candy and sweets? Heck yeah.
Which do you prefer: Sweets, Salty foods, or spicy? Spicy.
Have you ever looked at a small house pet or child and thought, "lunch"? Only when Xiph found a cockroach bit it in half and presented it by putting it in my bed. Cat tastes like chicken right?

GREED
How many credit cards do you own? One and I don't tend to use it.
If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it? Buy a new car, upgrade my computer, take some friends on a giant road trip.
Would you rather be rich or famous? Rich.
Would you accept a boring job if it meant that you would make megabucks? Maybe but I could never do it for long.

PRIDE
What's one thing that you have done that you're most proud of? Finished college.
What's one thing you have done that your parents are most proud of? Making more money than them.
What thing would you like to accomplish late in your life? Remain positive and not become jaded.
Do you get annoyed by coming in second place? If I deserve it no. (agreed)
Have you ever entered a contest of skill, knowing you were of much higher skill than all the other competitors? Nope
Have you ever cheated to get a better score? Probably
What did you do today that you're proud of? I made a lot of progress on a Christmas present I'm making for someone.

LUST
How many people have you seen naked (not counting movies, family, strippers, locker rooms)? Umm, I've probably seen more people naked than a prostitute.
How many people have seen you naked (not counting physicians, doctors, family, locker rooms, or when you were a young child)? a muchmuch smaller number :0)
Have you ever caught yourself staring at the chest/crotch of a person of your chosen sex during a normal conversation? Yep
What is your favorite body part of a person of your gender choice? Smile, eyes, hands
Have you ever had sexual encounters (including kissing/making out) with multiple persons? Nope
Have you ever been propositioned by a prostitute? Been in the passenger seat of a car that was propositioned.

ENVY
What item of your friends would you most want to have for your own? Tammy-Shane's TV, or Jer's laptop.
Who would you want to go on "Trading Spaces" with? What's Trading Spaces?
If you could be anyone who existed in the world, who would you be? Mmm... I like being me.(agreed)
Have you ever been cheated on? Technically yes.
Have you ever wished you had a physical feature different from your own? Yes.
What inborn trait do you see in others that you wish you had for yourself? I wish I would figure out how not to worry about things I can't change.

WHAT DEADLY SIN...
Do you do the most often? Sloth, I'm lucky to make it through a whole movie if I'm laying down. BT once described me as a sleepy carebear
Do you do the least often? Wrath I guess
Is your favorite to act on? Hmm...lust gluttony or sloth. (agreed)

1. Walter, your response to my last post absolutely made my day, thank you! :0)

2. People who know things about cats: How long til kittens reach their full size? Xiphoid is 7 months old and already bigger than our other cat, he's probably pushing 10-11 pounds or so at this point (and not overweight for his size) and he's got a whole lot of extra skin and growing paws... I know I call him Monster but I'm starting to wonder how big he will actually get.

I'm posting less and less on this thing...

I've noticed the music lyrics I listen to have a powerful impact on the rest of my day, so I've been doing my best to focus on upbeat music. It's amazing how little of that exists.

I'm sick, and while I only feel that way a little of the time I'm also sleeping 15 hours when I'm not at work. It's bad the first thing that popped in my head when I realized I was sick was I wondered if I caught MRSA from one of my patients.

Last night I had a dream I was talking with my currently nonexistent daughter. She wasn't allowed to tell me her last name or if she had brothers and sisters and she was a little older than I am now. Apparently to her I had died not too long ago, she was facing some hardship and was pleading to talk to her mom. She was disappointed when she was finally able to talk to her and got me who doesn't know the first thing about her. But we talked for a good hour or two about God, what it means to be yourself, timing, strategies to work with what she had. She said she was able to understand a lot about her mom from her conversation with me. The strange thing is I can still remember almost the entire conversation, normally that's not the case.

After my internship I landed myself a job in orthopedic trauma on night shift. Like any job there are ( Pros and Cons )

I would like this to be a position I stay at for a while, but right now I'm waiting to see if getting used to the routine and patient type will make me feel this is a less dangerous position. If not then I will certainly stay between 6 months - 1 year since I feel it only fair to them, but may consider other options when my one year commitment to the hospital is up.

Even though I don't post often I still read my friend's page almost every day. I'm still here, just a wallflower for the time being.

( Obligatory class schedule post for the semester )

The ER

Within half an hour of stepping into the ER for the first time I found myself literally racing down the halls wondering what the hell I just got myself into. Slightly intimidating? No shit.

The pace when you first get there is incredible. That first day we had a stroke admit, an acute MI, a patient whose fractured ribs punctured his lung seconds before getting a CT scan (that was what had me running) and a car accident trauma patient within half an hour. Thankfully everyone helps with every patient, or else we'd all be pretty much be SOL.

I'm getting my skills down by being there too, went from blowing every vein to being able to get an IV in one try 9 times out of 10.

No other floor has as much variety either, we get a ton of critical patients but we also get a lot of people who don't really need to be there, or people who get real drunk and need to sleep it off in the ER because every once in a while they decide to quit breathing for a minute til you yell at them to take deep breaths. The psych patients occasionally freak me out. Being the only one in the room with them when they say they want to kill themselves and they're looking to take a couple people with them sort of makes you feel like you've got a hole in your stomach.

One thing I'm starting to want to scream at patients: If you're given medication, pleaseplease take it. It costs less money to go get your seizure medication than to wind up in the hospital for 5 hours after an ambulance ride when you have a SEIZURE. Not to mention seizures kind of suck in general.

The best part about tonight? Definitely the scrawny correctional facilities officer (accompanying a patient) with a huge "Outlaw" tatoo going down the entire length of his forearm :0)

Last week was my first week on the floor. I'm in what's called the "RN Internship" program, which means I get to travel to different areas of the hospital every couple weeks. Last week and this week I'm on the Oncology floor. It felt very awkward at first because one of my patients was in the room April usually stayed in. After half an hour though I was over it and able to just be myself.

The patients are very different from the ones I cared for on the cardiac care unit I precepted at. At CCU the patients are usually sedated or on ventilators or both, so you can talk for education but you rarely expect much of a response. It becomes easy to focus more on the equipment rather than the patient. I hated that, though I admit it made the job of working with such critical patients a little easier. I didn't want to think of the 580 lb man on the ventilator in a coma on continuous dialysis (that clotted off every couple of hours) with renal and liver failure as a nice guy with 3 kids under 14 and a loving wife at home. But it's better because in the end it makes the job more worthwhile to realize what you're really helping, a life, and everyone connected to it.

With Oncology the patients are living with a chronic disease, most of them have lived with it for a long time and are frequent patients. Either they are on chemo or they are on pain management waiting for the doctor to let them go home again. They know exactly what pain meds work for them, how often they take it, and what sort of system to use to make sure they get their unscheduled pain medications as soon as they're available. Most of them are able to talk to you, and will for as long as you're in the room. They're bored, can't blame them, and they want to make friends with the people caring for them, since they're sure to see them again. I think of one lady in particular I had both shifts with sickle cell anemia. She's had the condition her entire life, and often spends less than 3 weeks outside of the hospital at a time. She's very sweet and will do her best to get you to come in on your break just to hang out for a few minutes. Nightshift is hard because we have 6-7 patients a night and sadly it's hard to spend more than 5 minutes with them before having to move on to the next thing.

The charting is what kills me. Spend 5 minutes with the patient, spend 15 minutes charting about it. And at our hospital it's a half paper - half computer system. The computers can be really slow sometimes and to give you an idea of how old it is, the charting system is a DOS program. I hope they follow the lead of NOVA hospitals and to go a paperless system, with a system that is a little bit faster.

Thursday I took NCLEX, the nurse licensing exam. It's a computer adaptive test, meaning it finds where you're weak and keeps asking you questions about it til you get them right. There can be anywhere from 75-265 questions, til you prove minimum competency. I had somewhere between 140-150. I was told I couldn't get my results til Monday and I was freaking out a little because I was sure I had failed. So when Julina, who took the test with me, called me Saturday afternoon and told me she passed I literally ran to the computer. I passed :0) So things finally came together, and it turned into this :0)

This is what I did today...

Interviews:

Wednesday 3/21 Washington Hospital Center This one went well. Not sure I like my research findings though.
Thursday 3/22 Fair Oaks Hospital Great hospital, not sure it's the right floor for me/

No idea what happened to Fairfax Hospital :0(

Wednesday 3/28 Crestwood Medical Center 12:30 (please let me get back to choir in time at 2:20 or I'm going to get bitched out)

Friday 3/30 Huntsville Hospital 2:00. - Eee, but can't do this because I'll be taking HESI then....

Yay!!

Heading back to Huntsville tomorrow. Precepting Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday night. Then there will just be 3 left :0)

No cancer!!!

The results came back as benign (as in non-cancerous) tumors :0) I've been feeling a lot better too. Unfortunately the size of the tumors still causes a couple side effects, mainly coughing fits, hoarseness and muscle weakness. Tomorrow I go to the doctor in Reston to decide if I want medication to reduce the tumors or remove them surgically. Obviously the medication idea sounds a little better to me. Thanks to everyone who commented on my last entry, you guys are so supportive and great and I'm lucky to have you in my life.

I'm sticking around Reston til Friday and I have 3 job interviews while I'm up there, Washington Hospital Center, Fairfax Hospital and Fair Oaks Hospital. Wish me luck and I hope everyone has/had a great Spring Break!

A week before Halloween I managed to catch my reflection while I swallowed and saw that a lump about the size of a marble moved up and down in my neck. I almost didn't get it checked out because I was worried the nurse practitioner would think I was an idiot if it was actually supposed to be there and it just showed how little I paid attention in anatomy. Thankfully I ran into Chris in the bookstore right before the appointment and told him about it. I had him look and he mentioned it wasn't really midline and that it didn't look right.

The nurse practitioner at the wellness center told me all she could; I had a thyroid nodule. A nodule is basically just a mass of extra cells. Nodules are actually fairly common and not really dangerous. Most of the time they're harmless cysts (fluid build-up inside a layer of cells). Mine was a bit large and showed up suddenly, which is not the best possible circumstance, so the next step was to get an ultrasound to see what type of nodule (cyst or solid) it was. My insurance is Kaiser Permanente, which is decent when you're in the area. The closest Kaiser center to Huntsville, however, is in Atlanta and they don't do ultrasounds there. So I called my regular doctor and told her the situation. She told me it wasn't anything to worry about, that she had to recommend to a board of administration that I have an ultrasound in Huntsville but that chances were I would be fine if I waited until winter break.

I called a few days later and was told I was denied the ability to have an ultrasound in Huntsville. So I waited two months and had the ultrasound in Reston, where I learned I had actually been approved for the ultrasound in Huntsville, but I must have called too early and the secretary assumed because there was no information I didn't get it approved. We made it an "urgent" ultrasound at the beginning of break so that if the findings were abnormal I could get everything taken care of over break. During the ultrasound they were able to tell me a little, that I had a cyst and one other nodule and that it would probably be treated with a medication that stimulated thyroid hormone secretion. These results weren't official though, those would take 4 days to obtain from my doctor.

Two weeks after I got back to Huntsville from break I got the results back. There were actually 3 nodules: two were solid adenomas (assumed benign tumors on a gland, in this case the thyroid gland) and one was a "complex cyst." Simple cysts are just the fluid ones like I mentioned, a complex cyst means that it's mainly fluid but there are also solid cells floating in the fluid. While there is only 1 in a 1000 chance that a simple cyst is cancerous, there is a 1 in 5 chance that a complex cyst is cancerous (the statistic came from online, it was not the only one I found, just the most common one.) Based on the size and type of two of the nodules my doctor wanted an immediate biopsy done in Huntsville. She took her recommendation to the board. This one actually DID get denied on the basis that if I was willing to leave the area with a pending exam result that it couldn't be an emergency.

I talked to my doctor some more and I realized I really had to go back to Reston. She gave me the name of what in her mind is the best biopsy facility in the DC area. When I called they said the earliest appointment they could give me was late March/early April. So I called my doctor and freaked out a little because the last thing I needed my last semester of school was to worry whether or not I had cancer. So she called them and suddenly they had an opening for the end of February.

At the beginning of the semester I had what I thought was a sinus infection, then it seemed to morph into a flu-like bug and went away a couple days later. I was expecting it, other Erin (my roommate) had it when we first got back and I could tell I was going to have it eventually. It came with an annoying cough. Erin had coughed for a couple weeks after her bout of this thing, but over a month later I still had the urge to cough every few seconds. My voice would also randomly become hoarse, something no one else with the illness seemed to get. I also would start feeling really weak. Originally I thought it was just exhaustion from precepting during night shift for 12 hours then going to school, but it was getting to the point where putting my hair in a ponytail hurt the muscles in my arm. I was getting a bit more worried.

Last week I went to Reston to have the biopsy. My first flight got cancelled but I was able to get a flight next day and I arrived about 2 hours before my appointment. They stuck a needle in two of the nodules and got samples. They don’t give you anesthesia because the needle they would use to administer it is actually bigger than the needle for the biopsy, and it didn’t hurt that much anyway. A pathologist was there and he stepped out of the room for about 2 minutes and when he came back he said that the nodules are probably benign, but he needs a closer look and he would send the results to Kaiser by Thursday. He also said that one of the nodules had more than doubled in size since my ultrasound, putting pressure of my esophagus and one of my parathyroid glands. He was able to shrink it enough that my voice should start feeling better. Parathyroid glands secrete calcium in your body, and one of the side effects of low calcium is muscle weakness. He put me on calcium supplements and believes that my parathyroid gland should be back to normal in a day or two.

I got a call from the pathologist’s office Thursday and they said he sent the results to my doctor. I called my doctor Friday morning before my flight and her assistant called me back saying that she doesn’t know what the pathologist told me but that it could be weeks until I get the results back. So I got on the plane because there’s no point in staying that long to wait for results when the pathologist basically told me I was fine. Of course, this is what happened with the ultrasound. I’m going back to Reston for three days during spring break. If the results differ from what the pathologist told me I’ll have to take care of it then. If not though, I want to spend the time going on interviews and visiting Dan and BT at JMU and Jess in Arlington and seeing Frank from PostSecret at Barnes and Noble in Bethesda.

I’m not really sure why I’ve been so secretive about all this, or why it’s overly uncomfortable for me to talk about, especially when I basically know I’m fine. Maybe it’s an attention thing. Maybe it’s that it was something I had to sweep under the mat if I wanted to deal with the rest of the stress I was under. I’m used to helping others and I’ve always acted weird when I had the problem. But as far as I know this is everything anyone would want to know about what’s been going on with me this year.

On a lighter note, I got my cap and gown today :0)