The Weekend - however short it may be

This weekend seemed short, probably because I kept very busy. On Friday I met Carrie at OMS and saw some of her students as well as her vivacious cooperating teacher. Then we took off for an afternoon of painting pottery, our $10 off coupons made this just about the right price. Next it was off to vespers and then we spent the evening scrapbooking.

Sabbath I was AT the church at 7:30 because I was the designated organist for the weekend, name at the bottom of the order of service and everything. This was probably the easiest Sabbath to play the organ because SAU's Wind Symphony played all the major music (Prelude, Postlude, Offertory) and I only had to play one hymn with them as well as the little prayer/call to worship repsonses and the music when the kids go back to their seats. It's a bit nerve wracking to sit poised above this HUGE noisemaker and try not to touch the keys until you mean to, where you mean to, with all these people around you listening plus being on the radio. I had to watch Ken Parsons (the conductor) thru my "rearview mirror" on the organ to get the cutoffs for the hymn with them. It's great fun to play with all the brass and the organ going at full blast, the whole platform rumbles. I even had to beef up the organ to be heard over them. Now my dad calls me Maestro whenever he answers the phone... "Dad, I just played a hymn..."

Sabbath afternoon we spent at Heilman's, as usual, and took a nice long walk on the Greenway. These pictures are from that treck.

And then I worked Sunday. I had a 16 year old and a 95 year old. Talk about extremes. One couldn't remember what day it was, the other played shoot-'em-up video games all day and ran his blood pressure up with all the girls in his room. We also had a lady die (not my patient) less than 12 hours after admission. It took her forever to go, her nurse kept thinking she should call the doctor because she would have 30 second pauses and then her heart would start going again. (She was a DNR, Do Not Resusitate, so we all sat at the nurses station and watched her heart's demise.) Watching a dying heart is a nerve wracking thing, you feel like you should be doing something about it. The tough thing about it is that we nurses were trying to lighten the mood by joking about it a little bit (after all, this is our work, and it's stressful) but we had to be respectful of the family. Death is not fun or normal and I'm thankful that we rarely see it on my floor.

A Day Spent in Family Planning

I could have said a day spent in gynecology, or a day spent sticking cold metal objects in places where they don't belong, but I figured family planning was the more kosher description and actually technically the right title. I have now done 2 PAP smears and watched about 15.

Things I learned today:
#1 All of Ooltewah (probably including most of SAU) is sexually active from the age of 14-60, and a good portion with multiple partners, except me... and Carrie... and Stephanie... what is it with these 14 year olds who think this is NORMAL?
#2 Just because you get an STD doesn't mean you should stop sleeping with the person you got it from. Just get checked out, get it fixed and it will all be better.
#3 People who can't afford health insurance and/or can't pay for their doctors visits can afford breast implants.
#4 Condoms are a girl's best friend, and can be had by the bag full at your local health department.

On the upside, I think I have a much better idea how I would do my own family planning if and when I should need that knowledge. I now know what it's like to be on the other end of the table making the diagnostic decisions.

Oh, and, my car is fixed! Two more new axles did the trick. I think I'm a little paranoid about every rattle or shake now though.

Comment Away

I changed my settings for those of you who are not blogger users, you can now comment.

No Fix in Sight

SO... I spent most of today finding and replacing a supposedly bent right front wheel on my car only to have the shuddering remain unchanged. I am now $60 poorer (thankfully this is the cheapest unsuccessful fix-it job ever) and much more frustrated. My car is back at the place the fixed the axles to see what they say. After all, it didn't do this before I got the axles replaced! I swear! The lady at the car place told me she'd tell the guys if they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it that they had to buy me a new car tomorrow.

Thankfully Carrie went with me on these excursions which made it much more bearable and we got to have some fun. Went to Cancun for lunch, was one of the strange times when BOTH Carrie and I had an opinion about what we wanted to eat AND it coincided! We also went suitcase shopping for my mom taking pictures to send to her. To view a few more of the pictures you can check Carrie's blog. Since we all look at everybody elses I didn't think it would be useful to post them both places... Stephanie, you are not allowed to use the duck picture as black mail. If you do, I will bring some of mine out of hiding. Which one of us has a higher blackmail picture average? Yeah, that's what I thought...

A Personality Test (which is slightly true)

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have low extroversion. You are quiet and reserved in most social situations. A low key, laid back lifestyle is important to you. You tend to bond slowly, over time, with one or two people. Conscientiousness: You have high conscientiousness. Intelligent and reliable, you tend to succeed in life. Most things in your life are organized and planned well. But you borderline on being a total perfectionist. Agreeableness: You have medium agreeableness. You're generally a friendly and trusting person. But you also have a healthy dose of cynicism. You get along well with others, as long as they play fair. Neuroticism: You have medium neuroticism. You're generally cool and collected, but sometimes you do panic. Little worries or problems can consume you, draining your energy. Your life is pretty smooth, but there's a few emotional bumps you'd like to get rid of. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is medium. You are generally broad minded when it come to new things. But if something crosses a moral line, there's no way you'll approve of it. You are suspicious of anything too wacky, though you do still consider creativity a virtue.

The Five Factor Personality Test

My Candy Heart

Your Candy Heart Says "Get Real"

You're a bit of a cynic when it comes to love. You don't lose your head, and hardly anyone penetrates your heart. Your ideal Valentine's Day date: is all about the person you're seeing (with no mentions of v-day!) Your flirting style: honest and even slightly sarcastic What turns you off: romantic expectations and "greeting card" holidays Why you're hot: you don't just play hard to get - you are hard to get

What Does Your Candy Heart Say?

We're alike Tara... So what do you think that means? ;-)

Being a Responsible Adult STINKS

For those of you that use MSN you've seen this picture a lot lately...

Last week I was able to maintain my relatively chipper attitude amidst the piling responsibilities and stressors. This week... not so much... As I've said already, I think, I've been doing a lot of clinicals in the last two weeks. Besides working 24 hours a week I've done 29 clinical hours plus going to school in the last two weeks and put 450 miles on my car going back and forth to downtown. Since I got my axles replaced, there's been a slight shuddering feeling in my front end. Now that I think about it I touched my front tires on the curb in front of Thatcher South parking where the parking spaces slope downward when I was on my way to class on Valentine's Day wearing all black. (This was not on purpose.) I still maintain a slight shuddering was happening before I did this. But in the last couple of days 3rd gear/30 mph had become so shudder-filled my watch was jingling on the steering wheel. So... yesterday I took my car back to the place where I got the axles fixed, they looked at it and didn't find a defective axle but a bent right front wheel. 1st strike

This sounds pretty generic in and of itself until you think about how tired and worn out I am and how much I needed a day off with little stress. Carrie and Stephanie left this weekend for Nosoca so I had to get somebody else to drive me down to pick up my car. After switching cars 3 times because she was going out to eat with a friend and that friend was taking her daughter's car... I finally arrived to get my car. 2nd strike I should back up and say that before this I went and got my bill from Southern which FINALLY arrived to see what the damages were there before deciding about the wheel. Upon opening my bill, I found that I owed more than my entire checking account (which had been emptied out to $75 before payday last week because of my stupid car). Upon closer examination I found that my bill is wrong because of Southern's finance office (big surprise, they aren't careful enough to credit back the same amount they deduct) but also because Dr. Ball didn't sign me up for the right organ lessons, then changed after add/drop time giving me two fees, plus signing me up as taking the class for credit instead of auditing (double the cost). 3rd strike Fortunately I was able to come home and figure out, after tearing my room up, that my bill is at least $350 off. I should become an accountant and take over Student Finance. I know more about nursing and music fees than they do. Somewhere in the midst of this I lost it on the phone with my mother for an hour... 3 strikes was enough.

So the moral of the story is: Don't ever think your car is working well, it WILL break. Don't ever think you might be getting to a point financially where you might be able to spend a little money on something you want, not something you have to have like the abysmal blackhole called automobile transportation, because your car WILL break and said financial kitty will vaporize. I know, it's happened to me twice in the last year. Don't think that after 5 years Southern will get your bill right, EXPECT that you will have to go back and fight tooth and nail until they fix it. Don't look at next week's forecast and think you might have an entire day off to relax since you don't ever get a Sunday off, EXPECT that something will go wrong like car breaking or bills being wrong and you will have to spend your day of relaxation hunting down car wheels and yelling at Southern employees. And while you're at it, your poor roommate whose day off it is to, that you took off to spend time with her, might have to help you do all this.

In a way it might be a good thing Carrie's gone this weekend. I think I needed 6 hours of alone scrapbooking time with soft music playing... Anybody want to give me a brand new car with a bumper to bumper warranty for the next 5 years? Or become my financial proxy?

Today's Patients at a Glance (not for the excessively squeamish non-medical people)

1: Older lady with chest pain deemed non-cardiac - sent home at 4PM with a perscription for Nexium (the purple pill, have the commercials been effective at telling you what it's for?) and an appointment with a GI specialist.
2: Heart bypass patient going home tomorrow. Today's tasks: pacing wires pulled out (these are small wires that are actually screwed into the heart and run to the outside where they can be hooked to an external temporary pacemaker if needed) and stopping the wonderful drainage coming out of 2 old chest tube sites.
3: Slightly mentally retarded older diabetic who passed out in his driveway with a blood sugar of 500. On an insulin drip with every ONE HOUR BLOOD SUGAR CHECKS. The joy of my day... I also had to fix an unexplainably low potassium and magnesium.
4: Older lady with old right masectomy with a sternal plate placement that had worn through her chest. At the doctor's office the nurse said she looked at the lady's chest and saw metal staring back, not skin. Needless to say, they took that plate out. Now nice long mid-sternal incision with staples.
5: Arrived at 4 PM (yes, right when other patient was leaving, how wonderful) older stubborn man who came in to get a cath done to check his coronary arteries for blockages as a pre-back surgery ok for his heart. Results: RCA 60% blocked, LMain 80% LAD 90%. Layman's terms? WALKING HEART ATTACK. Plan: Lots of heart bypassing on Friday.

Tomorrow? 6AM date with one of the cardiothoracic surgeon's nurses for clinicals. How wonderful... I did say things would change a bit when clinicals started...

I DO know something!

Here's a few things I've come to realize that I know in the last week and this knowledge has made me feel a little more grown up, confident in myself, and helped me get through the increasingly hectic schedule.

#1 Using a Hoyer Lift, moving big patients, basically life as a nursing home worker
I keep saying that I want warm weather to come back so the patients will start getting better and going home instead of staying FOREVER. We've had bypass patients that usually stay 4 days staying 3 weeks. Last week we had a huge man who couldn't stand up or move on his own and 6 of us undertook getting him back to bed. The "junior" member of the group, (I've been there two years, but still feel junior on the whole...) I just kinda stood there and listened while they discussed how we were going to get a 240 lb man back from the chair to the bed... all 6 of us. None of them had used a Hoyer lift before, I used to use one all the time in the nursing home. I knew we couldn't use it to get him BACK to bed, it has to already be on the guy. But I did demonstrate how to use the harness, strapping myself up in the hall, which they found highly entertaining. I was aghast that none of them had used one before. Eventually a nurse from downstairs came up and put her arms behind him in a bear hug and quickly moved him from the chair to the bed pretty much by herself. The rest of the nurses were aghast in amazement. But that's the way I moved nursing home patients by myself all the time. If I'd thought we could move a surgery patient like that without the family getting mad I would have gotten them to do it without the other nurse. The trick is you have to move fast so you don't lose the momentum, the patient doesn't get scared, and you injure your back as little as possible. So my lesson for this week was... every specialty of nursing has its own body of knowledge. If you have worked in a particular area (like the nursing home) chances are you know more than other nurses who haven't.

#2 How to play a giant tracker organ... well, more than a few other people...
Sabbath I played the organ for Evensong, the closing the Sabbath program. I think I must get more and more calm and confident as those around me get more nervous. The fact that the other girl who was playing was more nervous than I was and was asking me questions about what stops to pull and what to do when helped to put me at ease. Maybe it's something about feeling like you know what you're doing. That organ is so formidible and there are so many people around here that know what it's supposed to sound like that it's a little scary to play it. Especially when you're on the RADIO and there are 50 people listening in complete silence. It's very nice that your back is to them and it's like they aren't even there. I played Fugue in G and made it through the whole thing without derailing. This is a real accomplishment, it's probably the hardest thing I've learned to play in my life and it's taken me 9 months to learn. Now I have the opening measures going through my head all the time. It was nice to know what to answer when Karissa asked me questions about what stops she should pull and what to do with the hymn. I DO know something about that organ, believe it or not. Next stop: playing for church... grits teeth...

#3 How to diagnose problems in old vehicles (OR something I wish I didn't know OR how to say goodbye to money very quickly)
Having owned two oldish vehicles now, I am beginning to realize that several things WILL break on a vehicle of over say... 70,000 miles. A) airconditiong B) belts C) axles D) brakes E) starters. Thankfully, clutches have not been included in this although that is a general rule of old cars. I attribute my superior stick shift driving to this phenomenon. *cough cough* In the last week I'd noticed (and Carrie pointed it out on Sabbath) that my right front end popped when I cranked my wheel hard backing out of parking spaces. I thought it had something to do with the noise my belt has been making when it's really really cold (something I had fixed this past summer). I took my car to get the oil changed yesterday and found both front axles needed replacing. Should have known better, that's what it felt like when the blue car did this but hey, I was trying to deny it since I still have brakes and rotors to replace. So now, $514 later, my car turns better than it has since I got it.

In other news, clinicals start this week so that extra free time I had is out the window. I don't know which looks worse, going to Moccasin Bend or doing Pap smears... I think I'd like to do neither...