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...

Peace

Upon much reflection of my station in life, I've decided (as Charlotte tells Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice) "I am quite content with my situation." The post undergraduate life has its pluses and minuses but I think there are some decided advantages to this life.

Even though I am taking 5 hours of graduate studies, 5 hours is not 12 or 16. I don't come home every day feeling like there is a big weight named HOMEWORK above my head. The homework is a moderate ammount and doable. (This opinion may become slightly altered once I start doing clinicals.) I have time to take for myself! 30 minutes to read a book or practicing the organ an hour longer makes a big difference in your mental health. I'm at work enough to feel like I know what is going on. I'm not so exhausted that I loathe things like laundry and cooking and dishes. I feel so much more balanced. Life is still busy, but not frenzied.

On the cover of my journal for this year it says this:

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

May this year really be a year of peace.

Sick of being SICK

Well, I thought I'd bested the winter illnesses this year. How upity of me. Last weekend I started getting a little drainage down my throat progressing to a very sore throat. Eventually I was getting so worn out I had to take naps all the time. That was really frustrating because I went to DEEP last weekend, a diversity and leadership retreat for SAU and Oakwood College students, 50 of us all together. All the big mucky-mucks from each school were there, including the President of the Southern Union. I got to meet a lot of new people and do lots of fun things but I didn't get to participate as much as I would have liked, getting the beginnings of the worst sinus infectious illness of my life. I hope my OC roommate isn't sick... The leadership retreat was the kind of thing that would have made my college experience more like academy for me; getting together with other leaders, kids who are really excited about doing stuff for their church. Nursing sorta keeps you from getting involved.

So when I got back, I began several days of getting out of bed, blowing my nose 500 times, going back to bed and sleeping half the day away. I never knew such colorful substances could come out of your nose and eyes in such superfluous quantities. Waking up with your eyes all gooped up has to be the worst sick experience ever. Yesterday was the first day I didn't take a nap in almost a week. I've missed two days of work, but I made myself go to classes because they only meet once a week.

So my lesson for this week has been: Just when you think that there's no possible way you could make it if you got sick... you wouldn't have enough sick days to still go on vacation in May, you couldn't get your homework done, your life might fall apart if you died to the world for a week... You just get sick and everything doesn't matter because you can't think about it. And you wake up 5 days later and realize that it all works out in the end and actually, God probably helped you get sick at this specific time because it fit into your schedule just a bit better right here. Ironic isn't it?

Family Pictures

Over break I scanned some pictures of my parents and I thought I'd share a few just because I think old pictures are so neat. These are from highschool. It's strange to think they've been together this long...