sleep and eat

You're pretty much looking at my Tuesday. Except for the fact that I'd never be caught dead in that shade of blue and that anything as delicate as that pitcher would have bitten the dust eons ago in my house, this is a fair representation of my lovely day off. Every time I sat down I dozed off, and it felt pretty darn good, although I think I scared the hell out of the little old lady crossing in front of my car in the grocery parking lot. I don't think she gives her reflexes the credit she should.


For variety, once or twice I actually laid down on a real bed and looked like this.


Mercifully, the shadows cover the drool. At least I hope they do.


Today it starts again, but I've got a second wind. Part of my perkiness is that something unheard of happened in my house around dinner time. I had been doing my usual "what in the world can I make that will fit around the soccer carpool and that everyone will eat and is relatively healthy and cheap and fast" routine. When I was talking to my mom on the phone, I asked if she had any ideas and lo and behold, she did. She told me about a chicken, broccoli, mushroom soup and parmesan pasta thing she had tried recently and said she and Stu had both loved it. I made it (with soy chicken for Gumby) and everyone scarfed it down and said they loved it. And I have enough for lunches tomorrow to boot. Home run, Mom. Thank you!


Do any of you out there have fast, easy meals that you keep on standby for crazy days? Do tell. I need ideas and I need them bad. This whole thing was done in the time it took the pasta to cook, so it was perfect.

Bam!

piece of cake

Eight hours into my sixth straight day of work, I was sitting at the computer trying to figure out if the pain in my feet was traveling up into my legs or the pain in my back was coursing its way down to my feet. It had been a typical day so far - too many patients, too much status dramaticus and more than enough legitimate angst to go around. Except for the fact that I couldn't feel half of my body, it was actually alright...


Until the triage nurse came up to me and put her arm around my shoulders to tell me about my next patient. I knew the first words out of her mouth would be "I'm sorry" before she even told me what was heading my way. And I was right. And she should have been sorry. Maybe some day when I'm stronger I'll get into it. For now you just need two words - Train. Wreck.


As I stood at the med cart trying to swallow unopened bottles of ativan on the sly, one of my co-workers said to the room at large, "Has anyone else noticed that lately RC is a real shit magnet?"


And about three people said (simultaneously) "Well, we didn't really want to say anything..."


My response died on my lips as I looked up at the board and saw that my buddy from the other day had just checked back in. I laid my head on the counter and repeated my new mantra -


This too shall pass. This too shall pass. (Alternated with I will press charges next time. I will press charges next time).


When it rains, it pours.

gold medal sport

I have a new idea for an Olympic sport.

Here are the Short Program rules: You have to be able to thread an IV into a hand vein the size of a pencil tip while simultaneously dodging when the completely out of it patient in question projectile vomits directly toward your face the entire time you're doing it.

When you've mastered that, you can move onto the Long Program. This is where you place a foley catheter in the same patient, inducing him to struggle so violently that he dislodges the IV you have just painstakingly placed and you have to start all over again in the other hand. Of course he has worked himself into a state where the vomiting is even more forceful, and, out of sheer spite, his aim has considerably improved.

For bonus points you need to have the med/surg floor call for report on another patient - as the ambulance with a car accident victim arrives - at exactly the same time you're still wiping puke out of your hair.

I'd be at the top of that podium, all right.

sorry...

...I've got nothing.

warning: rant in progress

I've had a day.


Work called this morning as soon as the kids were at school, wondering if I could come in and pick up some hours. My immediate thought was hell, no, but it didn't take me long to change my mind. The pressure on me right now to produce cold hard cash is huge, so I went in while the kids were in school. I got up off of the comfortable sofa, put down my laptop and sucked it up. I picked up shifts Wednesday and Thursday. I also picked up shifts Saturday and Monday. Add in my scheduled Sunday and I just bought myself six days in a row. I get a little drippy around the eyes every time I think of it.


I got the kids home from school and headed out to the grocery store, since one of the things on my To Do List today had been to get some food in the house. Surfer Dude went with me, and I was no sooner out of my car than I saw my patient with the relative from hell from yesterday's post. She was moving pretty well for a woman in the excruciating pain that prompted the narcotics run earlier. As I watched her in horror, she leaned into the car and I realized that The Man in question was right there. My trip took longer than necessary since I did all of my shopping looking over my shoulder for Dumb and Dumber.



Then my cell phone started ringing. It was Sasquatch with earthshattering questions about gaming systems and birthday cash he needed me to pull and three phone calls in five minutes later I told him I was no longer answering my phone and would talk to him when I got home. Then I tried to pull the birthday money he asked for, only to find out that it exceeded the cash back limit by ten dollars and I had to stand in that godforsaken end of the workday line twice.


We walked in the door to this scenario - Gumby in the bathroom calling me frantically on my cell, the floor littered with juice bottles, empty cups and the broken piece of a chair arm and the kitchen wall dripping with some unnamed fluid that no one was willing to take responsibility for. One of Sasquatch's oldest friends was over, just to spice up the mix a little and confuse the story still more. I've known this kid since he was seven, and he may stand seven inches taller than me but I can still take him out. And he knows it. At one point Gumby looked me in the eye and lied straight out. When called on it he said "I just said it because I thought that's what you wanted to hear."


And I went off. In a ballistic kind of way. Nuclear, even. Of all the phrases on my shit list right now, this one is pretty near the top. And to have those foul words come out of my sweet little baby's mouth left a really sick taste in my own mouth. I would far rather be verbally attacked by an asshole with a Vicodin agenda.


There are times when the anger I have about the way my life is changing almost overwhelms me. And it surprises me, too. The things I'm angry and upset and sometimes sad about aren't the things I thought I would be angry and upset and sometimes sad about. I'm learning so much about myself, and a lot of it is, for a lack of a better word, fascinating. Is this really the person I am? How long has this been going on? And why am I just now figuring it out?


But as I looked around my destroyed kitchen and checked out all the crappy food that I was going to be feeding my children because I don't have time to make them anything decent, as I thought about how I was going to have to depend on them to keep themselves safe when they are left to their own devices, as I thought of days and days of work ahead of me, I just felt defeated.


And that's so not a nice feeling.

TKO

I had a run in of the unpleasant kind with a patient's family member at work. Without getting into all the gory details, lets just say that a) this particular set of people is not unknown to us, and b) this guy came at me with claws out and foul mouth in overdrive the second he walked onto the unit. The very first words I exchanged with him were defensive ones on my own behalf.


A few minutes later the discussion was over. I wouldn't exactly say I won, but I sure as hell didn't lose either. It was a draw in that a) I was still standing and b) his sorry butt hadn't been hauled out of the building. I was describing the scene to the doc I was working with, and even though I was trying to make it funny, I know I still had a little tremble in my voice. I don't like conflict, especially when it's directed loudly and abusively toward me. On the other hand, if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen, and the ER can be one hot kitchen. If you want calm and peaceful, this is not the place to be and I know that. I wanted to turn it into a good story - not look like a weenie.


He listened quietly as I ran through the saga, and when I was finished he stood up slowly, a nasty purple flush creeping up his face. He had only one thing to say, and it was,


"Where the f**k is he?"


Have I mentioned lately how much I love the people I work with??

The Thursday Three

We're having a wild weather week here and I'm loving it. Of course, this is making me think of


Favorite Kinds of Weather


There's a saying in Kansas that if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change. This week has certainly been a good example of this. We haven't had snow (phew!), but we've had pretty much everything else. We've even had some humor. The operator at work came on the overhead speaker and said "Attention - the National Weather Service has just issued a tornado warning for our county" and we all yelled "What??" since we hadn't heard a word about a possible tornado. About ten seconds later she said, "Uh, sorry. I meant a thunderstorm warning." Tornadoes, thunderstorms...whatever.




#1. Thunderstorms. Might as well start here since I'm already on the subject. (And god knows I won't be listing tornadoes under any kind of favorite weather). I love thunderstorms. I love rain and I love wind and I love the drama of thunder and lightning. If it happens to roll through at night while I'm snug in my house, it's even better.


#2. Wind. Not only with rain, either. Any wind is great as far as I'm concerned. One of the major local weather components is a warm wind, very strong and usually from the south. In California we had the Santa Ana winds, which are very hot and very dry. Here the wind is more humid and kind of envelops you. And it's fabulous.


#3. Rain. (Sensing a theme yet?) Oh, I adore rain. There's almost nothing better than going to sleep at night with the sound of rain beating down on the house. And puttering around the house with the steady sound of rain in the background is just about the best thing ever. It almost makes up for all the mud the dogs are going to track into the house every time they go outside.


How about you?