They sat her up every morning at eight, put makeup on her face, and dressed her in a sweet pink bedjacket with lace around the collar. They begged her to eat, to get into a chair, to walk around the floor and go to the gift shop, even after she had a pathological fracture from the cancer that was eating her body from the inside out.
Her daughter dressed her in clothing that wouldn't reveal the mass that was growing on her side, a mark of the cancer that had come back, or the tubes that came out of each side of her chest to drain the fluid that was accumulating there.
We'd talked about hospice, but they wouldn't hear of it. Mom was going to get better, by God, and she'd have surgery to fix that arm, even after the orthopedic surgeon told them there was no chance of it healing.
Finally, after admissions at three different hospitals, they took her home. They'd heard the same thing at three different places. It was obvious there wasn't any hope, that her best chance at comfort was morphine in her own bed. All they'd let her have with us was ibuprofen. She hurt all the time.
She died the day after they left our floor.
***
They were both shocked when the doctors came in with the news: tests showed that he had, at most, a few hours to live. Life expectancy is funny that way: you can go from weeks to live to hours to live in almost no time.
Still, he wouldn't take morphine. Not because she wouldn't let him, but because (his words) he didn't want to lose the hours he had left. They'd been married forty years, and she'd been with him through all the important times, so he wanted to be with her now, when he was dying.
He lasted four and a half hours. They lay together on the bed, holding hands, talking about how wonderful their lives together had been. At the end, he got sleepy, so she cuddled his head into her shoulder and held him even after he'd stopped breathing.
This is the same coin, the coin that has hard-won, painful life on one side and a gentle death on the other. The one side is selfishness and pain, the other is acceptance and love.
These are the coins that we pay the ferryman with.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
MBTs and me: a product review
So I got some new shoes the other week: Masai Barefoot Technology, they're called, and all I have to say about that is this: if the Masai have to spend the amount of money on their bare feet that I had to spend on these shoes, it's a wonder they can eat.
Anyway, I promised a review of the shoes.
They were recommended to me by a number of orthopods and physical therapists for plantar fasciitis. That's a condition in which the bottom of your foot stretches too much, or doesn't stretch enough, or something, and you end up with heel pain that makes it nearly impossible to walk after a day of work. So, taking a deep breath, I ordered a pair of these babies online.
Consider the MBT shoe: it is big. As in, it looks like a basketball's been cut in half and glued to the underside of the shoe. In addition, it has some sort of rocker action, the upshot of which is that when you stand normally, you actually have to balance your weight over the middle of the shoe. This led Chef Boy to ask, "Do they come with training wheels?" a reference to my fabled clumsiness. My sister remarked that that quip led her to consider Chef Boy her hero, and I said, "Shut up."
So you've put the things on and are balancing cheerfully in the middle of your foot. Or, alternatively, you've rocked back onto your heels so as to not have to waggle constantly to stand up. The first thing you notice when you start to walk is this: they're a very well-balanced shoe. As in, even *I* can't fall over in them. So snark away, Chef Boy and Beloved Sister, I'm doin' all right.
The second thing you notice is how heavy the damned things are. I don't know what sort of technology the engineers stuck into the oversized soles of these shoes, but it seems to be made of lead and gold. They're *heavy*.
That said, my heel hurts about the same after a day at work. But! On the morning after, it does not hurt *at all*, which means that I can pretty much walk to the bathroom rather than having to hobble and curse. Also, they do give my legs a good workout--not so much at work, since I'm used to walking around for twelve hours, but boy hidey! After a thirty-minute trot on the treadmill, I can feel muscles I only dimly remember from comparative anatomy class.
I can also run in them for several minutes at a stretch, having to stop only because my aerobic capacity is shit, not because my shins hurt. That is good. Very, very good.
And, strangely or not, the rocker-action of the shoe makes it easier to walk fast or trot than it does to walk slowly. That's nice, especially when you're trying to get as many miles in on the treadmill as you can. You have to walk with a shorter stride and in a more concentrated manner, or else your toes will brush the ground and you'll lose your rhythm. It's more like a forced march than a walk, but then, treadmilling is always more like a forced walk for me.
I'm sitting here contemplating the insertion points of my quadriceps--I can feel all of them, on both legs--after a thirty-six minute trot on the treadmill in the shoes. That's okay. My heel hurts a little, but not terribly, which is better than okay. And my bank account hurts a little more, but I'm dealing with that.
Bottom line: If you're happy with your Danskos, keep 'em. If, however, you spend the majority of the day wondering when the hell your heel will quit hurting, it's worth it to try a pair on to see if they work for you.
Anyway, I promised a review of the shoes.
They were recommended to me by a number of orthopods and physical therapists for plantar fasciitis. That's a condition in which the bottom of your foot stretches too much, or doesn't stretch enough, or something, and you end up with heel pain that makes it nearly impossible to walk after a day of work. So, taking a deep breath, I ordered a pair of these babies online.
Consider the MBT shoe: it is big. As in, it looks like a basketball's been cut in half and glued to the underside of the shoe. In addition, it has some sort of rocker action, the upshot of which is that when you stand normally, you actually have to balance your weight over the middle of the shoe. This led Chef Boy to ask, "Do they come with training wheels?" a reference to my fabled clumsiness. My sister remarked that that quip led her to consider Chef Boy her hero, and I said, "Shut up."
So you've put the things on and are balancing cheerfully in the middle of your foot. Or, alternatively, you've rocked back onto your heels so as to not have to waggle constantly to stand up. The first thing you notice when you start to walk is this: they're a very well-balanced shoe. As in, even *I* can't fall over in them. So snark away, Chef Boy and Beloved Sister, I'm doin' all right.
The second thing you notice is how heavy the damned things are. I don't know what sort of technology the engineers stuck into the oversized soles of these shoes, but it seems to be made of lead and gold. They're *heavy*.
That said, my heel hurts about the same after a day at work. But! On the morning after, it does not hurt *at all*, which means that I can pretty much walk to the bathroom rather than having to hobble and curse. Also, they do give my legs a good workout--not so much at work, since I'm used to walking around for twelve hours, but boy hidey! After a thirty-minute trot on the treadmill, I can feel muscles I only dimly remember from comparative anatomy class.
I can also run in them for several minutes at a stretch, having to stop only because my aerobic capacity is shit, not because my shins hurt. That is good. Very, very good.
And, strangely or not, the rocker-action of the shoe makes it easier to walk fast or trot than it does to walk slowly. That's nice, especially when you're trying to get as many miles in on the treadmill as you can. You have to walk with a shorter stride and in a more concentrated manner, or else your toes will brush the ground and you'll lose your rhythm. It's more like a forced march than a walk, but then, treadmilling is always more like a forced walk for me.
I'm sitting here contemplating the insertion points of my quadriceps--I can feel all of them, on both legs--after a thirty-six minute trot on the treadmill in the shoes. That's okay. My heel hurts a little, but not terribly, which is better than okay. And my bank account hurts a little more, but I'm dealing with that.
Bottom line: If you're happy with your Danskos, keep 'em. If, however, you spend the majority of the day wondering when the hell your heel will quit hurting, it's worth it to try a pair on to see if they work for you.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
No big surprise here...
| You Are Wolverine |
 Small but fierce, you're a great fighter. Watch out! You are often you're own greatest enemy. Powers: Adamantium claws, keen senses, the ability to heal quickly |
Friday, May 26, 2006
I need an intervention.
Tonight, after realizing that people really *don't* get any less annoying when you know them better, I had the following for dinner:
A large handful of cherry tomatoes. Okay, two large handsful.
Bacon.
Coleslaw.
Beer.
In slightly more cheerful news, this is the way of eating that has sustained me for years: weird food at weird hours, heavy on the vegetables and complex carbs, light on the meat. (I don't consider bacon meat; it's more a condiment.) I went back to it after three weeks on South Bitch sent my blood pressure to 150/100, shock! My BP is now back in the basement where it belongs.
In even more cheerful news, Carolita handed me an antique ad from a medical journal that she'd culled from among the equally antique books at her mother's house. It begins with the line "Experience Is The Best Teacher", references Camillo Golgi (a famous 19th-century neuroscientist), and ends with the claim that "More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette." It's now framed and resting atop the bookshelf that holds my ancient medical books.
Beloved Sister had the unenviable experience of interviewing a candidate for a job today who'd put semi-naked pictures up on his website. Oooooh, nipples. Love 'em. I wonder if her head has actually exploded, or if her brain simply oozed out one ear and crawled away across the conference room.
Speaking of brains, the Seriously No Kidding Single Most Squicky Thing I've Seen Recently came home to roost the other day: a guy who hadn't bothered to wear his seatbelt and went through the windshield of his car...and then had his frontal lobes (well, most of 'em), his sinuses, and his frontal skull removed.
There's a divot in his skull that I could put my fist in. Eugh. And no, he's not doing much these days.
Nor am I, except going to bed.
A large handful of cherry tomatoes. Okay, two large handsful.
Bacon.
Coleslaw.
Beer.
In slightly more cheerful news, this is the way of eating that has sustained me for years: weird food at weird hours, heavy on the vegetables and complex carbs, light on the meat. (I don't consider bacon meat; it's more a condiment.) I went back to it after three weeks on South Bitch sent my blood pressure to 150/100, shock! My BP is now back in the basement where it belongs.
In even more cheerful news, Carolita handed me an antique ad from a medical journal that she'd culled from among the equally antique books at her mother's house. It begins with the line "Experience Is The Best Teacher", references Camillo Golgi (a famous 19th-century neuroscientist), and ends with the claim that "More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette." It's now framed and resting atop the bookshelf that holds my ancient medical books.
Beloved Sister had the unenviable experience of interviewing a candidate for a job today who'd put semi-naked pictures up on his website. Oooooh, nipples. Love 'em. I wonder if her head has actually exploded, or if her brain simply oozed out one ear and crawled away across the conference room.
Speaking of brains, the Seriously No Kidding Single Most Squicky Thing I've Seen Recently came home to roost the other day: a guy who hadn't bothered to wear his seatbelt and went through the windshield of his car...and then had his frontal lobes (well, most of 'em), his sinuses, and his frontal skull removed.
There's a divot in his skull that I could put my fist in. Eugh. And no, he's not doing much these days.
Nor am I, except going to bed.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
This had better be all for a while. Dammit.
The last two days at work have been...well.
Mister Annoying Screaming Man came back a*gain*. Mr. ASM is one of those frequent-flyers who has some dementia, though not enough to keep him quiet and compliant, and who does things like leave his walker across the room at home and take repeated face-plants into the linoleum. The first six or seven times he came back, it was cute. It's not cute any more.
I took his care over about an hour before my shift ended and went to start an IV. He's been in the hospital before. He's been stuck before. He knows the drill, remembers it, knows he has to have a saline lock in his arm. Why, then, when I pierced his skin with the needle, did he scream and dope-slap me on the back of my head?
I jerked, the IV start needle ripped upward through his skin, and blood splattered my face and scrubs. That made a nice contrast to the vomit, feces and urine I'd already been splattered with.
Earlier that day I'd had the sort of patient everybody dreads--a brittle type I diabetic who refuses to manage his blood sugar or stick to his diet. There's a certain type of person you know is going to be trouble, usually shortly before he goes in to DKA or his glucose dumps down into the teens, and this was that guy. After a hearty breakfast of five (!!!) glazed donuts, coffee with sugar, and some chocolate milk, he started feeling a little tetchy. He was kind enough to unload breakfast on my shoes--thank God I was wearing my old Danskos--and my scrubs. Lovely.
The vomit was joined a short time later by shit. And sweat. There's some Universal law somewhere that says that isolation patients with nasty intestinal bugs must a) weigh something on the wrong side of 400 pounds, and b) want their thermostat turned up to 85. You know those plastic isolation gowns? They don't protect worth a damn.
There was no isolation gown nearby when my seriously demented patient yanked out her Foley catheter and started waving it around, speckling everybody with pee. Of course, she was on pyridium.
*sigh*
Chef Boy floated the idea of moving to Brazil and running a B & B last night. You know, there are times when moving to the Southern Hemisphere, learning Portugese, and living in the middle of nowhere tending orchards and sheep seems like a really fine idea.
Oh, and I did get the IV started on the second try. A combination of barely-controlled rage on my part and several towels wrapped around his bleeding hand kept him quiet.
Mister Annoying Screaming Man came back a*gain*. Mr. ASM is one of those frequent-flyers who has some dementia, though not enough to keep him quiet and compliant, and who does things like leave his walker across the room at home and take repeated face-plants into the linoleum. The first six or seven times he came back, it was cute. It's not cute any more.
I took his care over about an hour before my shift ended and went to start an IV. He's been in the hospital before. He's been stuck before. He knows the drill, remembers it, knows he has to have a saline lock in his arm. Why, then, when I pierced his skin with the needle, did he scream and dope-slap me on the back of my head?
I jerked, the IV start needle ripped upward through his skin, and blood splattered my face and scrubs. That made a nice contrast to the vomit, feces and urine I'd already been splattered with.
Earlier that day I'd had the sort of patient everybody dreads--a brittle type I diabetic who refuses to manage his blood sugar or stick to his diet. There's a certain type of person you know is going to be trouble, usually shortly before he goes in to DKA or his glucose dumps down into the teens, and this was that guy. After a hearty breakfast of five (!!!) glazed donuts, coffee with sugar, and some chocolate milk, he started feeling a little tetchy. He was kind enough to unload breakfast on my shoes--thank God I was wearing my old Danskos--and my scrubs. Lovely.
The vomit was joined a short time later by shit. And sweat. There's some Universal law somewhere that says that isolation patients with nasty intestinal bugs must a) weigh something on the wrong side of 400 pounds, and b) want their thermostat turned up to 85. You know those plastic isolation gowns? They don't protect worth a damn.
There was no isolation gown nearby when my seriously demented patient yanked out her Foley catheter and started waving it around, speckling everybody with pee. Of course, she was on pyridium.
*sigh*
Chef Boy floated the idea of moving to Brazil and running a B & B last night. You know, there are times when moving to the Southern Hemisphere, learning Portugese, and living in the middle of nowhere tending orchards and sheep seems like a really fine idea.
Oh, and I did get the IV started on the second try. A combination of barely-controlled rage on my part and several towels wrapped around his bleeding hand kept him quiet.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
The Glamorous Life of a Neuroscience Nurse
Hugh called *again* last night, sobbing, stumbling drunk, begging me to take him back. I've got to change my number; he just won't leave me alone.
It was fun in the beginning, when all we did was have quick dinners out, followed by long evenings of piano-playing, tap-dancing, and singing Judy's old songs. He loved my rendition of "The Man Who Got Away", especially when I did it as though I was half-smashed, wearing huge false eyelashes.
Then I made the mistake of telling him I liked his sideburns. After that, things began to go downhill. He was always so *serious*, talking about how we could move north, excavate a little den of our own, and raise a few litters of kits. He just couldn't understand that I wasn't ready to settle down, especially not with such a player. I mean, what about Kate? And don't tell me that that kiss with Meg was all acting.
So I told him as gently as I could that we'd have to go our separate ways. He took it hard. But really, what's a girl to do?
Plus, the claws were, frankly, a pain.
It was fun in the beginning, when all we did was have quick dinners out, followed by long evenings of piano-playing, tap-dancing, and singing Judy's old songs. He loved my rendition of "The Man Who Got Away", especially when I did it as though I was half-smashed, wearing huge false eyelashes.
Then I made the mistake of telling him I liked his sideburns. After that, things began to go downhill. He was always so *serious*, talking about how we could move north, excavate a little den of our own, and raise a few litters of kits. He just couldn't understand that I wasn't ready to settle down, especially not with such a player. I mean, what about Kate? And don't tell me that that kiss with Meg was all acting.
So I told him as gently as I could that we'd have to go our separate ways. He took it hard. But really, what's a girl to do?
Plus, the claws were, frankly, a pain.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Therapeutic Communication
"Roll over" I said.
"So you can see my incision?" he asked.
"No, so I can kick your no-good ass," I replied. "You've been giving me grief all day, and I've had it up to my moustache with your antics."
"Gobsmacked" would be the best word to describe his expression at that point.
The call bell system was dead. The cable was dead. The plumbing was under the control of some evil spirit. All of this had happened on the third day of his having to be flat on his back due to a low-pressure headache, and he was fed up. So he called the operator, the receptionist, the concierge, the assistant to the assistant to the President, and complained.
The one person he didn't call was me.
For two days he'd been cursing at nurses, throwing things, and generally making a pain of himself. The last nurse to take care of him had exited the room with some speed as the sound of smashing crockery came from behind her. This is a nurse whose dad was a Merchant Marine, so it's not like she couldn't handle it. But she couldn't handle it any more. So I went in to resite an IV that was giving him trouble, cussed right back at him, and got him for the full twelve hours the next day. Seems he liked my style.
I pointed out to him, at varying volumes and at some length, that he was paying me to make his life easier. Why, I asked, would he pay a lawyer to accomplish in two weeks what I could manage in two minutes if he simply gave me the chance? Why risk being branded a whiner when I could get him what he wanted (short of fixing the cable myself, which he seemed to expect) with a minimum of trouble and effort? Why, essentially, did he insist on being the most difficult of difficult patients--one with a legitimate complaint who says nothing until the pot boils over--rather than answering my questions honestly and letting me *make his life easier*? I'd tried to draw him out earlier, a number of times, and he'd simply waved me off.
Screw therapeutic communication. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it does, true; there are times when a patient simply needs a listening ear and somebody to say "Uh-huh, and then what?" over and over. But--and this is a big and delicate but--there are times when you have to throw it out the window and be blunt. Speak the language, as they say. Walk the talk.
He gave me cookies and a hug and an apology. I walked out with a smart remark and a toss of the head. We understand each other now; even if there's another crisis in the middle of the night tomorrow, I know he'll behave like a human being rather than the whistle on a teakettle.
*** *** ***
In other news, I'm rereading Bill Bryson's book on Australia. If you hear that I've cleared out my savings account and taken up a job travel nursing, you'll know what to expect: bulletins from the billabong.
*** *** ***
The Cat seems to love the Feliway Comfort Zone diffuser I got her. It's a pheremone-squirting widget that you plug into an electric outlet--supposedely, it combines "friendly pheremones" in such a way as to make cats happier and more relaxed. All I can say is this: after four hours of having the thing putting away, The Cat laid down in the middle of the floor and purred, allowing me to rub her belly. That hasn't happened in nine years. Maybe the neurologically-damaged Cat just needed some Happy Kitty Smellatrons; I dunno. I'm not questioning the results. (Mom: Try it for Astro.)
*** *** ***
The MBTs are, so far, a revelation. I'll let you know how they continue to work out.
"So you can see my incision?" he asked.
"No, so I can kick your no-good ass," I replied. "You've been giving me grief all day, and I've had it up to my moustache with your antics."
"Gobsmacked" would be the best word to describe his expression at that point.
The call bell system was dead. The cable was dead. The plumbing was under the control of some evil spirit. All of this had happened on the third day of his having to be flat on his back due to a low-pressure headache, and he was fed up. So he called the operator, the receptionist, the concierge, the assistant to the assistant to the President, and complained.
The one person he didn't call was me.
For two days he'd been cursing at nurses, throwing things, and generally making a pain of himself. The last nurse to take care of him had exited the room with some speed as the sound of smashing crockery came from behind her. This is a nurse whose dad was a Merchant Marine, so it's not like she couldn't handle it. But she couldn't handle it any more. So I went in to resite an IV that was giving him trouble, cussed right back at him, and got him for the full twelve hours the next day. Seems he liked my style.
I pointed out to him, at varying volumes and at some length, that he was paying me to make his life easier. Why, I asked, would he pay a lawyer to accomplish in two weeks what I could manage in two minutes if he simply gave me the chance? Why risk being branded a whiner when I could get him what he wanted (short of fixing the cable myself, which he seemed to expect) with a minimum of trouble and effort? Why, essentially, did he insist on being the most difficult of difficult patients--one with a legitimate complaint who says nothing until the pot boils over--rather than answering my questions honestly and letting me *make his life easier*? I'd tried to draw him out earlier, a number of times, and he'd simply waved me off.
Screw therapeutic communication. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it does, true; there are times when a patient simply needs a listening ear and somebody to say "Uh-huh, and then what?" over and over. But--and this is a big and delicate but--there are times when you have to throw it out the window and be blunt. Speak the language, as they say. Walk the talk.
He gave me cookies and a hug and an apology. I walked out with a smart remark and a toss of the head. We understand each other now; even if there's another crisis in the middle of the night tomorrow, I know he'll behave like a human being rather than the whistle on a teakettle.
*** *** ***
In other news, I'm rereading Bill Bryson's book on Australia. If you hear that I've cleared out my savings account and taken up a job travel nursing, you'll know what to expect: bulletins from the billabong.
*** *** ***
The Cat seems to love the Feliway Comfort Zone diffuser I got her. It's a pheremone-squirting widget that you plug into an electric outlet--supposedely, it combines "friendly pheremones" in such a way as to make cats happier and more relaxed. All I can say is this: after four hours of having the thing putting away, The Cat laid down in the middle of the floor and purred, allowing me to rub her belly. That hasn't happened in nine years. Maybe the neurologically-damaged Cat just needed some Happy Kitty Smellatrons; I dunno. I'm not questioning the results. (Mom: Try it for Astro.)
*** *** ***
The MBTs are, so far, a revelation. I'll let you know how they continue to work out.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Non-Work-Related, Part Deux
Girly Product Reviews, part Nine Gazillion
Amlactin Lotion
Friend Penny swears by this stuff for wrinkles. I haven't yet tried it on my face, but it works wonders on very dry legs and feet. It doesn't smell like anything, either, which is nice. And a little goes a long way; a lot will cause your skin to just sort of give up and peel off.
Flexitol Hand Balm
Another recommendation from Friend Pens, the Lotion Slut. She actually recommended the Heel Balm this way: "If there were something that worked on the rest of my life as well as Flexitol works on my heels, it would be called Dammitol."
The hand balm is petroleum-based, which means you can't use it during working hours, but it makes a nice overnight treatment for very rough, dry hands. It was originally developed for diabetics. It's easy to wash off and odorless, and again, a little goes a long way. Also good for feet.
Sally Hansen Beyond Perfect Nail Polish
I bought Whore Red (no, that's not the name, but it might as well be), painted my toenails with it, and they stayed unchipped and extremely shiny for three weeks. Plus, it came off with a minimum of strain. The only warning on this one I can come up with is, you'd better get a color you like. It'll be there for a while.
Old Navy Capri Pants, pickstitched, Just-Below-Waist
I found out after I bought two pairs of these that they were "Real Simple" magazine's pick for best capris for people under 5' 5" tall. Now, that's too much of a categorization for me, but I *did* buy two pairs of these pants. The waist is low, but not so low that you get that overgrown-teenager look. In fact, if you're short-waisted, the waist will hit *almost* at your natural waist, thus avoiding the Mom Jeans look and the muffin-top simultaneously. They wear like iron. I wash them on Boil and dry them on Broil and they don't shrink.
Gap (I know, I know) Flared Linen Skirt
At $68, this is a 'spensive piece of clothing...but I've already patterned two other skirts off of it and they're ready to hit the sewing machine. Good thick linen lined with cotton, eight gores, zip closure, French seams that should last forever. If you're short, do not mess around with the regular sizing; go for the petite.
This skirt hits at the natural waist and hangs almost to the ankle. It's perfect for people who live where the summers are sunny but who don't want to wear SPF 45 all over every damned day.
As soon as I get the MBTs in the mail, I'll review those too. Provided I don't fall off them and break my neck.
Amlactin Lotion
Friend Penny swears by this stuff for wrinkles. I haven't yet tried it on my face, but it works wonders on very dry legs and feet. It doesn't smell like anything, either, which is nice. And a little goes a long way; a lot will cause your skin to just sort of give up and peel off.
Flexitol Hand Balm
Another recommendation from Friend Pens, the Lotion Slut. She actually recommended the Heel Balm this way: "If there were something that worked on the rest of my life as well as Flexitol works on my heels, it would be called Dammitol."
The hand balm is petroleum-based, which means you can't use it during working hours, but it makes a nice overnight treatment for very rough, dry hands. It was originally developed for diabetics. It's easy to wash off and odorless, and again, a little goes a long way. Also good for feet.
Sally Hansen Beyond Perfect Nail Polish
I bought Whore Red (no, that's not the name, but it might as well be), painted my toenails with it, and they stayed unchipped and extremely shiny for three weeks. Plus, it came off with a minimum of strain. The only warning on this one I can come up with is, you'd better get a color you like. It'll be there for a while.
Old Navy Capri Pants, pickstitched, Just-Below-Waist
I found out after I bought two pairs of these that they were "Real Simple" magazine's pick for best capris for people under 5' 5" tall. Now, that's too much of a categorization for me, but I *did* buy two pairs of these pants. The waist is low, but not so low that you get that overgrown-teenager look. In fact, if you're short-waisted, the waist will hit *almost* at your natural waist, thus avoiding the Mom Jeans look and the muffin-top simultaneously. They wear like iron. I wash them on Boil and dry them on Broil and they don't shrink.
Gap (I know, I know) Flared Linen Skirt
At $68, this is a 'spensive piece of clothing...but I've already patterned two other skirts off of it and they're ready to hit the sewing machine. Good thick linen lined with cotton, eight gores, zip closure, French seams that should last forever. If you're short, do not mess around with the regular sizing; go for the petite.
This skirt hits at the natural waist and hangs almost to the ankle. It's perfect for people who live where the summers are sunny but who don't want to wear SPF 45 all over every damned day.
As soon as I get the MBTs in the mail, I'll review those too. Provided I don't fall off them and break my neck.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Non-work related
Sometimes a girl just has to turn her back on the brainstem, you know?
We were talking at work the other day about beautiful words: words that have their own intrinsic value as sounds, like "sycamore". Or "glioblastoma". Or "brook". We came up with quite a few, but the best remark came from a foreign doctor who remarked that "pus" was the best English word he'd ever learned. "Sounds like what it is and what it looks like. There's no question, when you hear the word 'pus', what the other person is talking about."
Apropos of nothing, United Nude shoes has usurped the place that Irregular Choice used to have in my heart. Any company that puts out a pump based on the Eames chair gets my vote. Unfortunately, I have no excuse whatsoever to buy even the least-pricey of their designs, as I just dropped a couple bills on some MBTs. They come highly recommended by the orthopods and physical therapists at work. Chef Boy's reaction was, "Do they come with training wheels?" No, but they do come with an instructional DVD, which kinda scares me. Still, if they ease my plantar fasciitis, they're worth it.
Pal Joey has a wedding to go to in Quebec City while I'm in Montreal this July. Anybody know of anything I should see or do while I'm there? Keep in mind that my French is limited, rusty, and slow.
We were talking at work the other day about beautiful words: words that have their own intrinsic value as sounds, like "sycamore". Or "glioblastoma". Or "brook". We came up with quite a few, but the best remark came from a foreign doctor who remarked that "pus" was the best English word he'd ever learned. "Sounds like what it is and what it looks like. There's no question, when you hear the word 'pus', what the other person is talking about."
Apropos of nothing, United Nude shoes has usurped the place that Irregular Choice used to have in my heart. Any company that puts out a pump based on the Eames chair gets my vote. Unfortunately, I have no excuse whatsoever to buy even the least-pricey of their designs, as I just dropped a couple bills on some MBTs. They come highly recommended by the orthopods and physical therapists at work. Chef Boy's reaction was, "Do they come with training wheels?" No, but they do come with an instructional DVD, which kinda scares me. Still, if they ease my plantar fasciitis, they're worth it.
Pal Joey has a wedding to go to in Quebec City while I'm in Montreal this July. Anybody know of anything I should see or do while I'm there? Keep in mind that my French is limited, rusty, and slow.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Simple rules.
1. If you have to jack with it, it's wrong.
This goes for everything from IV tubing to new shoes to long-standing romantic relationships. If you have to jack with the tube-feeding tubing to get it to go into the IV port, you've got it wrong. If you have to walk like a kangaroo in Earth Shoes in your new shoes, return them. If you have to jack with your responses in a long-time relationship, it's time to rethink.
2. If in doubt, give oxygen.
Again, this goes for everything from nonresponsive patients to relationships. Space is a good thing.
3. Sternal rubs cause bruising out of proportion to their usefulness.
This does not mean you should necessarily stop using them. After all, bringing one patient back from the brink of grokdom is worth a few bruises, right? Right. The trick is knowing when, by looking at your patient's sternum, one more mofoing sternal rub is not going to do the trick.
4. Always set two alarms in case of power failure.
That one's self-explanatory.
5. Less than a quarter-tank of gas is just asking for trouble.
Even when gas is $3.40 a gallon.
6. If you love, love, love a place, you should either buy it (if it's a condo or a house) or move there (if it's a city) without thinking too hard about the alternatives.
Another alternative may be better to the logical thinker, but will it make you happier? I think not. (Joey, listen up.)
7. Pate de fois gras always tastes better when you have several months of anticipation invested in it.
I'm going travelling in July, yes I am.
8. Cocaine and methamphetamine are the only scary drugs.
9. When you're eating faux-Mexican, just go 'head and get a to-go box right at the start.
That way, when the waitstaff brings you a four-part symphony in pseudo-burrito, you can put it away rather than munching on it all evening.
10. Support hose, no matter how good they feel at 0900, will always twist in some heretofore-unimagined way and cut off your circulation during a code.
You have been warned.
This goes for everything from IV tubing to new shoes to long-standing romantic relationships. If you have to jack with the tube-feeding tubing to get it to go into the IV port, you've got it wrong. If you have to walk like a kangaroo in Earth Shoes in your new shoes, return them. If you have to jack with your responses in a long-time relationship, it's time to rethink.
2. If in doubt, give oxygen.
Again, this goes for everything from nonresponsive patients to relationships. Space is a good thing.
3. Sternal rubs cause bruising out of proportion to their usefulness.
This does not mean you should necessarily stop using them. After all, bringing one patient back from the brink of grokdom is worth a few bruises, right? Right. The trick is knowing when, by looking at your patient's sternum, one more mofoing sternal rub is not going to do the trick.
4. Always set two alarms in case of power failure.
That one's self-explanatory.
5. Less than a quarter-tank of gas is just asking for trouble.
Even when gas is $3.40 a gallon.
6. If you love, love, love a place, you should either buy it (if it's a condo or a house) or move there (if it's a city) without thinking too hard about the alternatives.
Another alternative may be better to the logical thinker, but will it make you happier? I think not. (Joey, listen up.)
7. Pate de fois gras always tastes better when you have several months of anticipation invested in it.
I'm going travelling in July, yes I am.
8. Cocaine and methamphetamine are the only scary drugs.
9. When you're eating faux-Mexican, just go 'head and get a to-go box right at the start.
That way, when the waitstaff brings you a four-part symphony in pseudo-burrito, you can put it away rather than munching on it all evening.
10. Support hose, no matter how good they feel at 0900, will always twist in some heretofore-unimagined way and cut off your circulation during a code.
You have been warned.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Pen-i-ten-shurry.
"You," she said grimly, through clenched teeth, "are gonna end up in the pen-i-ten-shurry for this. They're gonna come let me out tomorrow and you're gonna go to the pen and I'm gonna laugh when the cops come to get you."
It was three-and-a-half hours into a four-hour drama, and I was getting rather tired of the situation. I replied, as calmly as I could, that I was not going to the penitentiary or to jail or to hell, no matter how often she repeated those suggestions, and that she was not getting out of this place tomorrow.
Subarachnoid hemorrhages are weird things. They happen most often when an aneurysm, a weak area in an artery, cuts loose and bleeds. What happens next is confusing and fascinating; the patient ends up with what's essentially a sterile meningitis (inflammation of the coverings of the brain and spinal cord). The ability to speak clearly sometimes disappears temporarily, and the person tends to take long vacations from reality.
Combine a subarachnoid hemorrhage with a couple of other organic problems that have already caused substantial damage, then add on a subdural hematoma. That's bleeding under the toughest layer of meninges that cover the brain, and is most often caused by a blow or counter-blow injury to the head. Subdural hematomas fall under the category "walk, talk, and die", because they tend to expand rapidly, compressing the brain tissue under them and on the opposite side of the brain. We keep SDH patients under close observation for several days for that reason.
Even if those patients aren't wandering off the floor, attacking ICU nurses when said nurses don't come up with discharge paperwork, and begging to be left alone long enough to have a quiet cigarette outside.
Had I been able to, I would've ordered a toxicity screen, both blood and urine. Unfortunately, after she came back upstairs from the lobby of the ICU, I had been busy holding her down. For three and a half hours. That kind of energy--the sort of energy and strength that allows an 80-pound patient to break through soft restraints and a restraint vest and requires 160-pound me to kneel atop her--doesn't come only from a subarachnoid hemorrhage or subdural hematoma.
It started innocently enough, with a long-distance phone call to her elderly mother, asking Mom to come pick her up. When Mom arrived, having not checked with the nurses to determine whether she could take her daughter home, things went straight to hell. The patient, amazed and angry that she wasn't going home, became increasingly violent. We got Mom out of there pretty sharpish when it was obvious that we would have some serious work to do.
The end toll on the patient goes like this: ten milligrams of Haldol IM, three of Versed IV, eight of Ativan IV, and four-point soft restraints, Posey vest, and bruises on wrists and ankles where people had to hold her down. (Note for nonmedical types: that's enough sedative and antipsychotic medication to take down a 200-pound man and make it necessary to bag him. She just got calm.)
Oh, and I ran a fourteen-gauge (note for nonmedical types: a fucking huge) IV into her left ankle with one stick. She didn't like it, but I felt better.
The end toll on the staff is as follows: One black eye, one certainly sprained and possibly broken finger, one sore back (that's the only one that's mine, thank God), several puncture wounds from filthy fingernails, and one inch-wide bite wound on a forearm.
The bite wound happened to a very sweet, slightly slow nurses' aide who happened to look away at a critical moment. I feel terrible for her, not least because she had to get vaccinated for tetanus and all the various other things one can get from a human bite, and she hates needles. I will say this, though: she held on like a bulldog even with blood from the bite running down her wrist and hand.
I bought her a pair of heavy black rubber elbow-length gauntlets today at the hardware store. I'll wrap them in pretty pink paper with a girlish bow and give them to her the next time I work.
It was three-and-a-half hours into a four-hour drama, and I was getting rather tired of the situation. I replied, as calmly as I could, that I was not going to the penitentiary or to jail or to hell, no matter how often she repeated those suggestions, and that she was not getting out of this place tomorrow.
Subarachnoid hemorrhages are weird things. They happen most often when an aneurysm, a weak area in an artery, cuts loose and bleeds. What happens next is confusing and fascinating; the patient ends up with what's essentially a sterile meningitis (inflammation of the coverings of the brain and spinal cord). The ability to speak clearly sometimes disappears temporarily, and the person tends to take long vacations from reality.
Combine a subarachnoid hemorrhage with a couple of other organic problems that have already caused substantial damage, then add on a subdural hematoma. That's bleeding under the toughest layer of meninges that cover the brain, and is most often caused by a blow or counter-blow injury to the head. Subdural hematomas fall under the category "walk, talk, and die", because they tend to expand rapidly, compressing the brain tissue under them and on the opposite side of the brain. We keep SDH patients under close observation for several days for that reason.
Even if those patients aren't wandering off the floor, attacking ICU nurses when said nurses don't come up with discharge paperwork, and begging to be left alone long enough to have a quiet cigarette outside.
Had I been able to, I would've ordered a toxicity screen, both blood and urine. Unfortunately, after she came back upstairs from the lobby of the ICU, I had been busy holding her down. For three and a half hours. That kind of energy--the sort of energy and strength that allows an 80-pound patient to break through soft restraints and a restraint vest and requires 160-pound me to kneel atop her--doesn't come only from a subarachnoid hemorrhage or subdural hematoma.
It started innocently enough, with a long-distance phone call to her elderly mother, asking Mom to come pick her up. When Mom arrived, having not checked with the nurses to determine whether she could take her daughter home, things went straight to hell. The patient, amazed and angry that she wasn't going home, became increasingly violent. We got Mom out of there pretty sharpish when it was obvious that we would have some serious work to do.
The end toll on the patient goes like this: ten milligrams of Haldol IM, three of Versed IV, eight of Ativan IV, and four-point soft restraints, Posey vest, and bruises on wrists and ankles where people had to hold her down. (Note for nonmedical types: that's enough sedative and antipsychotic medication to take down a 200-pound man and make it necessary to bag him. She just got calm.)
Oh, and I ran a fourteen-gauge (note for nonmedical types: a fucking huge) IV into her left ankle with one stick. She didn't like it, but I felt better.
The end toll on the staff is as follows: One black eye, one certainly sprained and possibly broken finger, one sore back (that's the only one that's mine, thank God), several puncture wounds from filthy fingernails, and one inch-wide bite wound on a forearm.
The bite wound happened to a very sweet, slightly slow nurses' aide who happened to look away at a critical moment. I feel terrible for her, not least because she had to get vaccinated for tetanus and all the various other things one can get from a human bite, and she hates needles. I will say this, though: she held on like a bulldog even with blood from the bite running down her wrist and hand.
I bought her a pair of heavy black rubber elbow-length gauntlets today at the hardware store. I'll wrap them in pretty pink paper with a girlish bow and give them to her the next time I work.
Friday, April 28, 2006
HN Special Feature: TeeVee Show Review!
I was really, really not wanting to put too much mental effort out tonight; two days straight of The Great Influenza and starting Pinker's How The Mind Works had left my brain box empty except for a quivering lump of greyish Jell-O.
So I flipped on the tube and stumbled on something called "The Ghost Whisperer." I was intrigued: a show about a person who trains ghosts to canter, trot, and gallop? A medium with laryngitis? You gotta understand, I may not get out much, but I watch TV even less.
What I got was Jennifer Love Hewitt and some guy I vaguely remember from the old one-season wonder "Relativity" (as well as Snow White: A Tale of Terror, with Sigourney Weaver as the evil stepmom) playing a paramedic (him) and an antique store owner (her) living in a small, peaceful Eastern Seaboard town.
So far so good.
As things progressed, though, I started to wonder: if this chick who sees dead people (all the time!!) and tries to send them into the light has been doing this since she was six, how come she's still flipped out by manifestations of what should be, by now, a fairly routine occurance? I mean, even her husband and business partner are treating her visitations with the sort of wry humor that connotes total acceptance of the weird.
Also, what up with the hallucinations? I mean, she's hallucinating all the damn time. Either that, or the dead aren't very good at communicating, since a planeload of people about to come down (this week's plot) can only focus their combined energies on one person. Everybody else is missing the obvious, like half-frozen people in pilot's uniforms wandering around. If J-Love's character is living in a small town, and her husband's a paramedic, you *know* somebody's said something to him about this by now. "Uh, Bob...you know, I hate to mention it, but your wife keeps screaming and clapping her hands over her ears in line at the Wal-Mart. Has she seen a doctor?"
Furthermore, what up with the eyeliner and Goth-Girl costumes, dawg? There was one scene in this week's episode in which Our Heroine was walking across Ye Olde Towne Square, the only person in town (and they all seemed to be on the square at that moment) wearing head-to-toe black and eyeliner fit for a Mod Squad audition. That, in most small towns I know, would get you looked at funny at the least, and probably not guarantee a lot of business for your antique store. ("Same As It Never Was." Cute, guys.)
At one point in a subplot, an architect stops in for a consult on remodelling the antique store and mentions that he's "passed by this place" a number of times. At that point The Cat snorted and said, "Yeah, 'cause he's freaked out by Little Miss Death Hallucinatron, here."
Then there's the subplot with the rookie paramedic who gets freaked out by the sight of blood, and Sensitive Husband Paramedic Guy has to be his big-brother type and get him over it in time for a plane full of sort-of-dead, mostly-frozen people who've been talking to J-Love for the last fifty minutes to crash...right into Smallton! Or Greenville, or whatever it's called.
According to the preview for *next* week's show, the whole upshot of the dealie-o is that J-Love will have to somehow armor her black lace cardigan and go up against The Devil Himself (dun dun dun) to save the souls of the mostly-dead, pretty-well-freezer-burned folk on the plane. There's a lot of symbolism about a pocket watch and doves coming back to life and love never dying, and Beelzebub wears a really, *really* bad hat and hisses a lot in J-Love's ear.
The Cat, pausing in her paw-licking, opined that Satan is getting lamer and lamer every year. "Whatever happened," she asked, "to 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?' Or Dante? Or even 'The Gospel of Peter?'"
I told her I had no good answer, and so we're going to bed.
So I flipped on the tube and stumbled on something called "The Ghost Whisperer." I was intrigued: a show about a person who trains ghosts to canter, trot, and gallop? A medium with laryngitis? You gotta understand, I may not get out much, but I watch TV even less.
What I got was Jennifer Love Hewitt and some guy I vaguely remember from the old one-season wonder "Relativity" (as well as Snow White: A Tale of Terror, with Sigourney Weaver as the evil stepmom) playing a paramedic (him) and an antique store owner (her) living in a small, peaceful Eastern Seaboard town.
So far so good.
As things progressed, though, I started to wonder: if this chick who sees dead people (all the time!!) and tries to send them into the light has been doing this since she was six, how come she's still flipped out by manifestations of what should be, by now, a fairly routine occurance? I mean, even her husband and business partner are treating her visitations with the sort of wry humor that connotes total acceptance of the weird.
Also, what up with the hallucinations? I mean, she's hallucinating all the damn time. Either that, or the dead aren't very good at communicating, since a planeload of people about to come down (this week's plot) can only focus their combined energies on one person. Everybody else is missing the obvious, like half-frozen people in pilot's uniforms wandering around. If J-Love's character is living in a small town, and her husband's a paramedic, you *know* somebody's said something to him about this by now. "Uh, Bob...you know, I hate to mention it, but your wife keeps screaming and clapping her hands over her ears in line at the Wal-Mart. Has she seen a doctor?"
Furthermore, what up with the eyeliner and Goth-Girl costumes, dawg? There was one scene in this week's episode in which Our Heroine was walking across Ye Olde Towne Square, the only person in town (and they all seemed to be on the square at that moment) wearing head-to-toe black and eyeliner fit for a Mod Squad audition. That, in most small towns I know, would get you looked at funny at the least, and probably not guarantee a lot of business for your antique store. ("Same As It Never Was." Cute, guys.)
At one point in a subplot, an architect stops in for a consult on remodelling the antique store and mentions that he's "passed by this place" a number of times. At that point The Cat snorted and said, "Yeah, 'cause he's freaked out by Little Miss Death Hallucinatron, here."
Then there's the subplot with the rookie paramedic who gets freaked out by the sight of blood, and Sensitive Husband Paramedic Guy has to be his big-brother type and get him over it in time for a plane full of sort-of-dead, mostly-frozen people who've been talking to J-Love for the last fifty minutes to crash...right into Smallton! Or Greenville, or whatever it's called.
According to the preview for *next* week's show, the whole upshot of the dealie-o is that J-Love will have to somehow armor her black lace cardigan and go up against The Devil Himself (dun dun dun) to save the souls of the mostly-dead, pretty-well-freezer-burned folk on the plane. There's a lot of symbolism about a pocket watch and doves coming back to life and love never dying, and Beelzebub wears a really, *really* bad hat and hisses a lot in J-Love's ear.
The Cat, pausing in her paw-licking, opined that Satan is getting lamer and lamer every year. "Whatever happened," she asked, "to 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?' Or Dante? Or even 'The Gospel of Peter?'"
I told her I had no good answer, and so we're going to bed.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
I'm blaming The South Bitch Diet.
So, um, you know when you get a scary troll on your blog? And you go and enable the "moderate comments" dealie on the blog template? And you forget to, um, type in your email address in that thingy so that the Blogger software can let you know when a comment's been posted? And none of the comments get posted, for, like, six weeks, so you think nobody's reading your stuff and you start posting titles like "BOOBIES!" and stuff?
Just be glad I'm not a programmer or proofreader, people. I figured out the comments glitch today, and let's just say boy is my face red.
It should work now. I take back all the nasty things I said about you, Blogger. It was entirely my own fault, mea culpa. And thank you, various commenters, for the nice things you've said.
On to bigger and worser things:
All you folks who have done SBD or who know patients or family members who have done it, I have a question: How do you get the freaking headaches to stop?
I'm well-hydrated, I'm eating everything I should. Last night I was in the grips of a three-day-long headache and finally ate a pita sandwich. The headache disappeared and hasn't returned since. I had a half-cup of rice today, which I think might account for that. Is this headache going to continue through the first phase of the diet? If it's that bad, should I just say to heck with it and start with Phase II? I don't eat much in the way of simple carbs anyhow, so that wouldn't be too bad.
It was bad enough yesterday that I took four ibuprofen, something I never, ever do, and the headache *still* didn't disappear. It went from "making me afraid to try to drive" to "moderately distracting". And no, I haven't cut down on caffeine. I wasn't having that much anyhow.
I can handle hunger and muscle aches and bad skin. I can handle constipation, the Plagues of Egypt, bad relationships, and traffic. I just cannot handle unrelenting headaches of near-migranous intensity. Any help would be appreciated.
In other news, since The Boys are off at the AANS conference, I'm home today, huzzah! Things will begin to pick up on Thursday, when they return, but I'll be off work then and (I hope) refinishing my dining table. The Cat and I had a little mutual-admiration society going this afternoon, so she should be able to handle being not At The Forefront of The Human's Mind for a day or so.
Note on the last big post: The song lyrics in italics are from Barenaked Ladies's "The Old Apartment" and Jackson Browne's "In the Shape of A Heart", mixed up together. "The Old Apartment" can be found on the album Rock Spectacle, while "In the Shape of A Heart" is on Lives In The Balance. You can hear lots of Browne cuts on his website, jacksonbrowne.com, which almost makes up for him being a drunken wife-beater. And for imbuing me with a lifelong *thing* for skinny dark-haired guys with dark eyes.
And that is all for now. Comments remain moderated, but now I know how to fly this bitch, so we'll do fine.
Just be glad I'm not a programmer or proofreader, people. I figured out the comments glitch today, and let's just say boy is my face red.
It should work now. I take back all the nasty things I said about you, Blogger. It was entirely my own fault, mea culpa. And thank you, various commenters, for the nice things you've said.
On to bigger and worser things:
All you folks who have done SBD or who know patients or family members who have done it, I have a question: How do you get the freaking headaches to stop?
I'm well-hydrated, I'm eating everything I should. Last night I was in the grips of a three-day-long headache and finally ate a pita sandwich. The headache disappeared and hasn't returned since. I had a half-cup of rice today, which I think might account for that. Is this headache going to continue through the first phase of the diet? If it's that bad, should I just say to heck with it and start with Phase II? I don't eat much in the way of simple carbs anyhow, so that wouldn't be too bad.
It was bad enough yesterday that I took four ibuprofen, something I never, ever do, and the headache *still* didn't disappear. It went from "making me afraid to try to drive" to "moderately distracting". And no, I haven't cut down on caffeine. I wasn't having that much anyhow.
I can handle hunger and muscle aches and bad skin. I can handle constipation, the Plagues of Egypt, bad relationships, and traffic. I just cannot handle unrelenting headaches of near-migranous intensity. Any help would be appreciated.
In other news, since The Boys are off at the AANS conference, I'm home today, huzzah! Things will begin to pick up on Thursday, when they return, but I'll be off work then and (I hope) refinishing my dining table. The Cat and I had a little mutual-admiration society going this afternoon, so she should be able to handle being not At The Forefront of The Human's Mind for a day or so.
Note on the last big post: The song lyrics in italics are from Barenaked Ladies's "The Old Apartment" and Jackson Browne's "In the Shape of A Heart", mixed up together. "The Old Apartment" can be found on the album Rock Spectacle, while "In the Shape of A Heart" is on Lives In The Balance. You can hear lots of Browne cuts on his website, jacksonbrowne.com, which almost makes up for him being a drunken wife-beater. And for imbuing me with a lifelong *thing* for skinny dark-haired guys with dark eyes.
And that is all for now. Comments remain moderated, but now I know how to fly this bitch, so we'll do fine.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Blogger Band-Aid
Suggested by Les, brilliant correspondent.
Blogger's bug won't allow people to post on the first post on the page, so I'm trying something new: A band-aid post to knock the *real* post down a notch, so it can be commented upon.
Let me know how it works.
Blogger's bug won't allow people to post on the first post on the page, so I'm trying something new: A band-aid post to knock the *real* post down a notch, so it can be commented upon.
Let me know how it works.
Finally, enough time off.
Of course, I'll pay for it starting tomorrow.
I had two days off this week and three last week and actually put them to good use. Chef Boy and I went to a food show, a nightmare of fried things and processed things attended by the chefs of places like Applebee's and Chili's.
I kid you not: I saw six people so obese that they could not walk and had to use those little scooters to get around. Obesity doesn't necessarily lead to mobility problems, but the lightest of these folks was, by my estimation, somewhere north of 400 lbs. That's gonna give you problems at some point.
Apparently, this particular food show is a big draw with church groups and social groups: people buy tickets for however much, then grab a to-go box from one of the product booths and fill it with fried things.
The only booth that had fresh food had no samples available. It was torture, walking past heirloom tomatoes and bags of salad and not being able to eat anything but chicken-chili-cheese dogs (the most foul thing I've ever put in my mouth) and crawfish empenadas (a close second). There's a list of about eight things I will never eat again, even under duress, and the food show provided all but three. (The other things are Danish ammonia-and-salt licorice, anything flavored with asafoetida, and Tofu Pups.)
I also bought books, to wit:
The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo. I was not crazy at all about Because of Winn-Dixie, but this is a charming story well-told. I like the style, I like the rat Chiaroscuro, I like Miggery Sow.
Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. So far it's failing to entrance me, but I understand it gets better after the first eight chapters or so.
How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker. Because I felt like I oughta, and because I liked the interviews with Pinker that I saw on YouTube.
John M. Barry's The Great Influenza. I'm not sure I haven't read this one before, but if I did, I don't remember it and so should read it again.
The South Beach Diet. Yes. My belly measurement has reached truly worrying levels, as have my fasting blood glucose and cholesterol numbers. Two of the internal med docs I work with recommended this book, independently of one another, and they're both the biggest fitness-freak Diet Cops I've ever met, so I'm going to give it a shot. Hell, I can do anything for two weeks, especially an induction plan that includes things like broccoli and Brussels sprouts and black beans.
Lesson learned: If you don't listen to your doctor when he tells you you need to make small changes, you'll end up having to buy diet books and looking askance at potatoes. Which is probably a good thing, as I don't want to end up like Miggery Sow, cauliflower ears and all.
Dinner with Chef Boy's family, a whole bunch of laundry, and some more naps rounded out my days off. Work I'm not even going to mention; Eric over at eric135 says, rightly, that February and March are the nastiest months of the nursing year, and April isn't far behind, at least at our facility. We seem to be having a run on subarachnoid hemorrhages and glioblastomas (with six you get eggroll!) and I'm just plain tired of thinking about it.
Besides, it's nice to have something like a life now and then.
I had two days off this week and three last week and actually put them to good use. Chef Boy and I went to a food show, a nightmare of fried things and processed things attended by the chefs of places like Applebee's and Chili's.
I kid you not: I saw six people so obese that they could not walk and had to use those little scooters to get around. Obesity doesn't necessarily lead to mobility problems, but the lightest of these folks was, by my estimation, somewhere north of 400 lbs. That's gonna give you problems at some point.
Apparently, this particular food show is a big draw with church groups and social groups: people buy tickets for however much, then grab a to-go box from one of the product booths and fill it with fried things.
The only booth that had fresh food had no samples available. It was torture, walking past heirloom tomatoes and bags of salad and not being able to eat anything but chicken-chili-cheese dogs (the most foul thing I've ever put in my mouth) and crawfish empenadas (a close second). There's a list of about eight things I will never eat again, even under duress, and the food show provided all but three. (The other things are Danish ammonia-and-salt licorice, anything flavored with asafoetida, and Tofu Pups.)
I also bought books, to wit:
The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo. I was not crazy at all about Because of Winn-Dixie, but this is a charming story well-told. I like the style, I like the rat Chiaroscuro, I like Miggery Sow.
Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. So far it's failing to entrance me, but I understand it gets better after the first eight chapters or so.
How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker. Because I felt like I oughta, and because I liked the interviews with Pinker that I saw on YouTube.
John M. Barry's The Great Influenza. I'm not sure I haven't read this one before, but if I did, I don't remember it and so should read it again.
The South Beach Diet. Yes. My belly measurement has reached truly worrying levels, as have my fasting blood glucose and cholesterol numbers. Two of the internal med docs I work with recommended this book, independently of one another, and they're both the biggest fitness-freak Diet Cops I've ever met, so I'm going to give it a shot. Hell, I can do anything for two weeks, especially an induction plan that includes things like broccoli and Brussels sprouts and black beans.
Lesson learned: If you don't listen to your doctor when he tells you you need to make small changes, you'll end up having to buy diet books and looking askance at potatoes. Which is probably a good thing, as I don't want to end up like Miggery Sow, cauliflower ears and all.
Dinner with Chef Boy's family, a whole bunch of laundry, and some more naps rounded out my days off. Work I'm not even going to mention; Eric over at eric135 says, rightly, that February and March are the nastiest months of the nursing year, and April isn't far behind, at least at our facility. We seem to be having a run on subarachnoid hemorrhages and glioblastomas (with six you get eggroll!) and I'm just plain tired of thinking about it.
Besides, it's nice to have something like a life now and then.
Monday, April 17, 2006
The shape of a heart
I drove past the old house today. It's the house I grew up in; the one the 'Rents sold to us shortly after we got married.
I hadn't driven past it in three years. Not through trying, but because my daily life doesn't take me to that end of town any longer.
The Erstwhile Hub and the Erstwhile Best Buddy are living there, still. Shortly after I left, and she left, she moved back in.
It was a time I can't forget
Full of sorrow and regret
And the shape of a heart
And the shape of a heart
There were two things left that I cared about, the dog that I saved that I left behind, because it was better for him, and the rose bush that had grown as tall as the second-story windows when Mom and Dad bought the place.
Why did you paint the walls?
Why did you clean the floor?
Why did you plaster over the hole I punched in the door?
This is where we used to live.
I walked around to the back fence (stalking behavior, I know; email me if you're in a chastising mood) to see if the dogs were still there; I guess they'd been taken in for the night.
The rose bush is gone. Dug up, cut down, it doesn't matter. It's gone. All ten feet of it, each way, with blooms that used to come like clockwork in April and again in June and then sometimes in December if it was warm.
these things used to be mine
I guess they still are, I want them back
Now there's nothing that ties me there. For three years or more, I'd assumed that they'd keep the rose bush at least. In some weird sense, I'm free of the two of them, of all the badness that happened unexpectedly after an amicable divorce, when it turned out that he couldn't let go and she was determined to put herself in the right.
That's twelve years of my life you're talking about. Which isn't much, given a life expectancy of 107 years, but it's a lot to me now.
You keep it up
You try so hard
To keep a life from coming apart
And never know
What breaches and faults are concealed
In the shape of a heart
More than twelve years, it's the two people who made me mostly what I am now, more than I ever made myself. I had known her from the time I was 18. She had stood by me, mostly, through the roughest parts of my life and the best. And he was the first person I'd ever met, and so far the only one, that I thought I could stay with until I died.
And I held it in my hand
For a little while
And dropped it into the wall
Let it go, heard it fall
We bought an old house on the Danforth
She loves me and her body keeps me warm
I'm happy here
But this is where we used to live
Only memories, fading memories
Blending into dull tableaux
I hadn't driven past it in three years. Not through trying, but because my daily life doesn't take me to that end of town any longer.
The Erstwhile Hub and the Erstwhile Best Buddy are living there, still. Shortly after I left, and she left, she moved back in.
It was a time I can't forget
Full of sorrow and regret
And the shape of a heart
And the shape of a heart
There were two things left that I cared about, the dog that I saved that I left behind, because it was better for him, and the rose bush that had grown as tall as the second-story windows when Mom and Dad bought the place.
Why did you paint the walls?
Why did you clean the floor?
Why did you plaster over the hole I punched in the door?
This is where we used to live.
I walked around to the back fence (stalking behavior, I know; email me if you're in a chastising mood) to see if the dogs were still there; I guess they'd been taken in for the night.
The rose bush is gone. Dug up, cut down, it doesn't matter. It's gone. All ten feet of it, each way, with blooms that used to come like clockwork in April and again in June and then sometimes in December if it was warm.
these things used to be mine
I guess they still are, I want them back
Now there's nothing that ties me there. For three years or more, I'd assumed that they'd keep the rose bush at least. In some weird sense, I'm free of the two of them, of all the badness that happened unexpectedly after an amicable divorce, when it turned out that he couldn't let go and she was determined to put herself in the right.
That's twelve years of my life you're talking about. Which isn't much, given a life expectancy of 107 years, but it's a lot to me now.
You keep it up
You try so hard
To keep a life from coming apart
And never know
What breaches and faults are concealed
In the shape of a heart
More than twelve years, it's the two people who made me mostly what I am now, more than I ever made myself. I had known her from the time I was 18. She had stood by me, mostly, through the roughest parts of my life and the best. And he was the first person I'd ever met, and so far the only one, that I thought I could stay with until I died.
And I held it in my hand
For a little while
And dropped it into the wall
Let it go, heard it fall
We bought an old house on the Danforth
She loves me and her body keeps me warm
I'm happy here
But this is where we used to live
Only memories, fading memories
Blending into dull tableaux
Saturday, April 15, 2006
First things first....
Blogger has a bug which disallows comments on the newest post on every page, unless you're using some combination of IE and luck which I've only hit on once. I know some of you have encountered that bug, and I apologize. There's no way I know of to fix it in the template, so you'll have to keep either emailing me with comments or wait until a new post comes up to comment on the second-newest.
Today, as I was manhandling a casserole into the fridge, I caught the third finger of my right hand against the corner of a drawer I had carelessly left open. The corner (being that weird melamine veneer stuff) ripped a swath of skin and meat off the first knuckle of that finger. For the first time in a very long time, I looked down after doing myself an injury and saw I was bleeding.
Copiously.
Luckily for me, it didn't involve a fingernail. I'm sure I've told this story before, but I once sliced a chunk out of a fingernail with a mandoline as I was slicing some vegetable or another. I actually fainted when I had to change the bandage on that finger. I had foreseen that possibility and so had a friend standing by with ammonia and Scotch and ice packs, all of which she put to good use.
So I stood there, watching in fascination, casserole forgotten, as I bled. I don't usually injure myself with sharp or penetrating things; my hurts tend to be more of the blunt-trauma, falling-over variety. Or of the roundhouse-to-the-left-kidney variety, one of which I sustained a week ago and am only now feeling normal after.
One of our patients with no risk whatsoever for seizures had a seizure. He's a big guy--six-eight and three hundred pounds at least, and not fat. We're talking Olympic athlete standard of fitness and muscles from here to Toledo. And he, of course, is the one who has the tonic-clonic seizure to end all tonic-clonic seizures. I've never seen anything like it.
His wife screamed out over the call system, so the charge nurse and I hit the door at a dead run. Credit to the charge for saying simply, "Shit." and turning on his heel for oxygen and Ativan and the crash cart, but I had to stay in the room and get this guy on his side.
Down goes the bed--they're heavy when you grab the CPR emergency release--and I hauled the patient over on his side so he wouldn't choke on the blood and vomit and foam that was seeping out from between his clenched teeth. A rigid, tall, heavy, muscular patient who's in the grips of a seizure that's made every muscle tetanic is not easy to get over onto his side; it amazed me that I could manage. But I did.
He seized long enough that we could run for a mask, for more Ativan, for a suction setup and O2 monitor and blood pressure monitor and EKG leads and he *still* hadn't finished. Conservatively, I know his seizure lasted at least forty seconds, and probably more like two minutes, with no dimunition until after we'd given him a total of 4 milligrams of Ativan, fast push.
Then it was suction and Venti mask and EKG leads and where the hell's that respiratory therapist and more sedatives and Jesus Christ somebody get me a four-by for all this blood, then reasoning out that the goose-egg on his forehead came from his repetitive pounding of said head against the bedrail during the clonic portion of the seizure, and then off to CT scan.
And I went away and gibbered for a few minutes, even though he wasn't my patient, because if there's one thing I hate more than a code it's a seizure. And this one...dear sweet Christ on a crutch, I can honestly say I didn't know the human body could make such sounds. Or that eyes could roll quite like that. Or that people actually, really and truly, *foamed at the mouth*.
Years ago, when I was still at PP, a patient's boyfriend had a seizure that culminated in one of our waiting-room chairs being kicked through a tempered-glass window. This one was much, much worse. I'm just glad that we had three bedrails up; there's no way I could've held him on the bed without the support of the rails. Even so, one was bent so far out of alignment that it's not usable.
And at some point I sustained a really lovely bruise over my left kidney. I'm not sure if I got it during the scrum to get Ativan into the guy, or if he whacked me with a flailing leg without my noticing, but it's there. It's *still* there, I should say, and still makes me wince when I roll over in bed. I guess I'm lucky not to be peeing blood.
Just thinking about it makes me gibber some more and feel sort of shaky.
The best part? Dude had a bladder infection from a catheter we'd had in him during back surgery. We gave him Levaquin, which apparently lowers seizure thresholds in otherwise normal folks.
So his risk factor, looking back, was a commonly-used antibiotic.
Er.
I think I'll tough-out the next sinus infection, thanks.
And go put an ice pack on this flank.
Today, as I was manhandling a casserole into the fridge, I caught the third finger of my right hand against the corner of a drawer I had carelessly left open. The corner (being that weird melamine veneer stuff) ripped a swath of skin and meat off the first knuckle of that finger. For the first time in a very long time, I looked down after doing myself an injury and saw I was bleeding.
Copiously.
Luckily for me, it didn't involve a fingernail. I'm sure I've told this story before, but I once sliced a chunk out of a fingernail with a mandoline as I was slicing some vegetable or another. I actually fainted when I had to change the bandage on that finger. I had foreseen that possibility and so had a friend standing by with ammonia and Scotch and ice packs, all of which she put to good use.
So I stood there, watching in fascination, casserole forgotten, as I bled. I don't usually injure myself with sharp or penetrating things; my hurts tend to be more of the blunt-trauma, falling-over variety. Or of the roundhouse-to-the-left-kidney variety, one of which I sustained a week ago and am only now feeling normal after.
One of our patients with no risk whatsoever for seizures had a seizure. He's a big guy--six-eight and three hundred pounds at least, and not fat. We're talking Olympic athlete standard of fitness and muscles from here to Toledo. And he, of course, is the one who has the tonic-clonic seizure to end all tonic-clonic seizures. I've never seen anything like it.
His wife screamed out over the call system, so the charge nurse and I hit the door at a dead run. Credit to the charge for saying simply, "Shit." and turning on his heel for oxygen and Ativan and the crash cart, but I had to stay in the room and get this guy on his side.
Down goes the bed--they're heavy when you grab the CPR emergency release--and I hauled the patient over on his side so he wouldn't choke on the blood and vomit and foam that was seeping out from between his clenched teeth. A rigid, tall, heavy, muscular patient who's in the grips of a seizure that's made every muscle tetanic is not easy to get over onto his side; it amazed me that I could manage. But I did.
He seized long enough that we could run for a mask, for more Ativan, for a suction setup and O2 monitor and blood pressure monitor and EKG leads and he *still* hadn't finished. Conservatively, I know his seizure lasted at least forty seconds, and probably more like two minutes, with no dimunition until after we'd given him a total of 4 milligrams of Ativan, fast push.
Then it was suction and Venti mask and EKG leads and where the hell's that respiratory therapist and more sedatives and Jesus Christ somebody get me a four-by for all this blood, then reasoning out that the goose-egg on his forehead came from his repetitive pounding of said head against the bedrail during the clonic portion of the seizure, and then off to CT scan.
And I went away and gibbered for a few minutes, even though he wasn't my patient, because if there's one thing I hate more than a code it's a seizure. And this one...dear sweet Christ on a crutch, I can honestly say I didn't know the human body could make such sounds. Or that eyes could roll quite like that. Or that people actually, really and truly, *foamed at the mouth*.
Years ago, when I was still at PP, a patient's boyfriend had a seizure that culminated in one of our waiting-room chairs being kicked through a tempered-glass window. This one was much, much worse. I'm just glad that we had three bedrails up; there's no way I could've held him on the bed without the support of the rails. Even so, one was bent so far out of alignment that it's not usable.
And at some point I sustained a really lovely bruise over my left kidney. I'm not sure if I got it during the scrum to get Ativan into the guy, or if he whacked me with a flailing leg without my noticing, but it's there. It's *still* there, I should say, and still makes me wince when I roll over in bed. I guess I'm lucky not to be peeing blood.
Just thinking about it makes me gibber some more and feel sort of shaky.
The best part? Dude had a bladder infection from a catheter we'd had in him during back surgery. We gave him Levaquin, which apparently lowers seizure thresholds in otherwise normal folks.
So his risk factor, looking back, was a commonly-used antibiotic.
Er.
I think I'll tough-out the next sinus infection, thanks.
And go put an ice pack on this flank.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Boobies! Boobies! Boobies!
Nota bene: there are no boobs in this post. The title line is merely an attention-getting device.
A nice guy came in a couple weeks ago with a huge tumor. This particular huge tumor is growing in his chest, wrapping around his spinal column, compressing his lungs and heart, and dropping down to involve one kidney. His symptoms started about five months ago and got steadily worse; he's lost the use of his legs and bowel and bladder control.
He came to us through a relative of a friend of a former patient who *also* had a huge tumor. She had heard somehow of the guy's predicament and called her relative's friend's former surgeon, who said to bring the guy in.
His predicament, to wit: being discharged from a charity hospital because the only surgeon who was not willing to operate gratis demanded full payment for service up front. This particular wanker apparently works on contract with The Other Hospital, so there wasn't a lot anybody could do. He was also apparently the only surgeon willing to attempt a tricky and complicated resection, so my patient was screwed. To the wall.
Now, as in all great Suthun states, we have one city which continually congratulates itself on its international appeal, its liberalism, its ability to absorb people of all ethnicities and cultures into a huge melting pot/salad bowl of wonderfulness. This particular guy emigrated from his home country during a time of, shall we say, political unrest, and landed in That Great City.
Whereupon, after working and paying taxes and so on for umpty-ump years, he was told by one nurse to "go back to your own country to get your surgery". Yeah, I'll bet the Khmer Rouge established *great* surgery programs in its medical schools. Then there was the accusation by a doctor at the hospital that the patient was over-playing his symptoms in order to get free treatment for himself and the presumed ten kids he had, because, as the doctor pointed out, people like that come here to take advantage of the system.
And then there were the nurses and nurses' aides who pulled slanty-eyed faces and spoke with fake Chinese accents to him and his family.
Lovely crowd, that. There is something to be said for a well-aimed tornado or six, eh?
At any rate, he's with us now, and he'll get treatment for free. He had his first surgery over the weekend, an anterior resection of the bulk of the tumor, in order to allow him to breathe. The neurosurgery and kidney stuff will come a little later in the week. I think he's glad he left Self-Absorbedville and landed with us, poor sot.
It still amazes me, even after (*cough*) years of being on this planet, that people can be outright viscous hateful bigots. Especially people who have a professional charge and a moral responsibility to be better than everybody else when it comes to their job. There don't seem to be enough tornadoes to go around.
A nice guy came in a couple weeks ago with a huge tumor. This particular huge tumor is growing in his chest, wrapping around his spinal column, compressing his lungs and heart, and dropping down to involve one kidney. His symptoms started about five months ago and got steadily worse; he's lost the use of his legs and bowel and bladder control.
He came to us through a relative of a friend of a former patient who *also* had a huge tumor. She had heard somehow of the guy's predicament and called her relative's friend's former surgeon, who said to bring the guy in.
His predicament, to wit: being discharged from a charity hospital because the only surgeon who was not willing to operate gratis demanded full payment for service up front. This particular wanker apparently works on contract with The Other Hospital, so there wasn't a lot anybody could do. He was also apparently the only surgeon willing to attempt a tricky and complicated resection, so my patient was screwed. To the wall.
Now, as in all great Suthun states, we have one city which continually congratulates itself on its international appeal, its liberalism, its ability to absorb people of all ethnicities and cultures into a huge melting pot/salad bowl of wonderfulness. This particular guy emigrated from his home country during a time of, shall we say, political unrest, and landed in That Great City.
Whereupon, after working and paying taxes and so on for umpty-ump years, he was told by one nurse to "go back to your own country to get your surgery". Yeah, I'll bet the Khmer Rouge established *great* surgery programs in its medical schools. Then there was the accusation by a doctor at the hospital that the patient was over-playing his symptoms in order to get free treatment for himself and the presumed ten kids he had, because, as the doctor pointed out, people like that come here to take advantage of the system.
And then there were the nurses and nurses' aides who pulled slanty-eyed faces and spoke with fake Chinese accents to him and his family.
Lovely crowd, that. There is something to be said for a well-aimed tornado or six, eh?
At any rate, he's with us now, and he'll get treatment for free. He had his first surgery over the weekend, an anterior resection of the bulk of the tumor, in order to allow him to breathe. The neurosurgery and kidney stuff will come a little later in the week. I think he's glad he left Self-Absorbedville and landed with us, poor sot.
It still amazes me, even after (*cough*) years of being on this planet, that people can be outright viscous hateful bigots. Especially people who have a professional charge and a moral responsibility to be better than everybody else when it comes to their job. There don't seem to be enough tornadoes to go around.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Is it a sin to call in sick when you're really not?
Because I have a bottle of Becker Vineyards' Viognier here, and a slab of salmon, and a little miniature Dachshund across town that would love to play tug with a sock.
(Nota bene: Becker Vineyards is in a place called Fredricksburg, in Texas, in the Hill Country. It produces a really superior Viognier. You should have some, even if you have to scour your local wine store for it.)
I also have a kitty-cat who hasn't seen me for Two Whole Days, and for whom I just installed a Cat-A-Comb (one of those corner groomer widgets that contains catnip). And I have a bed, which I haven't seen much of lately, and a Chef Boy who's feeling a bit put out that I haven't seen much of *him* lately.
At work, it's Glioma Season. Any nurse will tell you that things like appendicitis, brain tumors, and heart attacks tend to come in waves; this is our Glioma season. Subarachnoid Hemorrhage Season starts in a few weeks, when the thunderstorms and resultant pressure drops start to get *really* nasty...but for now, it's all tumors.
She has a glioma that extends from the bottom of her right frontal lobe, just above her sinuses, to the middle of her frontal lobe, and might have fingers reaching into her temporal and parietal lobes. So far it's skinny and isn't affecting her thought processes, though her balance is a little off. I discharged her on Monday. She'll come back next Monday for a biopsy. There's not a lot we can do besides a confirmatory biopsy and gamma-knife radiation; her tumor is in a really, really nasty spot and a really, really nasty configuration.
"So," she said, "the doctor was just in here telling me that this is probably brain cancer."
"Yep," I replied.
"And it's going to kill me if it is?" she asked.
"If it is, it will." I said.
"Mmmm. I suppose I ought to do all those things I always wanted to do, then," she mused.
"That would probably be a very good idea." I said.
"How long do I have before I...(flapping hands helplessly, crossing eyes, and sticking tongue out of mouth)?"
"Maybe six months. More probably three." I replied.
I wasn't telling her anything she hadn't already heard from the doc, and she isn't the sort of person that appreciates bush-beating.
Unexpectedly, she asked me, "Do you know Trout Fishing In America's version of 'Last Days of Pompeii?'"
Do I. "On the last day of Pompeii/Thought I heard some poor boy say/Oh, wow, man/If I knew then what I know now..."
I giggled. She giggled. One of the lines is about "I woulda filled up on chocolates, cigarettes and booze/given some perfect stranger the blues". We were both thinking about that.
"If I don't show up on Monday," she said, "I'm in France. I'm spending all my money and eating good cheese and chocolate and flirting madly with men two decades younger than I am."
"Rock on," I said. "Have some Camembert for me."
She won't be back for that biopsy.
Down the hall is a woman with three children, in her late twenties; a totally non-average patient for a glio. Hers is large and aggressive and likely to take her body before it takes her mind, yet she's cheerful and happy.
"I can't believe how blessed I've been," she says, after a group of her friends from church leave. "One of my friends told me that I'm the sort of Christian that she wants to be. All of these people have shown me such love and such tenderness. I feel like I've fallen into a whole group of Good Samaritans."
She thanks me for her care and promises to pray for me. She leaves a lovely thank-you note that mentions me by name and lavishes praise on all of us.
"Serious denial" says the PA, whom I'm not real fond of these days.
"Maybe she really *is* blessed" I retort.
And here is where I find the motivation *not* to call in sick, *not* to spend the day with perfectly healthy people, doing perfectly pleasant things. I've met two people who've gotten the worst possible news a person could get, yet they intend to live the hell out of their lives in the twelve or fourteen weeks left to them.
I'm going in tomorrow with the express purpose of living the hell out of the day, no matter how many are given to me thereafter. If I drop dead of an aneurysm at 19:08, at least I'll have had fun. And maybe made a difference.
One thing's for sure: I'll be humming, "And now that I'm a goner/All that lava rushing 'round that corner/Oh, wow, man--I ain't complaining/Only thinking out loud/You know that my life would be different/My love would be different/If I knew then what I know now."
(Nota bene: Becker Vineyards is in a place called Fredricksburg, in Texas, in the Hill Country. It produces a really superior Viognier. You should have some, even if you have to scour your local wine store for it.)
I also have a kitty-cat who hasn't seen me for Two Whole Days, and for whom I just installed a Cat-A-Comb (one of those corner groomer widgets that contains catnip). And I have a bed, which I haven't seen much of lately, and a Chef Boy who's feeling a bit put out that I haven't seen much of *him* lately.
At work, it's Glioma Season. Any nurse will tell you that things like appendicitis, brain tumors, and heart attacks tend to come in waves; this is our Glioma season. Subarachnoid Hemorrhage Season starts in a few weeks, when the thunderstorms and resultant pressure drops start to get *really* nasty...but for now, it's all tumors.
She has a glioma that extends from the bottom of her right frontal lobe, just above her sinuses, to the middle of her frontal lobe, and might have fingers reaching into her temporal and parietal lobes. So far it's skinny and isn't affecting her thought processes, though her balance is a little off. I discharged her on Monday. She'll come back next Monday for a biopsy. There's not a lot we can do besides a confirmatory biopsy and gamma-knife radiation; her tumor is in a really, really nasty spot and a really, really nasty configuration.
"So," she said, "the doctor was just in here telling me that this is probably brain cancer."
"Yep," I replied.
"And it's going to kill me if it is?" she asked.
"If it is, it will." I said.
"Mmmm. I suppose I ought to do all those things I always wanted to do, then," she mused.
"That would probably be a very good idea." I said.
"How long do I have before I...(flapping hands helplessly, crossing eyes, and sticking tongue out of mouth)?"
"Maybe six months. More probably three." I replied.
I wasn't telling her anything she hadn't already heard from the doc, and she isn't the sort of person that appreciates bush-beating.
Unexpectedly, she asked me, "Do you know Trout Fishing In America's version of 'Last Days of Pompeii?'"
Do I. "On the last day of Pompeii/Thought I heard some poor boy say/Oh, wow, man/If I knew then what I know now..."
I giggled. She giggled. One of the lines is about "I woulda filled up on chocolates, cigarettes and booze/given some perfect stranger the blues". We were both thinking about that.
"If I don't show up on Monday," she said, "I'm in France. I'm spending all my money and eating good cheese and chocolate and flirting madly with men two decades younger than I am."
"Rock on," I said. "Have some Camembert for me."
She won't be back for that biopsy.
Down the hall is a woman with three children, in her late twenties; a totally non-average patient for a glio. Hers is large and aggressive and likely to take her body before it takes her mind, yet she's cheerful and happy.
"I can't believe how blessed I've been," she says, after a group of her friends from church leave. "One of my friends told me that I'm the sort of Christian that she wants to be. All of these people have shown me such love and such tenderness. I feel like I've fallen into a whole group of Good Samaritans."
She thanks me for her care and promises to pray for me. She leaves a lovely thank-you note that mentions me by name and lavishes praise on all of us.
"Serious denial" says the PA, whom I'm not real fond of these days.
"Maybe she really *is* blessed" I retort.
And here is where I find the motivation *not* to call in sick, *not* to spend the day with perfectly healthy people, doing perfectly pleasant things. I've met two people who've gotten the worst possible news a person could get, yet they intend to live the hell out of their lives in the twelve or fourteen weeks left to them.
I'm going in tomorrow with the express purpose of living the hell out of the day, no matter how many are given to me thereafter. If I drop dead of an aneurysm at 19:08, at least I'll have had fun. And maybe made a difference.
One thing's for sure: I'll be humming, "And now that I'm a goner/All that lava rushing 'round that corner/Oh, wow, man--I ain't complaining/Only thinking out loud/You know that my life would be different/My love would be different/If I knew then what I know now."
Sunday, April 02, 2006
long trung thanh
She's a nice woman; a little thin for her height, but solid muscle and bone. She had a brain tumor in an odd spot; although we managed to get it all out, it still had an impact on her legs. She's learning to use them now, just yesterday she walked 300 feet with only a gait belt.
She's the head of the SWAT team for the town two counties over. Not something you'd expect a pretty blond to be doing for a living. But she is, and she's apparently very good at it--good enough that the Thin Blue Line has been in evidence 24 hours a day outside her room since her surgery.
See, when a cop gets hurt in the line of duty, it's a tradition for the other cops to sit outside his or her room, one at a time, all day and all night long. I don't know if they run errands or just sit and eat sandwiches and read the paper, but I've seen them in every case where a cop has ended up at our hospital.
It's more unusual for cops to pull their vigil when one of their own gets hurt, or gets sick, outside the line of duty, but that's what these guys and women are doing. On their own time, they come and occupy a chair outside her room. Inside, there's a party going on--somebody brings in grinders and a sixer of beer, and shares everything with the nurse ('cept the beer, of course; it wouldn't do to drink on duty) and we all have a nice time.
Three rooms down is a gangbanger. He got part of the top of his head taken clean off by a bullet about a week ago. He's beginning to come around now, but he's going to have problems with speech and spatial relations for the rest of his life. His room is quieter. When his mom or aunties show up, there's a lot of talk but not much laughter. Sometimes, they pray.
And outside his room, on a chair, down the hall from the cop, is one of his buddies. Every hour around the clock, in shifts, they come to sit and keep vigil in the same way the cops do.
The khaki shirts and brown pants clash a little with the tattoos and blue bandannas, but we're all getting used to it. Grinders and beer in one room, wings and Pibb in the other. They'll all get along fine as long as they're here.
I asked one kid who showed up for the night shift why he was giving up his time to sit in the hallway in the hospital. "Respect." he said. "Loyalty."
She's the head of the SWAT team for the town two counties over. Not something you'd expect a pretty blond to be doing for a living. But she is, and she's apparently very good at it--good enough that the Thin Blue Line has been in evidence 24 hours a day outside her room since her surgery.
See, when a cop gets hurt in the line of duty, it's a tradition for the other cops to sit outside his or her room, one at a time, all day and all night long. I don't know if they run errands or just sit and eat sandwiches and read the paper, but I've seen them in every case where a cop has ended up at our hospital.
It's more unusual for cops to pull their vigil when one of their own gets hurt, or gets sick, outside the line of duty, but that's what these guys and women are doing. On their own time, they come and occupy a chair outside her room. Inside, there's a party going on--somebody brings in grinders and a sixer of beer, and shares everything with the nurse ('cept the beer, of course; it wouldn't do to drink on duty) and we all have a nice time.
Three rooms down is a gangbanger. He got part of the top of his head taken clean off by a bullet about a week ago. He's beginning to come around now, but he's going to have problems with speech and spatial relations for the rest of his life. His room is quieter. When his mom or aunties show up, there's a lot of talk but not much laughter. Sometimes, they pray.
And outside his room, on a chair, down the hall from the cop, is one of his buddies. Every hour around the clock, in shifts, they come to sit and keep vigil in the same way the cops do.
The khaki shirts and brown pants clash a little with the tattoos and blue bandannas, but we're all getting used to it. Grinders and beer in one room, wings and Pibb in the other. They'll all get along fine as long as they're here.
I asked one kid who showed up for the night shift why he was giving up his time to sit in the hallway in the hospital. "Respect." he said. "Loyalty."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
