Life Happens…..

As I’m sure many of you can agree, life has a way of happening so that everthing else falls to the wayside. No matter how well things might be planned, something in life will always find a way to change them. And so it happened to me.

A few months ago, I was having a typically hectic day at work, we were short handed as usual, when I received one of those phone calls you hope to never get. It was a call from my brother at another hospital letting me know that my Mother had had a heart attack.

My Mother is unfortunately one of those old fashioned, stuborn types, that refuses to go to the doctor or follow dietary instructions (she’s a diabetic) because she knows best. So, upon my arrival to the hospital a short time later, she was insisting she was fine and wanted to go home. It didn’t matter that the Doctor stated the type of heart attack she had will continue to reoccur if the originating problem was not resolved, she wanted to go home. 

Between the Doctor, my brother and I, we managed to talk her into having a  heart cath done to determine what was causing her attacks. She wasn’t able to have this done for a couple of days, and was required to stay in the ICU in the meantime. This was accomplished through much cajoling and bullying.  Upon completion of the heart cath, we found out that she had an 80% or greater blockage in 6, I repeat 6, of her vessels. She was going to have to have by-pass surgery.   The next problem that had to be tackled prior to surgery, was Mom’s blood sugar levels. As a diabetic, that ignores her diet, takes her diabetes pills when she feels like it, and in general seems to be in denial after 7+ years of having diabetes, her glucose levels were quite out of control. For those unfamiliar with normal levels, a blood sugar should be between about 70-120 when fasting. Hers was 585!

So…. one week later, with blood sugars around 180, she was able to have surgery. Due to her lack of care for herself, eating what she wanted, she also had plaque build-up in her leg vessels – the ones they needed to harvest to do the bypass surgery. Due to her condition, they were unable to do all of the needed vessels, although she did have quadruple bypass.

She remained in the hospital before and after surgery for about two and a half weeks. During this time, the care of my Grandmother fell to me. She is 89 years old and very set in her ways. Once my Mom was discharged from the hospital, I needed to assist with both of their care. My brother, while helpful in preparing meals and such, still needed instruction on what he was allowed to cook for them to meet Mom’s new diet restrictions.

Working in a Recovery Room is a full time position, not including call for emergencies. I also have a husband and two children. Needless to say, life became very hectic. Getting up early, making sure my children got off to school ok, checking on Mom and Grandma, and still making it to work on time. Then home, supper, homework, settling the kids in for the night and taking care of all those little things at home like clothes and such, and still finding some time to check on Mom and Grandma. Weekends became packed with shopping for two households, and catching up all the household chores that weren’t getting done during the week. Then there were the bills…….bills for two households. My Mother no longer had an income, wouldn’t for several months, and while my Grandmother still had her retirement, it was not enough.

I have finally reached a point where I can take a breather, and actually have a few minutes to myself. While I don’t regret caring for them in any way, it is nice to be able to relax a little bit, before diving in to the rush and bustle of Christmas.

How small are you?

Ever think about how small our world is? Or where we fit into the grand scheme of things?

My husband came across a site that proved just that, showing our earth and moon compared to other planets in our solar system. It went on to compare our sun to several of the closest stars to us. While very informative and interesting, it makes you realize just how small we are.

http://naurunappula.com/hotlink.php?/nn/0/162/165/353424.jpg

Easter Break

Raw Easter egg toss

I hope everyone had a good Easter. The weather was very pleasant on Friday and Saturday, but got a little cool and rainy Sunday. Thankfully, most of the activities my family and I participated in were on Saturday.

Of course, as pleasant spring days go that are spent outside, I now look like a lobster. Ouch!

Our youngest participated in the usual running around playing tag, and traditional Easter egg hunt with the other kids.

Although, I must say the most memorable moment was when our oldest son, Timothy (17) decided to participate in the raw egg toss. To his horror, the moment will forever be immortalize in pictures and on the web. HeeHee. Hope you enjoy.

Raw Easter egg toss

The Confusion of Family

OK, a little background first: my Mother-in-Law lives with us due to her health, so usually, as any offspring would do, my husband greets his Mom, talks with her a little, asks how she did today, etc. She is unable to work because of her health, but to help us out, she gets our youngest child off the school bus (first grade). When we get in from work, both of our sons are already home.

My family and I went out to eat this evening. During dinner, my husband and I were discussing various things that had happened during our work day, talked about how his Mom was doing, the usual stuff.

Suddenly my son says to his Dad, “When can I meet your Mom? I’ve never met her before.”

Not sure I heard correctly, I ask him to repeat what he had just said. Sure enough, he was asking to meet my husband’s Mother. Through stifled giggles, I explain to him the woman that lives with us that he has been calling Maw Maw for the last 7 years IS his Dad’s Mom.

He wore a total look of shock and confusion for the next 10 minutes.

Just goes to show, the stuff you think children pay attention to and understand said right in front of them, half the time they don’t. The stuff you don’t want them to hear, they catch you say at a whisper from 100 yards away!

Working on a new book

OK, I’m working on a new book and am looking for opinions. Below is the blurb that would appear on the back of the book. Would you consider reading it?

 She’s on a mission to save the world and her own from the enemy.

Susan is a detective.  Strategic government officials and people in authority are dying, replaced by corrupt and evil incarnations from her world. Time is of the essence. Can she stop the rampaging evil before it’s too late to save Earth from a war destined to destroy their worlds?

 

He’s trying to come to terms with a much older girlfriend from another world.

Daniel suddenly finds himself drawn into Susan’s perilous adventure, threatening everything he holds dear. But he must fight his own demons – a girlfriend not of  earth and hundreds of years old — an evil entity maneuvering his pawns into key positions to dominate Earth.

  What does the future hold? Can Susan and Daniel defeat this evil and find an everlasting love?

What do you mean the TV won’t work without power?

I find myself reading more and more these days. It doesn’t seem to matter when either: at work on break, before bed, in the tub, and anywhere else I can find a few free minutes. Especially in the evenings while everyone else is busy watching TV. I can’t begin to say how much money I have spent with Amazon or other book stores in the last few months. I just can’t seem to get enough.

I keep trying to encourage my children to read as well, but they would of course prefer to play video games or watch TV. Well, to my seven year old’s great dismay, and much argument, he found out that they won’t work without the electricity….

 As tends to happen during the spring, the news issued a severe thunderstorm warning complete with tornado watch, high winds, and possible hail. A short time later, the storm hit and we lost power. This in itself is bad enough considering it was evening and my son is afraid of the dark, at least the pitch black kind you find at night without power. Except of course it got worse, for both my son and myself…. Picture this a couple of minutes after the power goes off ….

Family gathered in the living room with candles scattered about the room giving it a soft, but dim light. My oldest son (17) attempting to finish up some Algebra homework with a candle sitting on the coffee table next to his papers, my husband and I just sitting down after lighting candles and calling (on the cell since the cordless isn’t working) to report the outage. Meanwhile, my youngest son (7) has been sitting on the couch, clinging to the flashlight, watching us light the candles. As each new candle is lit, the expression on his face becomes more relaxed. After a couple of minutes pass, he asks to watch a movie. We tell him the TV won’t work without the electricity. He sits there, contemplating this idea quietly for a minute (he is ADHD, so with him quiet is amazing to see). He then asks to play a game on the computer. We again tell him it won’t work without electricity. Then, this look of total confusion crosses his face… He sits frowning, staring from the TV to the computer and back again.

Finally saying “but Momma, my Gameboy works just fine with the power out cause it has batteries. Just put some batteries in the TV.”

Again we tried to explain that the TV won’t work and that it doesn’t take batteries, that only little things took batteries. He thinks about this new information for a couple of minutes then replied ” big stuff does too take batteries. Daddy just put a new battery in the car and you use it all the time.”

My husband and I looked at each other in surprise of his thought process, stumped as to how to explain the difference. By this time, only about 20-30 minutes had passed. Thankfully the power came back on at that moment and we were saved from trying to further battle the logic of a 7 year old!

Recovery Room disappointment

Hello everyone,

If you happen to have read my post yesterday, you know that my co-workers and I were looking forward to tomorrow due to the 3 month rotation of doctors changing on April 1. Well, we were met with true disappointment today.

First, as has happened of late, Heidi, the on-call nurse yesterday was kept out until 6am this morning for several different orthopedic cases and one, I repeat one general surgery case. Needless to say, she went home to sleep instead of working her 8-4:30 shift. This of course left us short-handed today, but it was something that we have come to expect, so no big deal. Especially since we say today as an end to this madness.

Unfortunately we were told differently today.  All of the surgical teams (Ent, General Surg., Oral surg., etc.) change out to the new team tomorrow. All of them except orthopedics! We were told that they decided since 4/1 falls in the middle of the week, they are going to finish out the week instead.

Imagine our reaction to this. Don’t get me wrong, they are all good doctors and if I ever needed an ortho doctor, wouldn’t hesitate to use any of them. I just wish they would prefer to work daylight hours. Well, at least it’s only 3 more days.

A day in the life of a Recovery Room Nurse

For anyone unfamiliar with me, I am a Recovery Room Nurse at a local charity/teaching hospital.  While I love my job, it can be a bit annoying at times. Because it is a teaching hospital, the surgeries tend to take a little longer than you would have at a regular hospital. Our doctors / interns/ residents change out every three months which is due to happen April 1. As a whole, our group in recovery is looking forward to this day. Let me explain why.

Orthopedics (bone doctors) tend to take two hours or more (stress the more) as a general rule. In most instances, this type of surgery is not considered as an emergency, so potentially can be bumped by any type of surgery considered an emergency (for example: general surgery needing to remove an appendix before it ruptures).  While we like the current group of doctors on a personal level, when they get bumped, usually they decide to do the surgery anyway later that evening. Because you must have a recovery room nurse to “recover” a patient after surgery, usually the “on call” person must come back to care for the patient. Which would be fine, and understandable, if this were an occasional thing. But of late it has become routine. This is where the annoyance comes in. If the call person is recovering patients through most of the night, which is usually the case, they are must take off the next day due to the little need called sleep. This causes our department to be short a nurse, making things more difficult for us as a whole.

While we obviously all love our jobs, or wouldn’t be working where we are, it gets rather old, when you constantly are having to work night hours and miss a whole day of work due to this. The option for the doctors would be to perform the surgery the following day on a normal schedule when all of the crews are there instead of having to call out all of the needed people to perform surgery (OR nurse, anesthesia, surgery tech, recovery room nurse, scrub tech etc.).

OK, maybe I’m ranting a bit, but after three months of having to eat up my vacation time because I worked all night could get under anyone’s skin. And unfortunately, the way our payroll is set up, we have no choice in the matter if our normal scheduled 40 hours are not worked. Even if I end up with say, 60 hours, if only 32 of those are my regular hours, and the rest are ”on call” hours, I get 8 hours of my vacation time taken to fill the gap.

Hello world!

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog. I decided first to tell you a little bit about myself and my interests and then take things from there. I hope you find later posts both interesting and informative.

Nicolete

HeartLa RWA Meeting

I went to my second HeartLa meeting today and found it to be very informative.  There was discussion to finalize details for  the Readers Luncheon on October 3, 2009 and the upcoming writers’ contest. 

There was a guest speaker named Toni McGee Causey. She spoke of changes happening in the writing industry as well as her upcoming books. Several pointers she gave were on the business side of being published as well as ways to “get your name out there”.  But the thing she said that sticks the most in my mind was about how to react to a rejection letter received from a publisher.

“No is not an option, it’s just an obstacle.”

She went on to elaborate on how if you truly wished to be published, keep trying. Though you may have a very good book, if it doesn’t fit the category the publisher happens to be looking for at the present time, it will be rejected. Try again, and again, and again, until you succeed. 

I found her to be very motivational. She went on to recommend several different web sites to obtain information for the up and coming writer.