Blast From the Past

Every Tuesday I try to get to work a little early so I can have a chat with my favorite teacher from high school, who is now retired from teaching, but works a couple of evenings a week at the information desk at the hospital. He is the kind of guy who really makes an impression on you, whether you are one of his previous high school students, or a family member of a patient at the hospital, just trying to find out the right room number. He's jolly and feisty, always cracking a joke, always wearing a kind smile, and always telling one of his funny little anecdotes. I am sure that I am not the only one of his previous students who makes a point to swing by for a chat. As it turns out, my thinking is absolutely correct.

When I went to visit him last Tuesday, there were two other people already in front of one side of the desk. I went to the other side to wait for their conversation to finish, thinking that he was probably giving out a room number and would be done shortly. He noticed me and said, "Well here's yet another Lakeside person!" I looked over at the other two people and smiled, thinking to myself, "Do I know them?" The younger of the two, stared right at me, waiting for me to recognize her. I had nothing. Finally, after an awkward moment or two, she said her name.

As soon as she said who she was, I absolutely recognized her. But wow, if I had passed her on the street, I never would have known it. She looked different, way different. In high school, this girl was like a stick....skin and bones. And now, I'll just say, she takes up much more room (like 3 times more).

I have actually seen her a couple of times in passing since our high school graduation, and I remember that she had gained some weight in college, but it seems like she's gained even more since then. What in the heck happened? She was very athletic in high school, and always had a ton of energy. It just doesn't seem like her to have gained so much weight. The only thing I can think is that maybe she ended up with some kind of medical condition that made her gain so much. I mean, this was way more than your average freshman fifteen.

My first reaction is much along the lines of high school maturity: "Haha! You're fat now and I'm not! I can still fit into my high school clothes and you can't! Haha!" You see, this girl was not only skinny and athletic in high school, but she was one of the most popular girls in our class. She was one of the people that I tried so hard to impress and fit in with back then. Isn't this what she deserves for not giving shy, awkward, and uncool people like me the time of day?

Well whatever she has gone through in the past 9 years, doesn't look like it has been fun. And for that, I say, shame on myself for thinking evil thoughts. I could tell that she felt awkward and uncomfortable, because I am sure she is very aware that she looks very different than she did when we graduated. But I must admit, it's hard for me not to be just a little smug.

Despite my initial reaction, deep down I do hope that she is happy, well, and has been able to follow through with her hopes and dreams for life. Nobody ever got anywhere by being happy for someone else's misfortunes.

I am Thankful For...

• my favie
• my family
  
• my friends
• snuggling
• comfy couches
• sleep, sleep, wonderful sleep
• funny movies
• delicious food, especially when my grandma makes it
  
• comfy clothes
• my apartment
• rain
• my bed
• jokes
• having a good job that pays the bills
• indoor plumbing
• showers
• pillows
• cute, furry animals
• my cat
• upcoming ski vacations
• mountains
• waterfalls
  
• toothbrushes and toothpaste
• snuggly couch blankies
• smiles and laughter
  
• flowers and trees
• sunshine
• beaches
• inside jokes
• road trips
• happy memories
• fires (in fireplaces)
• good music
• opportunities
• the hope for a happy future ahead
  

Middle of the Night Musings

It was a little over a year ago now that my Favie and I had just set out on an adventure to find whatever it was that we were searching for at the time. I'm not sure I knew what I was looking for then, nor do I necessarily know what it was now. I just knew that I wanted to experience life elsewhere: somewhere different, somewhere new, somewhere exciting. I wanted to be outside of my comfort zone, so that I could learn something about myself that I might not have known. And I wanted to grow as a person in whatever way that I could: intellectually, psychologically, and socially. I found all that and more during the seven months I lived in Boston, MA.

The time that I spent in Boston and the things that I learned about myself and the world around me, are now forever ingrained in the countless memories and musings that my mind happily revisits almost every day. What's interesting is now that we have returned to Atlanta, I seem to be experiencing this city in a whole new way.

As a 27 year old, I figure this is the 26th fall season I have lived in Georgia, and the 20th I have lived in Atlanta. And honestly, I really can't remember a time when the trees here have been more beautiful. It seems that going away for a year has really enabled me to appreciate the good things about Atlanta that I had ceased to notice after living here all my life.

Driving along the winding, tree-lined streets of my commute to Emory has really become something that I take great pleasure in. I'm sure in years past, I would have thought of the same drive to work as a necessary evil. But over the past couple of weeks, I've noticed the trees bursting forth with more color than I ever remember. It reminds me of the drives we took last fall in New England, discovering the place we would soon grow to love. And now, as I drive along on a clear day in Atlanta, I take in the brilliant hues of red, orange, and yellow, streaming along the road beside me. I then reminisce on my time in Boston, and I am warmed inside as I smile to myself, remembering the place that I will always think of fondly. Maybe I just needed to find the joy of something new and different, to rediscover what I could have found here all along.

Some People Call it Job Security

The past three nights (Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday) at work have been extremely busy. Sunday started off pretty laid back, but the night became much busier after I admitted a patient around midnight. And from there, each night of work has increased in intensity, culminating with by far the most intense night I've had so far on my current unit.

What am I trying to say? I guess just that I seriously worked my ass off last night and I am still totally exhausted to the max. It took me until about 10:30 this morning to wind down from it all and then I was literally physically and mentally unable to peel myself from my comfy bed until about 6pm. Uggh. I feel like every joint, bone, and muscle in my body, and not to mention my brain, have been reduced to a pile of half-melted jello. I feel weak like I have the flu, but I don't have any other symptoms. This is what night shift, especially a busy night shift, does to you. (And by busy night shift I mean, 12+ hours on your feet and a dinner break that is reduced to chugging orange juice and scarfing down a few graham crackers only because you are a shaking nervous wreck that can't think clearly due to a low blood sugar.)

Last night I took care of a 34 year old patient with spina bifida who came in with a severe blood infection on Monday. She is also a dialysis patient, and she developed this really bad infection from her permanent dialysis catheter. Apparently, she wasn't feeling good on Friday and was acting "a little confused." Her mental status declined over the weekend to the point of unresponsiveness Monday morning. However, she was not brought to the hospital by her mother until that evening. What?! Excuse me? Your daughter was not responding to you at all on Monday morning and you still waited until the evening to bring her in? Your daughter, who has a history of seizures and brain swelling, was unresponsive and you didn't bring her in right away? Anyone else think this is weird??

Anyway, this poor woman, who is apparently at her mother's mercy, was very very sick when I was taking care of her on Tuesday night. So sick that she almost stopped breathing before the "let's wait and see how she does" ICU resident finally decided that we could put her on the ventilator. But that was only after I called her 3 times in a 2 hour period to let her know that her patient's fingers were blue and that her breathing was agonal (breathing the way someone does just before they stop breathing.)

I'll spare you of all the details of everything that went on overnight, but basically, I've been reduced to a pile of sludge thanks to this idiot lady who wouldn't just bring her daughter to the hospital when she first noticed that she wasn't acting right. She even admitted that she noticed the green drainage coming from around her daughter's dialysis catheter. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out something should probably be done about that. I guess she was too busy with more important matters, like taking her half-conscious daughter to have her 2 inch fake nails done. And guess what the mother said after I brought her back in the room and explained about the tubes we had to put in her daughter to keep her alive? "Can I have a blanket?" And without another word, or a hint of concern, she went back out to the waiting room to sleep.

Here's yer sign.

Poor Li'l Punkin

My cute Halloween pumpkin, just after I carved it:

After sitting on the counter all day next to the slow cooker:

I guess the humidity got to him :(

I See Dead People

Most people who decide to go into nursing don't really know what they're getting into until it's too late (me included). A perfect example being from my previous post, in that part of my job includes cleaning up incontinent patients. Being an ICU nurse, it just kind of comes with the territory I guess.

Another part of working in the ICU that a lot of people might not always think about, is that because our patients are so sick, even when we do everything we possibly can to save someone, sometimes they just don't make it. Between the ICU and the ER, those are probably the two areas of the hospital where patients end up dying the most often, just because that is where the sickest patients are.

Every ICU nurse remembers their first patient death. Although my first patient death was probably five years ago, I still remember it as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. Unfortunately, death is part of life, and it is something that all ICU nurses have to learn to deal with when it comes up as often as it does in our job.

So last week one of the patients on our unit ended up passing away around 9pm that evening. It was a particularly unfortunate case, as she was a 19 year old female with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia that had gone into blast crisis. She had apparently not been feeling well for awhile, and had been putting off going to see the doctor, probably because she wanted to be with her 1 year old child a few days longer. Because she wasn't my patient, I'm not sure of all of the details of her arrival to the hospital, but I think she may have collapsed at home, and finally been brought in by ambulance. By that point in time, her disease process was so advanced, there wasn't much we could do for her, except give her pain medicine and sedatives, and keep her alive on the ventilator until all of her family gathered together to say goodbye. Once she was taken off of the ventilator, it wasn't long before her body gave out and her heart stopped beating. After she passed away, we then allowed her family to stay in her room with her for awhile, saying their last few prayers and beginning their grieving process.

Once the family was gone, it was then our job to take care of her body. No matter how many times I have done it in the past, I'm not sure I will ever feel totally comfortable being in the same physical space with a dead body. It's just plain eerie. I always have to make sure that there is either someone else in the room with me, or I leave the door as wide open as possible, so I can at least see or hear someone else. Otherwise, I will start imagining things like seeing an arm twitch out of the corner of my eye, or that the body will just all of sudden wake up and grab me. Yes, I know this is irrational, but I have a really vivid imagination that gets a little carried away when it comes to scary stuff. (And that is why I've stopped seeing horror movies.)

When I walked in the room to help the patient's nurse prepare her body for the morgue, she had been dead for several hours. She was definitely the youngest dead person I have ever seen. I was immediately taken aback by her childlike features and her small, frail body. Her entire body was a dark grayish shade of blue, darker around the lips and nails. It was difficult not to look at her face, studying her little button nose speckled with freckles and her perfectly still purplish-blue lips. I could tell that she had been through numerous chemo treatments in the past, as her hair was growing back out, all spiky and wild looking. I wondered what she was like when she was alive and well: bubbly and fun-loving or more quiet and intense?

During postmortem care, it is our job to take out all of the tubes and IV's that we had once stuck in her to help keep her alive. We also have to stick an identification tag on her toe, called a "toe tag," to make sure that her body can be properly identified by the funeral home when they come to retrieve her. Finally, after we place her in a body bag, she is ready to go to the morgue.

At every other hospital I've worked at, they have a patient transport team, whose job it is to take patients around the hospital, whether they are transferring to another room, going to a diagnostic test, or going to the morgue. At Emory, the transporters don't work at night, so the nurses get to do it. So I was the lucky one that got to help take the body down to the morgue. Oddly enough, in this hospital, the morgue was located right next to the cafeteria. Gives you a whole new meaning to "mystery meat," doesn't it?

So there I was, a week before Halloween, going to the hospital morgue in the middle of the night with a dead body. It actually was nowhere near as scary as I imagined it. It wasn't anything like you might see in the movies, where there are rows upon rows of metal drawers that the bodies lie in and some weird, creepy mad scientist looking dude guarding them. Actually, it was a small, very unassuming looking room. We entered the room through a set of wooden double doors. To my right was a row of five or six small metal doors, just big enough to slide an entire stretcher with the body on it into what basically amounted to a large refrigerator. In front of me was another set of wooden double doors, which I can only assume led into the room where autopsies were performed. I made sure to stay as far away as possible from those doors and as close as possible to the first set of doors I came through, just in case I needed to make a hasty exit. And finally, to my left was a couple of filing cabinets and a small desk with a computer on it. I really would hate to be the person that would have to sit at that desk all day.

So once we got to the morgue, we had to wait until a security guard came to open the locked double doors for us. We brought the stretcher in and slid it inside one of the empty compartments. And then we "signed the patient in" by filling out a little form on the clipboard hanging above the metal doors to the compartments. The funeral home would then pick her body up the next day.

And that was all there was to it. I went to the morgue and came back to tell the tale with not even one dead person jumping out and grabbing me. I survived, but hopefully this won't become a regular task at work. I'm about 99% sure that no matter how many times I end up at the morgue out of necessity, it will never be a place that I will look forward to visiting.