Today, Gabrielle and I went out to do a bit of shopping. We headed off to Super Target. I had gotten a Target gift card from our Investment broker for my birthday. We found a nice pair of work shoes for Gabrielle to replace the ones she has been altering to keep in a usable fashion as they breakdown. We found a cute one egg fry pan. And then we also got some coffee beans and a couple of candles to replace the living room pillars.

From there we headed to the Scrub store but they were closed. By that time, I needed gas…ok…I know I’m not the only one complaining about gas but come on…it cost $30 for one half a tank…OUCH!

We then headed to Menards to get some ideas on finishing off the laundry room which is about three quarters of the was done. So much to be done on the house…sigh. We started getting a bit snarky and decided we needed to eat lunch and stopped at a Greek-a-teria in Glendale Heights that we hadn’t been to in a long time. After lunch I realized why we hadn’t gone back…things didn’t settle well.

From there we went to Office max to pick up a couple of stationary things. Then headed across the street to Pier One, but didn’t end up buying anything there. We walked a couple of stores down to the Avenue and found a bunch of nice work clothes for Gabrielle. A quick walk through of Michael’s Craft store and we headed home.

Since then, I’ve been trying to get the damn printer to work but I’ve had no luck…I think it is quickly becoming Big F*$#ing Hammer time.  A few loads of laundry and I’ll be heading to bed. Nite all

TTFN

HURRAY IT’S MY BIRTHDAY !!!!!!!!

Today Gabrielle flew back for North Carolina after a short visit with her mom. Of course, as with every return flight she was delayed. I swear it is a curse with her and planes, but if that is the worse thing she ever has to bear with the airline industry she is doing well. After checking her flight status I finally decided it was time to go to O’hare to get her. Well, as most of you know it was pouring with rain and as I got to close to Mannheim Road on Irviing Park Road I saw construction and no cars moving. OH Great! I thought to myself construction in this weather what will they think of next…I couldn’t have been more wrong. One of the drainage ditches for the runway across the street was flooded over and Irving Park Road had a nice 300 foot across 4 foot deep river running across it. The traffic had no choice but to cross it. We had no way to get across the median to get to the westbound side of traffic. So I’m thinking this was my titanic moment. Everyone knows my dislike of large bodies of water and that I don’t know how to swim and now I’m faced with crossing this river in my Saturn Mid-sized SUV, as I gaze upon the stranded cars in the water. Having very few options, I put the truck into second gear and slow entered the water. The truck was being pushed to the side by the current. Steam was rising off the hood of the car as I drove into deeper water. The water level reached the top of the engine hood. Fortunately I made it through and lucky enough as I drove up to the United Airlines terminal, Gabrielle has just gotten outside and didn’t have to wait very long.

After all that we headed off to Elgin for Bob and Jen’s after wedding celebration party. Now, I couldn’t go back the same way because of the flooding and as I exited O’hare several other options were closed due to flooding as well…sheesh…so for a short while we ended up going the wrong way. Actually, we ended up heading toward Wisconsin for a short while until we could find a place to turn around. It all ended well though, there was a lot of flooding though and many accidents. When we got to Juli’s (where the party was held) we had a great time. Food was good and it is always good to see our friends and after some laughs and cheer we headed home to the cats.

I got some great birthday cards, so THANK YOU everyone for your lovely thoughts.

TTFN

Today at work was crazy. Not in that it was super busy but in the type of patients I had. My first patient was this nice little old Spanish lady who is on peritoneal dialysis, she is the sweetest thing. She came to the ICU because her blood pressures had dropped dangerously low not too mention that she has had this powerful cough for three weeks. So powerful in fact, that she managed to break two ribs just from the coughing. This lady was a treat to take care of, pleasant, few medications, and respectful of the call light. At the beginning of the shift I was told I was getting an admission…sigh…”ok so what am I getting?” I asked. ER patient, 21year old female overdosed on Advil and Motrin after drinking about 10 beers and a bottle of wine because she got into a fight with her lesbian partner about who should get their haircut first. So obviously a nutter and on suicide precautions. Well to add to the challenge, my other patient is a 50 year old drunk who is going through the DT’s who came to the ER because his roommate kicked him out and because of that, wanted to kill himself….argh….another suicide precaution patient. Ok, so I’m whining a bit, however, the suicide precaution patients where four rooms apart. It was nuts trying to keep an eye on these two rooms. Thank God for “Captian Ativan” and his sidekick “Vitamin H” as we inappropriately call them in the nursing trade.

All in all it wasn’t a bad day, but it got busy because of how much help I had to give Karina, Betsy and Kim. They had bad patients. Betsy and Karina’s patient had a strangulated hernia repair and was in the poor me, oh god take me now mood. and Kim’s patient is also another detox who fell out the bed and then crapped all over the floor….sigh….why did I become a nurse again.

So although the day wasn’t too busy task wise, the patients were demanding and frustrating and presented a significant challenge in keeping them safe today.

oh well more later….and fyi tomarrow is my BIRTHDAY!!!! Yippee

TTFN

It has been awhile since I have updated the blog as you can plainly see. Life got really busy very quickly. Where to start. Well, first of all I had not intended to work Bristol this year but when our friends at Hearthstone Pottery put the word out for help, I figured this was a good way to get into faire to spend time with Gabrielle who still works for Camelot Enterprises (she is even pictured on the homepage), the feather store. You see our friend Mike, who with his wife co-owns Hearthstone with his sister Suanna and her husband, had a liver transplant this year. Due to the obvious, Mike has not been able to  work faire…and NOR SHOULD HE (iffen he’s reading this) and so the shop is down two sales people when there is normally four. It was great fun working with Rich and Suanna and they really seemed to like me helping out in the shop, so much so they have asked me back next year. I’m 99%  that I’ll be working the shop again. I was able to do some great silly stuff to sell the pottery. Everything from wearing a huge flower pot on my head and striking it to make it tone to using vases and mugs as “personal voice amplification systems” as I would hawk them, usually out voicing the candied nut seller at the top of the hill (heheheh). I was pretty proud of my selling ability. I actually sold my personal mugs that I had been using to even selling goblets to the security guards as they were walking people out of the faire and the end of the day. Of course, helping out with Wisdoms and Douglas’s was awesome but it is always fun to play with patrons. With the help of John Wohlers we set up multiple skits with the Sheriff of Bristol, who would sometimes come to the storefront and collect taxes…of course being the peasants we are we have no money and so he would take our pottery in trade and then because he is the evil sheriff he would smash the pottery in the storefront (they were already damaged pieces). The look on patrons faces were priceless, it is a great skit. The best parts were when the sheriff place a mug on the ground and he hit it with his staff and it only crushed out a dent…remember this is ceramic. He had to hit it several times in order to break it…a great testimonial to the durability of the wares. Another time the Sheriff threw a mug on the ground and it just bounced again the look on the faces of those watching was great. All in all a great season. Some of the best times is were of course at dinner after faire. One night a bunch of us got together for dinner and ended up singing and generally causing mayhem for the waiter who took it all with a great attitude. The night even spawned a new song, “What Do You Do With A Drunken Santa” a spin off of, “What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor.” We ended up with like 15 verses of which are in John Wohlers phone…a great night…a great season.
Other than faire, I was talked into joining three housewide committees at work so I am now on the Safety, Disaster, and Emergency Preparedness committees. I don’t mind but getting to the meetings can be difficult since I still have my regular RN duties and usually three patients. Work is going well, I am still learning a lot and in the next couple of weeks I start my Critical Care Classes which will cover hemodynamic monitoring, ICU pharmacology and Advanced Cardiac Support. I will also be taking an advanced cardiac life support class, which will be nice. Furthermore, I’ve been asked if I will goto a Bariatric Patient training class and then be the ICU trainer for that patient population. Life is busy, but at least the resume is filling out

Lately, I have been helping out Gabrielle’s grandmother, Vivian by taking her to the doctors and then relaying what the doctors said at the appointment to the rest of the family. At her last appointment the doctor has a med student that came in first. After some talking, the med student and the doctor both said I should goto med school. Sigh…I just finished nursing school but that thought has been in the back of my head for a long time. Maybe after some good ICU experience I’ll consider going back for a MD or DO, but I dunno we’ll see.

Well time for bed, TTFN

Today was busy. Poor Hermes was sick today and was throwing up all over the place for cat and has an issue with diarrhea. So there was much cleaning up today. After cleaning up kitty puke and the litter boxes, I headed off to work because I had to get my annual tuberculosis test read and documented so I could keep working. I then headed off to Gabi’s office to see her and to see if they needed any help. My assignment when I got there was to find a shredding company to come and destroy a 10×10 foot locker of old tax documents. I figured I could do that at home so I headed out. I picked up lunch and then went grocery shopping for dinner. When I got home I cleaned up more kitty puke and hopped online to search shredding companies…sheesh…some of the people working at these companies are, to say the least, on the shallow end of the gene pool. I then tackled cleaning the bathrooms with a vengeance and they are almost respectable. I finished moping and scrubbing just in time to start dinner. I made batter dipped cod fillets with a spinach salad topped with mushrooms, bacon, blue cheese and tomatoes…mmmm. Gabi and I watched a little of one of our favorite britcoms As Time Goes By and then headed to the office to do some work. I needed to work on Sue Mac’s crest picture and thats starting to take shape. And no to bed. Sorry if this read like a laundry list but it has been a busy day and its time for bed cuz 4:30am comes soon…nite all.

Gabrielle and I finally got a chance to catch up and spend some awesome time with Bridget. We ended up going to Red Lobster for yummies and to my amazement I could not finish my plate. It must be a sign of the coming apocalypse. Gabi had her traditional Alaska king crab legs (it’s always fun to watch her eat those — it makes for great amusement), I had an assortment of shrimp and Bridget had shrimp linguine with crab legs. It was a gastronomic delight, well ok its was better than Ramen noodles which has been the mainstay of our diet lately. It was fun catching up and Bridget is planning on joining us when we go see Wicked downtown with Dani and Spencer (hurray party time).

After dinner we went over to Straford Square Mall and saw Wall-E at the theater there. We like going there, it’s brand new, comfy seats, a nice set up overall except for the screaming teenagers. Wall-E was freakin awesome, I highly suggest you go see it. Oh and look carefully for the well hidden commentary on the direction of our society (sarcasm alert)…but it’s a true commentary on our society.

All in all, a great day with Gabi and Bridget…much fun…ta

Went to work this morning and was pleasently surpised as we had four nurses in the unit today, which meant I only had to take two patients. That’s something that hasn’t happenend in months…yippee. For the most part both of my patients were stable. Both Patients only spoke spanish, which made things difficult but I managed and it reinforced my need to take spanish classes…sigh more school. My first patient was a high speed motor vehicle crash who actually was on the regular med/surg floor but started develping abdominal pain, so the docs did an exploratory laparotomy and found some mesenteric tears along his belly. This patient was pretty stable, I ended up sending him back to the med/surg floor by the end of the shift after I pulled out his NG tube, Foley, and removed over 30 staples from his abdomen and taped the inscision with steri-strips. Oh by the way, did I mention this guy is a pimp. The guy 27 years old, who I might add is Fugly as sin, has like 20 girlfriends, who are also Fugly as sin, who apparently don’t know about each other. It was fun to watch this constant stream of visitors enter his room as he played off who the previous girl was. So anyway, this guy was pretty uneventful throughout the day.

My other patient however…sigh…a nice enough guy, has cancer and a lot of of it. No one is sure where his cancer started but tests show he now has cancer in his liver, adrenal glands, throughout both lungs and has now settled in his brain. This guy is most likely going to die and in a relatively short time frame and probably in an unpleasant way. So you might be saying to yourself, “well ok that’s said but people get cancer what’s so different about this patient.” What’s different is the family is lying to the patient and has forbade the hospital from telling him that he has cancer. There are a few rare execptions that this is ok, but this case does not fit any of them. So now I am in a HUGE ethical delemma. The patient is alert and oriented to person, place and time and is fully capable of comprehending the situation and able to make decisions for himself. As it was explained to me in shift report, the family doesn’t want him to become depressed! REALLY (stated with much sarcasm) are you freaking kidding me. This guy is dying, facing life altering events and decisions about quality of life and invasive, painful treatments and you don’t want to tell him he has cancer because he’ll get depressed…WHAT! But I digress, so I let my charge nurse know, who already knew and I told my manager, who again already knew and then I did something I never thought I’d have to do ever. Something they tell you about in nursing school but you kinda blow off as fluff…I called the Hospital Ethics Committee. I had to, for the sake of my patient and his right to truthful information about his condition. It will be interesting to see what happens with this over the next few days. So I kept him as comfortable as I could, and I was proud that I was able to wean his oxygen down. When I got him in the morning he was on 35 liters of high humidity oxygen at 0.40% …put simply that’s a lot of oxygen. I was able to wean him down to 8 liters on a high flow nasal cannula…huge difference.

Since my patients were pretty stable, I was able to help the other nurses in the unit. Poor Debbie had to goto MRI. Going to MRI is a pain the butt because an MRI can take hours throwing your whole day off majorly. So I watched her patients while she was off unit for which she was very thankful.

I was sitting at the nurses station trying to get some charting done when I noticed that one of Terraca’s (my charge nurse) patients SPO2 was at 88% (norm is >92%) and dropping with a good waveform on the monitor. I ran over and told Terraca what was happening. She kinda blew it off saying she was fine and that it wasn’t a true reading, but my gut and brain told me otherwise. So I left Terraca to deal with it. A few minutes passed and I saw Terraca calling for respiratory to come to the room stat, so I thought it a good thing to grab the code cart and intubation kit. Turns out this lady was really loosing her airway quickly. OH…did I mention this lady is truthfully 105 years old and a FULL CODE! What the hell is up with people today family lying to family, people over 100 years old and full codes geez. We fortunately were able to get her levels up with a CPAP machine instead of throwing a tube down into her lungs but come on people lets think about what’s going on here.

When Kim was at lunch, I was covering her patients, well one of the docs came by and said I think this patient has an abdominal infection I’ll be back in five minutes get me *insert list of medical supplies here* so I can culture what I find…thanks doc (sarcasm alert). I got what he needed and helped him open this guy’s belly and watched as the pus poured out….yum…we got our cultures and the doc left him open. No sense in closing him if its all infected.

All in all a good day in comparison to the norm.

In my unit at work, we have a social worker that helps our patients that are possibly going to need help at home when they are discharged from the hospital his name is Aaron Polski. Aaron is a drummer for a band called Dollhouse, a band that plays covers from the Ladies of Rock. So Aaron told me that his band was playing today at the Venice Tavern in Batavia, so Gabrielle and I went out there to check out the band. We got there early to have dinner. The Tavern doesn’t look like much when you first walk in but once inside there is a nice dinning room and buffet and most impressible is the large outdoor seating along the river. The band can play either inside or out and today they played outside, it was cool and breezy and best of all there is a second bar outside. There is a large area for the band to play. I was a bit worried at first because the Batavia feast was going on at the same time and their band was pretty powerful on the decibels (although they sounded like crap). In addition, the air had the smell of rain but It all worked out, by the time Dollhouse started playing the Batavia fest band was done and not a drop fell from the sky.

The only odd thing was as Gabrielle and I ate our pizza (which was very good, although the chili was all that great) while the band was setting up my department manager showed up with a bunch of friends. Not that its a bad thing that she was there, it was just a surprise. Then a bit later our waitress said hey a table of my other customers are your coworkers. So she pointed them out and sure enough two of the ICU nurses (Tabitha and Maribel) were there waving at us. At intermission we switched tables to join them, had a couple of drinks and had a great time. We should definately get a group together on a nice day, reserve one of the tables outside and listen to Dollhouse jam. I must admit they are really good…they rock. Click on the image below to goto their sample section.

later….keep rockin

CRAP !!!! … so the screen on my MDA is cracked and has made it pretty much unusable (visually). The touch screen still responds but its just a matter of time. Gabrielle and I we on our way to see Hell Boy 2 (which rocked) when it happened, so while in the mall we stopped off to get me a new phone…sigh. Of course, when I got to T-Mobile they no are no longer carrying the MDA line and have replaced it with the T-Mobile Wing. It’s still pretty packed with functions. There has been a lot of trade offs, some good, some bad, but overall it looks like it will fit the bill. The processor is apparently a bit sluggish with a large application load but I tend not to get to application crazy anyhow. I’ll have to see how I like it over the next few days. I’ll miss not having infrared transfer ability, but honestly I didn’t use it all that much anyway.

So this is the phone:

Here is a link if you want to see it in action: http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/t-mobile-wing/4505-6452_7-32452858.html

Oh well, more money I wasn’t planning on spending…sigh

Got up early today around 7:30ish, mostly because Gabrielle couldn’t stand the smell of the litter box anymore. I can’t say I blame her, I had been pretty lax about it but all is well now. Gabi and I ended up doing a bit of grocery shopping at Costco and Jewel for our usual staples and necessities. After shopping we had a bit of impromptu lunch, but not before we took a few minutes to clear out the fridge of items past their expiration date. It is amazing how easily it is to let things go without checking. Fortunately, I believe we have only had the plague twice this year…sheesh. After lunch, Gabi did some work on the computer while I set off to clear the closet of clothes that don’t fit and can be donated. I was proud of myself as I am a serious procrastinator and accumulator of everything. I managed to bag up about 15 nice dress shirts for donation. After that I spent most of the day fiddling on the computer and ended up making a new page for kiltedbehemoth.net. It is a link to a webpage that lists ideas for gifts. Around birthday time and Christmas I am invariably asked the simple question of “What would you like?”…..uhhh…and of course I can never remember so…here is my solution. I am going to keep a running list on a web page of items I would like. Some are feasible and down right reasonable, while others are well lets just say if you buy me the $16 Million dollar Bugatti prepare to be kissed by kiltedbehemoth like you’ve never been kissed by kiltedbehemoth before. So I have a list of a few things and there are supposed to pictures with them but for some reason they haven’t cycled onto the webpage. They are on the server, in the right folder, made public…I think maybe the servers just need some time to catch up to the changes. If they aren’t up tomorrow I’ll fiddle with things again. So I hope it looks ok…I’m still learning take a look at the site when you have a chance it is linked off the homepage but here is the direct link: http://kiltedbehemoth.net/karls_wishlist.html .

Ta for now as I have work in the morning.