My Big Brother

My big brother passed away early this morning from a massive stroke. I can't believe that I will never see him again.

He is survived by his wife, five step-children, our parents, brother and assorted dogs, cats, a squirrel and large reptile things. He loved air planes, Porches and travel. He served in the Air Force, was an L.A.P.D. officer and later a flight engineer.

Diabetes robbed him of his sight a few years ago. He was still tall and handsome, though, and managed to meet and marry an angel, despite his blindness. I will always be grateful to his lovely wife for taking caring of him these past difficult years.

Recently, he had become dependent upon dialysis to keep him alive. His health was steadily getting worse. On top of everything else, my brother had just been diagnosed with a tumor requiring major surgery. The stroke occurred first and was perhaps a blessing. He didn't suffer. As a nurse, I've seen some bad, agonizing deaths. My brother was fortunate. He slipped into a coma and peacefully passed away.

My sweet Golden Retriever, Kelsey, who died a few months ago, was crazy about my brother. I imagine Kelsey greeting my brother with sloppy, wet kisses and leading him to a better place. Please let it be so.

Gas Woes

All of my time spent blogging hasn't been wasted, it turns out. I have become really good at cutting and pasting. I had to. Who wants to type all of the stuff that is stolen borrowed from other places? On the second day of my computer class, we had to cut and paste to construct documents. I was the only one who could do it.

The young nurses are more profient with computers, but obviously, they don't blog. After the first bad day at computer class, my damaged self-esteem got a much need boost.

On a side note, the traffic has changed from the last time I had to drive in rush hour traffic. The 25 mile drive should have taken between 60 and 90 minutes. Both days, it took about 25 minutes. Either half the population of Los Angeles decided to go on vacation at the same time or the gas prices have taken people off the roads.

I'm paying $4.87 a gallon for gas now. The last time I bought gas, it cost $72 to fill up the tank and I have a small car. My gas station has taken down its big price signs which could be read from a block away and replaced them with one small, discreet, sign. Next, they may take the sign away entirely and just say that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.

There is no way for me to get to work other than drive, but I have made some other changes. I no longer drive twenty miles just for a Pink Berry. Costco's frozen yogurt isn't as good, but it is much closer to my house and a fraction of the cost.

I'm also driving slower and avoiding quick accelerations. Driving isn't nearly as much fun, but I also don't have to keep an eye out for the cops any longer. Are you doing anything special to deal with the high gas prices?

Paperless

My electric toothbrush stays on for a predetermined amount of time, about two minutes, I think. So, I was brushing my teeth and sat down to watch TV to entertain myself. It seemed like way more than two minutes went by.

I got up, walked into the bathroom and glanced in the mirror. I was brushing with an ordinary toothbrush. I am truly losing my mind.

It is with that kind of brain that I went to a computer class today. My hospital is going "paperless" next month, so we have to learn to do everything on the computer. Usually, I'm a fast learner, so it is hard for me to accept the role of the class dunce. And, I have to go back tomorrow for more punishment. I envy the nurses who were able to retire before all of this nonsense started.

I'm in that awkward age bracket, too old to be comfortable with computers and too young to retire. I've heard of doctors who say they are going to hire secretaries to help them with their computer entries. Too bad that is not an option for me. I'll get over it, but in the meantime, I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a few days.

The Quickie

While making my rounds, I stopped to chat with a patient. Suddenly, he smiled and asked, "Would you like a quickie? "

"Uhhh..." was my response.

While I stared at him with a frozen smile, he reached into a drawer, pulled out a canister and opened it. Inside were cookies. He hadn't offered a quickie, but a cookie. Happily, I took one and went back to the nurse's station, eager to tell my funny story.

No one laughed. None of my coworkers knew what a quickie was.

Adventures With Dave

In Skagway, we hired a personal tour guide to show us around. That is him below. His name is Dave and despite the goofy photo, a really smart guy. He picked us up from the train station in the middle of nowhere and took us into the Yukon.

There was another family in his van. He had driven them from Skagway to the train station. We were all going to go to Emerald Lake together, then they would be put on the train back to Skagway. Dave would drive us back.

Somehow, it all worked. Initially, there was some confusion because Dave was expecting two women instead of us. He had room for us in the van, but he was worried about what had happened to the two women. He brooded about it much of the trip. It wasn't until the end that we realized he thought Lindsay and Melissa were two women. We were the two missing women.

Dave had lots of stories and kept us well-entertained. We were especially happy when the other family got on the train. It is not that they were bad people or meant to be annoying, but it was a relief to have Dave to ourselves.

This is proof that we made it into the Yukon. It was nice to have a personal photographer take our photos.

The shot above is what most of the scenery looked like on the drive. We were a little scared at times when Dave was driving and looking off to the side of the road for things to show us. I kept my mouth shut, but there were times a wanted to scream that I didn't care about the goats on the mountain and to keep your eyes on the road.

Emerald Lake, above, was worth the drive. We couldn't go down to the water, but the view from above was good enough.

Once we got back to Skagway, Dave was trying to find some bears to show us, but we weren't interested. We've seen bears and didn't feel the need to see more. We asked him to just drive us around the town. I enjoy looking at old buildings, people's homes and gardens. So, Dave drove up and down the streets and even showed us his house and his sister's house. Dave has one of the nicest homes in town.

It is a small town and took about five or ten minutes to see it, but it was interesting. There are still boarded up, abandoned cabins from the gold rush days. It reminded me of Ireland where there are so many abandoned homes in ruins left over from the famine. I'm used to living in a city that just keeps getting bigger. It seems strange there are places around that lost a huge part of their population so quickly.

Frozen Alaska

In Skagway, we followed the route that the gold prospectors used to reach the gold fields. We had an advantage, though. We simply got on a train. The train was built to support the gold rush, but the rush was over before the train was finished. It is now a popular tourist attraction.

The prospectors had to hike over miles of mountains in the snow. My grandmother's uncle died in the Alaskan gold rush. He broke his leg and never made it back. The train ride was fun. That is my reflection in the glass. I rode on the outside to get a better view and enhance the thrill ride. The route is chiseled into the side of a mountain with spectacular drops. Lindsay is afraid of heights, so he stayed inside.

I'm afraid of tunnels, so I was upset that we went through two of them. I was especially upset that I was outside for one of them. With horror, I saw the tunnel up ahead and didn't have time to go inside and hide. The suffocating hot, train exhaust in the tunnel combined with the total blackness closing in on me led to a disagreement with Lindsay. He insists that he told me there were two tunnels on the route and I'm sure that he said that there were no tunnels. I had agreed to take the train ride only if there were no tunnels.

It was cold. On the mountain, the lakes were still frozen over and snow covered the ground. I spent the two hour journey outside.

The little train depot in the picture below is where the ride stopped. There is nothing up there except for that and a little Canadian customs hut. We got our passports stamped just for the fun of it.

We got off the train and were met by Dave, our tour guide. To be continued.

Juneau

I think that this is a photo of Juneau, but I'm not sure. The memories are already beginning to fade. We didn't get a good parking space. Our ship was far from town, but it all worked out. We had arranged for a bicycle tour and the van picked us up at the ship.

It was raining and cold, but why should that day be any different? It was advertised as a 9 mile, mostly level ride, around a lake. The downhill parts were fun, but getting back up the "mostly level" hills were tough. We had to suffer the indignity of walking the bikes at times.

It was nice to see the town without a panes of glass around me. I could smell wood burning in the fireplaces, listen to birds sing and squawk and get a feel for the area.

This church was a bathroom stop. It is also a popular spot for weddings. The alter is in front of a huge window facing a glacier. It was one of the plainest and most beautiful churches I have ever been in. Who needs stained glass and ornate architecture when you have a simple log cabin with a view?

This is the view from the church's windows. Tiny icebergs float around in the lake like ice sculptures. The glacier looks different from the last time I saw it almost 20 years ago. It is melting rapidly.

After the ride, the tour continued at the Alaska Brewing Company. The tour guides were smart to take us biking before they took us boozing. We were given a tour of the tiny facility while we being given free samples. Some of the samples were for new flavors they are testing and others were for some of the more popular brews. I was a little disappointed that they weren't testing their jalapeno beer the day we were there. The only weird beer we got was the smoky porter, which although an award winner, tasted to me like it had been in a brush fire. That smell doesn't have pleasant associations for me.

The samples were generous and we got tipsy. I don't remember the ride back, but we ended up in town. We walked around a bit. With all of the stores, you would think that we would have found plenty of stuff to buy, but it was all over-priced stuff we didn't need.

We came across a bus driving toward our ship. They let us on, saving us a mile walk in the cold rain while still impaired. The beer was good. Now I need to find some so that I can help relive the trip. I'll only change the memory by drinking it in the warm California sunshine.

Patient Perversions

How many times in one evening does a vagina need washing? The princess thinks that hers needs to be washed every time she pees. The nurses aren't happy about that, but will grudgingly try to please her. The part that bothers us the most is that she insists on a certain male nurse's aide taking care of that task. If he isn't there, she will say, "Go get John, he is the only one who knows how to wash my vagina."

Poor John. He is a nice, handsome young man and the patient is middle-aged and over 400 pounds. It can't be pleasant reaching in with a wet wash cloth while she barks orders to push it in deeper. When I first heard about her unusual requests a couple of days ago, I thought that she was using the word vagina loosely. Some people use that word to describe the general private area. Perhaps she just wanted to be washed off a little after using her female urinal. That is not an unusual request. It was just odd that she wanted a certain man to do it for her.

Tonight, one of my coworkers witnessed exactly what John was doing. He is literally washing the inside of her vagina with a wash cloth about every 45 minutes. He couldn't possibly be enjoying doing that. I think that the patient is sexually harassing John and he is afraid to refuse her demands. I'm dreading the talk that I'm going to have to have with him.

Another patient had major surgery because a dildo got stuck in his butt. Unable to pull it out, the surgeon had to cut him open to remove it. The wound is now infected and he needs complicated dressing changes several times a day. It will take several weeks for the deep wound to heal.

I would almost feel sorry for him, except that that same thing happened to him a year ago. That time there were also complications. He needed several units of blood and spent some time in ICU. They almost gave him a colostomy when they had trouble stopping the bleeding.

Perhaps sex toys should come with long handles or ropes attached. Since we can't seem to stop people from jamming foreign objects in their butts, there might as well be an easy way to extract them when necessary. Maybe I should get a patent.