Misadventurous Melissa

A Brush With The Law

2010-10-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

I was inside my house and walked out the front door to pay some day laborers who had done some chores for me. A Sheriff's car was idling in front of my house. I didn't give it a second thought and directed my attention to giving a check to the workers. With my peripheral vision, I detected sudden movement. Looking back at the Sheriff's deputy, I saw him jump out of his car and stand hunched over behind the car door. He was clearly alarmed over something. Over what, I couldn't imagine.

Then, he yelled out, "Do you live here?"

I yelled back, "Yes."

He yelled back, "Did you hire those guys to do some work for you?"

I responded, "Yes, I had them move some firewood for me. "

At this point, I thought I understood what the problem was. The workers, in his eyes, clearly could not live in my neighborhood. This is an affluent area and two El Salvadorians in plaid shirts and an old pick up truck stood out. They could be doing some work for a homeowner or they could be burglars. He wanted to make sure which.

What the officer said next floored me. He yelled, "Bring me some proof that you live here."

Obviously, the officer didn't believe that I looked like I could live in my neighborhood either. Granted, I didn't look my best. I had been working on the pond in the drizzle and my old, ragged, mismatched sweats were covered in mud. I had last combed my hair the day before. But still, under all the dirt and rags, I was still blond and middle aged. I thought that I fit the demographics even though I was dirty.

I thought about the events that led to the beer summit, that is, the black college professor who was doubted my a police officer to be the owner of his home and ended up arrested when the situation escalated. Although my feelings were hurt, I was going to remain polite, calm and reasonably friendly.

I yelled out that I was going to go in the house and come right back. Although it was annoying to have to produce papers when I had done nothing wrong, it was easy enough to show a driver's license. Then I suddenly remembered. My driver's license had my old address on it. Walking in my house, I was wondering how I was going to prove that I lived here. I did a quick search of the tabletops and found some escrow instructions with my name and current address.

I walked over to the deputy, who was no longer crouched behind his car. Back up had arrived while I was inside the house and I guess he was feeling more comfortable. I handed him my papers while the second set of officers watched me. He took the papers and sat in his car and copied the information. When he was done, he handed them back to me and explained that a neighbor had called the police because they saw suspicious men walking around my house.

Forcing a smile, I thanked him, thanked the day laborers and walked back in the house. Everyone drove off. Thank goodness the officer didn't question the workers about their immigration status. I will never be able to run for public office.

Koi Moving Day

2010-10-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

I finally got my house rented, but the family I chose has a two year old kid. Not wanting to risk drowning a kid, that created an urgency to finish the pond at my new house, so I could move the koi and drain the old pond.

The last pond, I dug myself. It took two months. Not having two months or the desire to do anything like that ever again, I hired someone to dig it for me. It took two guys one day. It is about 10 by 12 feet and 4 feet deep. There is a shelf all the way around so that if dogs fall in, they can climb out.

I bought 3,300 pounds of ledger stones and went to work. I moved each rock several times until I was satisfied with the placement and then cemented it in. It was a long miserable weekend and then I ran out of rock. I filled up the pond anyway. Enough of the sides are done that the fish have room to swim around. I just need to finish edging the top row or two.

I treated the water and then waited a few days for the water to warm up. Then, the much dreaded fish moving day arrived. I got large plastic containers and lined them with kitchen trash bags. I put them in the car and drove to my old house. With a bucket, I filled the bags with pond water. Next, I climbed into the pond and started fishing.

Koi are hard to catch. They are surprisingly intelligent, fast and slippery. The pond was completely green with zero visibility. The only tool I had was a lace tablecloth. Fortunately, it was a hot day because I spent 2 hours in the pond trying to catch the fish by feel. I caught Sunny first, then Sosamma. It was Judy who challenged me the most. Worried about the the two fish waiting in the hot car, I finally had to leave and take them home. For the most part, they were good in the car, there was a just an occasional splash from Sunny. I didn't have time to acclimate them to the new pond. I just slid them in and they were fine.

It is an hour round trip between the two houses and I knew fishing was going to take some time, so I had to get going before rush hour started. This time, I brought a pump with me and started draining the old pond. With fewer hiding places as the water level dropped, I caught Judy.

Judy is a fighter. She thrashed for most of the ride home. Two minutes from home, she became quiet. When we got home, I was horrified to see that her bag was filled with bloody water. She was completely still. I poked her with my finger and she was unresponsive. Heartbroken that I had killed her, I decided to put her into the pond anyway. She lay on her side for a few seconds and then suddenly woke up. She swam away and joined her friends.

It has been several days and the fish are all fine. Now, I just need to buy more rock and finish what I started.

Another Month

2010-09-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Since buying the new house, Lindsay and I have been making three mortgage payments and are in a deficit situation. We have no intention of selling our individual houses, we just need to get them rented. We were using a website, that came highly recommended, to advertise our houses, but attracted no real interest. I placed an ad in the local newspaper, which cost some bucks, and once again, had no takers. Then, I tried Craigslist. Wow. It has been hard for me to keep straight all of the potential renters and showing my house.

I had heard from other people who had rented their homes out, that renters are flakes. The people who want to rent my house don't strike me as being flakes, but they are all down on their luck. It is just so sad to hear their stories. A couple of people have even handed me essays explaining their bad credit. They all have jobs that have been effected by this great recession and have lost their homes through foreclosures or short-sales. Their credit is terrible and they are drowning in debt.

I feel guilty. All of my nurse coworkers and I are doing well. We have nice homes, cars, take expensive vacations and most of us own two or three homes. We work our butts off, but it pays well and we seem to be recession proof, so far. I know that, but for the grace of God, I could just as easily have ended up in a career that would have lead to financial disaster. The only difference between me and the potential renters of my house is luck.

I have to decide between one of three families and I really like them all. Plus, they all really need my house and are desperate. It makes me so uncomfortable to have to choose.

Lindsay hasn't attracted any serious attention for his house. It is in a much higher price range and fewer people can afford it. But if my house is rented, financially we are fine. We just won't be saving any money.

We have been living together for a little over a month now and still only see each other two days a week. He works days and I work evenings. Our paths do not cross except when I have a day off. We also have separate master bedrooms because he snores and sleeps with the TV on. But it is okay. The separation keeps the relationship fresh. We have been dating for about ten years, but in relationship time, it is more like six months. We are both independent and used to living alone, so this is working.

Our dogs have almost gotten used to each other. Of course they have all known each other forever, but my dogs have always been terrified of the huge Newfoundlands. For the first couple of weeks, little Tom Tom lived in the closet. It was sad, so I put a dog bed, food and water in the closet to make him more comfortable. Eventually, he discovered that the Newfies were gentle giants and meant him no harm. It is a relief that Tom Tom finally came out of the closet. MacKenzie still growls when the Newfies come in my bedroom, but the growls are becoming less ferocious and outside of the bedroom, she is fine.

The dogs forgot their house-training when they moved here, but we are making serious progress with that. On the other hand, there are urine stains in the living room, family room and two of the bedrooms. The carpet appears to be ruined. I never liked it anyway because the grey color looked industrial to me, but I also can't afford to replace it. Oh well.

So, that is what is new. I hope that is everything is fine with you all.

Pillow Therapy

2010-09-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

Someone told me that a patient wanted to leave. I asked if the patient was alert and oriented and she said yes. My response was that we had to let him go. To hold a patient against their will can lead to nasty things like lawsuits and hearing annoying phrases like false imprisonment. I wasn't in the mood, but I agreed to talk to the patient.

I didn't have to go far. The patient walked by, naked and barefoot except for his backless gown. He was a healthy man in his prime trying to walk with a walker due to orthopedic injuries. Smiling and trying to be friendlier than I was feeling, I asked him where he was going. He looked at me with terrified, wild eyes. His hands were trembling and he was drenched in sweat. He forced a smile and said that he needed to go outside to make a phone call.

I asked him if he had a cell phone and he said no. I suggested that he go into his room and use the phone there, but he insisted that he had to go outside to make the call. I offered to let him use a phone in the nursing station. I offered to make the call for him if he wanted. It was useless. He couldn't explain how he would make a phone call outside, but he would not consider using one of our phones. He kept hobbling toward the elevators.

I had a difficult decision to make. If he was in his right mind and I prevented him from leaving, I/we could be sued. If he was not in his right mind and I let him go, I/we could be sued if he was harmed. I called three people above me for assistance and they declined to help. It was my call. I decided to error on the side of stopping him. I asked for security to be called and I caught up with the patient next to the elevator. I grabbed his walker and held it down between us. He couldn't walk without it and it kept a safe distance between us.

Soon, five security guards showed up. They tried to reason with him and even tried handing him a cell phone so that he could make his call. The patient was adamant that he was going to leave and make his call outside. Security asked me what to do and I said to bring him back to his room. We all knew what that meant. It was going to be really ugly.

I walked away to get restraints while the wrestling match ensued. Eventually, the patient was thrown down on the bed with five men on top of him. Another nurse and I tied down his torso, arms and legs. He immediately broke the restraints. The security guards laid on top of him until someone could get the leather restraints.

At some point in the struggle, one of the security guys smashed a pillow on the patient's face and held it there. The patient couldn't breathe. I don't like to tell people how to do their job and wondered if that was some kind of technique for controlling combative patients. Still, it didn't seem right. Several seconds went by and I was just stunned, not saying anything. Then, the pillow was slid up a bit so that his lower jaw was exposed. He couldn't see and his nose was still smashed, but at least he could breathe.

It took some effort to get a doctor to come, but after some begging someone agreed to help us. Long story short, we gave the patient a special cocktail which knocked him out until the next day. When he woke up, he was fine. He apologized for his behavior and we let his family take him home.

I have no idea what that craziness was all about and if it was appropriate to give pillow therapy. What do you think?

The Psychiatrist's House

2010-08-20T00:59:00.000-07:00

The house had been on the market for several months, but was out of my price range. After a year of disappointments, my expectations were low, but I monitored the house on the realtor's website just in case it ever came down to my price range.

One day, the price came down to just $25,000 over my budget. That was close enough to schedule an appointment to see the house. We had to wait for a day that both of us had off, which only happens four days a month. We also had to see the house when the doctor wasn't seeing patients. The psychiatrist owner worked out of his home.

The appointment was for late in the day after a long day of house hunting. I was tempted to skip this last house because of fatigue and the long drive to get there, but was reluctant to say anything. We ended up driving there and planned to wait until the agreed upon time.

As we drove around the corner and saw the house for the first time, the feeling I has was more than love at first sight. It was recognition. I knew that was my house.

We saw the house on the first day of Spring. The hillsides were green. Trees were blooming and birds were singing. The weather was perfect. It was simply paradise. The photo above was taken in August, three months after the owners stopped watering. The lawn is brown, but at least it matches the hillsides.

My biggest requirement, and most difficult and expensive to find, was land. I don't want to look out my windows and see into someone else's house or vice versa. I don't want to look out the window and look at a wall. I don't want to know if the neighbor is taking a shower. I need space.

The new house is on nearly two acres of land. That sounded great in theory and perhaps if I didn't have a full time job it would be great in reality, but right now I feel overwhelmed. We live in a high fire danger area and there is four years worth of brush that needs to be removed. I would do it myself, but I don't have time, plus I'm afraid of rattlesnakes.

Only about half an acre of land is fenced. The rest is wild. A creek flows through the unfenced land and native oak trees line the banks. It is very nice to sit on the patio and look down on my oak trees and listen to the creek. The coyotes also like my land. A pack of them live on it. That wasn't mentioned in the sellers disclosure statement. They seem to be afraid of my dogs, so hopefully they will stay out of my fenced yard. But, that also means I can only have big dogs. No more Cockers. *sigh*

The picture above shows my backyard. I own it up to the fence on top of the hill, lined with Italian Cypress trees. A top priority was getting a play pool. Newfoundlands must have water to play in.

I'm sorry that the picture above is sideways. If I knew how to turn it around, I would have done so. But this is the only picture I have of the creek. I could have hiked back down there and taken some upright shots, but I didn't feel like it. I'm still trying to get the stickers and burrs out of my shoes and socks from the last time.

Nailed to one of the oak trees is a no trespassing sign. When I first saw it, I was hesitant to go any further until I realized that the sign now belongs to me. I never thought that I would own property with a no trespassing sign. I will probably remove it, though. I don't mind if people want to visit the creek and coyotes and rattlesnakes can't read.

A New Direction

2010-08-16T00:24:00.000-07:00

Has it really been three months since I last visited my Blog? I, at least, have a good excuse for my absence.

It occurred to me about a year and a half ago, that with the economy being so bad and so many people losing their jobs and homes, that it would be a great time to buy a new house. I'm taking a big risk with my life savings, but I was finally able to buy my dream house. It was at one time a million dollar house, but not anymore, otherwise it would not be mine.

It was a short sale, which is a type of Hell. The first buyers walked away from the transaction during the third month of the bank's shenanigans. I then moved to the front of the line. My biggest problem was with my mortgage broker. The broker was both an idiot and unlucky. His appraiser under-appraised the home; so, I had to start over again with a different broker when we had only three weeks left to close. My life has been a roller coaster ride for the last four months and it has been mostly downhill.

For the year prior to this, my second job has been house hunting. I looked at homes on the Internet and visited the ones that looked promising. It seemed quite hopeless. All I wanted was a decently sized modern home on a big lot, with a view in a safe, quiet area. And, it had to be in my price range. Was that too much to ask? It appeared to be. It took an entire year and three Realtors before I found my house.

I'm all moved in, but there is still a ton of stuff to unpack. But mostly, I'm so glad to finally have phone service and my computer on line again after over a week of grief from AT & T. That is a story all by itself. I live in a dead zone and every time I needed to call AT &T, I had to get in my car, drive to the other side of the hill and wait on hold for between twenty and thirty minutes to talk to someone. They would promise to send someone to my house to connect me and then not show up. That was my routine for several days. I was both angry and scared. I sort of live in the country now and being out of contact and not able to call 911 was scary. I'm feeling much better now.

In a future post, I will show pictures of my new house. I'm a little overwhelmed by the size of the lot, but I got what I asked for. Yikes.

The Golden State

2010-05-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

It is really nice when California does this.

Milk Maids

2010-03-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

Two of our patients were having penis problems. One penis was passing gas and the other one was dripping pus. The poor guy with the farting penis had the bigger problem. His colon had, for some unknown reason, merged with his bladder. A passage formed between the two, a fistula. Gas was passing from his digestive tract to his urinary tract. Major surgery corrected that problem.

It is the pus dripping penis that has me wondering. The more I think about it, the more I suspect that the doctor played a practical joke on the nurses. The patient had a suprapubic abscess, meaning that a pus filled sac was attached to the top of his bladder, in his lower abdominal area. In addition to antibiotics and lancing the abscess, the doctor ordered the nurses to "milk" the penis three times a day. This is the part that makes no sense to me.

If the abscess were in the penis, I could understand how milking it might help drain the pus. But the abscess was in the top of the bladder. How does pulling on the penis drain an abscess in another body part? If the doctor just wanted to make sure that the bladder was drained of pus, asking the patient to urinate would wash it out. Yanking the penis for several minutes, I'm guessing, emptied fluids from the testicles, which were not infected.

The patient, an old man, did not seem to mind the treatment. I suspect the doctor is telling his friends about the practical joke he played. But, I did not go to medical school, so it is possible that I'm missing something here. Does anyone have any explanation of how milking a penis would drain an abscess on top of the bladder?

Sick Call Flow Diagram

2010-02-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

This is what we have to do in order to call in sick, effective today. At first I thought it must be someone's idea of a joke. I got a good laugh out of it. But, management was serious. Now it is stuck to my refrigerator with magnets, so I'll know what to do when I get sick. I feel sick already, of work.

A Wedding March

2010-02-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

I love this video. Watch it and feel happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0

Asking For Sexual Harassment

2010-01-24T17:14:00.000-08:00

Every Friday, some of the nurses are expected to wear a t-shirt that has a green hand on each breast. No, it is not punishment. It is considered some kind of an honor and a mandatory duty to wear one of these tops for nurses belonging to a certain committee. Thank goodness I am not in that committee. I just borrowed a shirt for a minute to pose for the picture. I wanted you to see how offensive it is.

I honestly don't know if whoever designed the shirt was naive or deliberately wanted something sexually provocative to get people's attention. What has happened is that every Friday, about thirty nurses are sexually harassed and teased. One doctor asked if he could put his hands on the nurse's hands, while staring at her breasts. A male coworker, who has always been a complete gentleman, commented that the shirt made him want to put his hands on our breasts. All day long, the nurse victims have to endure the comments and stares.

Sometimes, it is hard to say if something constitutes sexual harassment, but in my opinion, this is clearly over the line. If someone is forced to wear something that exposes them to unwanted sexual comments and stares, than it is sexual harassment. If we worked for Hooters, it would be different, but we are serious health care workers who should be shown respect for our hard work and compassion, not treated like bimbos. No, I'm not saying that Hooter's waitresses are bimbos, it's just that we have worked too hard to have men joking about wanting to touch our breasts.

It is hard for me to ignore this kind of thing, so I have been talking to every t-shirt wearing nurse I can find. They tell me their stories of abuse and I tell them other nurses' stories. I'm not giving legal advice, but I'm making sure they know that they don't have to put up with this.

With the managers who made this bonehead decision and also wear the shirts, I've been passive-aggressive. With a smile and a pleasant sing-song voice, I'll ask them how many people teased them today.

I don't know if it was my doing or if everyone suddenly came to their senses, but last Friday, I didn't see a single hands-on-breasts shirt. So, what do you think? Am I just an old fuddy duddy, or are these shirts offensive?

Dry Humping The Boss

2009-11-24T19:20:00.000-08:00

Is it ever okay to give your boss a lap dance? The reason I'm asking is because there was a party to celebrate the retirement of a female executive. The D.J., who was leading party games, asked the executive to pick a man from each table. The executive then sat on a chair in the middle of the dance floor, while each man had to take turns giving her a lap dance. Everyone kept their clothes on and there wasn't any serious touching, but there were erotic moves with various private areas shaken in her face.

As far as I know, everyone had a good time and thought it was funny, but it bothers me. I don't want to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but isn't this a little inappropriate for a work party? This is the second work party in the last two weeks that involved the men being asked to perform like strippers.

If the women were coerced into giving the men lap dances, I'm fairly certain that there would be outrage. Or, at least I would be outraged, instead of just feeling squeamish with the male performers.

Is this some new trend for work parties or are the people I work with just weird and perhaps in need of a class on sexual harassment in the work place?

Olive Tamponade

2009-10-31T16:39:00.000-07:00

The story ends with pickled olives rolling across the operating room floor. The story begins with a guy in a bar. He had a little too much to drink and got into an argument with another guy in the bar. One guy passes out and later awakens with the belief that a jar is in his rectum. He isn't sure how it got there, but believes the guy he got into an argument with is responsible. He doesn't call the police or go to the hospital.

Two days go by. He can no longer stand it and comes to the ER. He refuses to let the nurse call the police. Normally, the police would be called anyway, but given the silly story he came up with, it was thought best to just treat him and say nothing.

He was taken to OR and put under. The surgeon inflated balloons behind it to keep it from migrating up further. I'm still wondering if he used party balloons or what. Anyway, when the jar came out, it was with such force that it hit the surgeon on the chest, splattering him with poop. The jar fell to the floor and broke. You know how the story ends.

I've known this surgeon for eight years and when he was telling the story and showing us the x-rays, it was the first time I had ever seen him smile. It just warms the heart.

Walking down the hospital corridor, I heard an annoying shrill alarm. It sounded like the negative pressure alarm. It goes off frequently for no apparent reason and we just have to live with it. Had I recognized it as a bed alarm, I would have walked faster and been perhaps prepared for what I saw next. A naked old man, covered in blood, was roaming the hallway. A trail of blood led from his room to another patient's room and back out into the hall. The woman behind the door where the blood trail led, was screaming. I figured there was a connection between the two events.

My first reaction was oh %$#^&. He belonged to me. The nurse's aide had warned me that the patient had escaped during an earlier hospitalization, but I thought that just setting the bed alarm would do the trick. He seemed okay at the time and I really didn't want to tie him up or use our precious nurse's aide to watch him.

With bare hands, I grabbed his bloody arm and led him back to his room. He had just had major surgery a few hours earlier and had pulled out his chest tube. Air was leaking from the little hole in his chest. Blood was pouring from the wound and running down his legs and, of course, he had pulled out his IV's and blood was pouring from them too.

I looked around for help, but nobody was around. I sat him in a chair and ran to get some dressing materials to stop the air leak. On the way to the supply room, I passed a big, red furry Elmo. In a high pitched voice, he said, "Wash your hands." Unbelievable. My employer has money to hire a cartoon charater to wander the hospital and tell people wash their hands, but doesn't have money for safe staffing.

When I came back, he was walking out of the room again. He was looking for a bathroom. I promised him that as soon as I covered the wound, I would take him to the bathroom. I continued to ignore the woman screaming for help in the room with the blood trail.

After I got the wound covered, nurses appeared and helped. The woman whose room he walked into was even more hysterical. She couldn't understand why she could scream for several minutes without anyone coming to her rescue. She said that the naked bloody man came into her room and closed the door behind him. He was doing something around her sink and mumbling. She believed he bore evil intent; I think he was just looking for a bathroom and he mistook her sink for a urinal.

Anyway, security came and filed a report. A social worker was called to calm her down. The house supervisor talked to her. Then the house supervisor talked to me. She wanted to know why I didn't go into the screaming woman's room right away. I explained that my sole concern was saving my patient's life. I couldn't allow air to continue to leak out of my patient's chest while I responded to another patient who was not in jeopardy. The supervisor then wanted to know why there were no other nurses at the nurse's station to help. I just said that they were busy in other rooms and unaware of what was happening. I didn't say it, but that is what happens when staffing is cut to the bones and they fill us up with very sick people.

We have already lost a young pregnant patient to swine flu. Other patients have it too. The nurses are at high risk of becoming infected, especially since they took our special masks away that provide protection against viruses. The masks are too expensive. We have been told that if we want to be vaccinated, which they strongly encourage, we need to go downstairs and wait in line with everyone else. We don't have time to stand in line for hours, so it is not going to happen. If management wants us to be protected, they need to send someone up with a basket of vaccine and syringes and shoot us up. That is how ordinary flu shot time is handled.

We don't have any extra nurses. If nurses get sick, they either work while sick and make everyone else sick or the hospital is dangerously short-staffed. I suspect that management hasn't thought through the consequences of making it so difficult for the nurses to be vaccinated.

A Rescue At Sea

2009-10-06T07:14:00.000-07:00

The sinking of the Titanic was in the back of our minds. Halifax, Novia Scotia is where most of the victims of the Titanic are buried and that is where we had spent the day. Of course, we weren't worried about our ship sinking. Princess cruise ships don't sink. But still, when you're in the North Atlantic, the Titanic does cross one's mind.

After we were back on the ship, a storm struck. It doesn't seem like twelve foot waves and high winds should affect a huge cruise ship, but we were being tossed from side to side. Thunderous blows sent shudders through the ship, loose stuff was banging the outside of the ship and sometimes the ship would go up and just drop. To amuse ourselves, we would bet how far we could walk without being thrown against a wall.

Another source of amusement was watching the tsunami-like waves coming out of the swimming pool. And then, we heard the ship's horn blow. Being in the North Atlantic in a storm and hearing that sound freaked us out. Something terrible must have happened. We've only heard the ship's horn in ports, not at sea. We vaguely remembered that something like seven blasts in a row meant to prepare to abandon ship. We didn't know what one blast meant. It seemed like a good time to go back inside.

Careful to maintain our cool demeanor, we walked over to the first employee we saw, who was busy stringing up yellow "do not cross" crime scene tape across the doors to the outside. Cheerfully, he replied that in the fog, the ship has to blow its horn periodically. I wasn't sure I believed him, but that was the official answer to our question.

Feeling a little queasy, I wanted to go get a piece of bread to coat my stomach. The problem was that the food was on the fifteenth floor and Lindsay was afraid to go up there. Normally, Lindsay was very happy to go to the fifteenth floor, but this time we knew the rocking would be worse up there. After a while, he bravely agreed to escort me up there. We quickly ate and got out of there.

It was getting late, so we decided to go to bed. Sleep was difficult. With all of the booms, rattles and rocking, we just laid there. Then, we heard a sound that caused us to jerk in fear. The room intercom chimes went off, followed by an announcement about an emergency on board. A passenger was critically ill and needed blood. I would have liked to help, but I was the wrong blood type. We didn't know what had happened, but it didn't seem like there could be a good outcome unless the patient got off the ship as soon as possible.

Around one a.m., the chimes sounded again. This time, it was the captain waking everyone up. We were expecting the worst. The captain of a cruise ship isn't going to wake everyone in the middle of the night unless something bad is happening. He spent way too long apologizing before getting to the point. In the meantime, I couldn't believe this was happening. Surely, he was going to tell us the ship was going down. When the captain finally got to the point and told us we had to go back to Halifax and meet the Coast Guard for a helicopter evacuation of the critically ill passenger, I was so relieved. I was looking forward to watching the rescue operation, but we slept through it.

I later learned that the top floors of the passenger cabins had been evacuated, the lifeboats were lowered into the water and fire fighting equipment was set up on the deck. With the rocking boat, high wind and darkness, there was a possibility that the helicopter might crash into the ship. The basket was lowered three times before they got it right, but the passenger was eventually safely pulled up into the helicopter and taken to a hospital.

Early the next morning, the captain once again woke us up with some bad news. After he finished his apologies, we learned that the rescue operation had been successful, the passenger was still alive and in stable condition, but that we were behind schedule. There would be no port day in Sydney, Novia Scotia. Of course that was fine. Considering all of the things that could have gone wrong, missing a port was not a problem at all.

Another Fire

2009-09-01T00:15:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to write about the fire. Brush fires have been the subject of so many of my posts, it seemed like enough was enough. But still, it has been hard to ignore this fire. The photo is of what I look at from work everyday. This is a day shot. At night, the mountains to the east are covered with spots of brilliant orange flames that sometimes shoot up into the sky.

The fire has been going on for almost a week. At night, the smoke drifts down and creates what looks like a marine layer. But it's not fog, just smoke. During the day, the smoke rises back into the sky so that the air is just unhealthful to breathe, as opposed to toxic. And, it is getting worse. Even inside the hospital, the air is smoky. At my house, it smells like there is a campfire burning in my backyard. There is also an ominous red glow over the mountains that, for the first time since the fire started, is visible from my house. The fire is approaching.

I've never seen a fire like this in the absence of a windstorm. Sure, it is hot and dry. But without high winds, the Fire Department can usually put out fires like this before they get out of control. It is expected that the fire will burn for another two weeks. It was that bit of news that has me unnerved. The only thing between the fire and my house is a few miles of brush covered mountains, a dry river and a freeway. If a wind picks up from the north-east in the next two weeks, I'm in trouble. Even without the wind, the fire is slowly moving towards Santa Clarita.

The Penis Problem

2009-08-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

The last thing that I want to do is make fun of this patient. He is such a nice man and it must have been out of his control what happened to him. But now, he is so fat that he can no longer walk. He is also incontinent and dribbles continually. Lying in bed all day, soaked in urine, has caused his skin to break down. We change his linens frequently, but still, he is always wet.

The logical solution would be to insert a catheter. The problem is that no one can find his penis. It's not like we haven't tried. Dozens of us have gone penis hunting during his long hospitalization.

Once, we got close. He dribbled some urine during a hunt, allowing us to narrow the scope of territory to within a few inches, but still, we couldn't find it. The patient is also starting to get testy when he feels us poking around down there. Our hunts are limited to only about a minute at a time before he tells us to knock it off.

I'm reasonable sure he has a penis. He has children. It's just that with all of the folds, it is hiding. In a situation that this, I usually just ask the patient to find it for me. It is a common problem, but this situation is different. His abdominal fold hangs down to his knees. He can't get his arms past it to reach his penis.

The poor man needs and desires bariatric surgery, but he is a poor candidate. The doctors believe that he would die on the operating table.

Usually, nurses fight over who has to take care of morbidly obese patients, but with him, it is different. It is back-breaking work to take care of him, but he is so nice, we don't mind. I just wish that we could catheterize him so that his skin could heal.

The Castrator

2009-08-02T00:16:00.000-07:00

The patient had driven himself to the E.R. following a "shaving accident." His pants were soaked in blood and he was walking gingerly. He was quickly given a room and told to remove his pants. This was an unusual shaving accident. His scrotum sported a neatly sutured incision, along with a rubber band being used to form a tourniquet.

A urologist was paged and soon the patient was rushed into surgery. A couple of arteries had been cut through and needed to be tied off. The patient knew how to suture his skin back together, but tying off blood vessels was beyond his skill level. The blood loss had been massive. And, the testicles were gone.

The patient stuck to his story that it was a shaving accident. Were we unreasonable to assume that he was nuts? We all had our theories about what had happened. Perhaps it was revenge for a bad drug deal or maybe he was attacked by loan sharks. Could it have been kinky sex?

The psychiatrist couldn't get any information from him. The patient angrily insisted that it was a shaving accident. In all of the years that I've known this psychiatrist, this was the first time I ever heard him say that someone was crazy and dangerous. We needed to get him to a locked facility.

The patient was a strong, healthy man in his prime. Transferring him against his will was going to be a challenge and the doctor was afraid that someone might get hurt in the process. It was decided to sneak the patient a special cocktail to knock him out for the journey.

Four big security guards, the house supervisor, the doctor and assorted nurses watched as I prepared the syringe. His nurse went into his room and asked if he would like some pain medication. He said yes. I handed her the syringe and we all waited in a huddle just outside the door. He didn't question why this medication was being injected into muscle when all of the other medications had been given in his IV line. We got lucky. The worst was over, or so we thought.

About 45 minutes later the ambulance arrived. Security came back to help with the transfer. The patient was fast asleep, so this looked like a piece of cake. Unfortunately, the patient woke up. This cocktail would have killed me, but in him, it had no affect. He went wild. He was in a fight for his life. The six men were lying on top of him, trying to tie him up. They were all yelling, sweating and panting. The patient was screaming obscenities and demanding to speak to his lawyer. After a couple of minutes, the guards were yelling at us to call the doctor. They were losing the battle.

Another cocktail was ordered, which this time, I gave. There was no more need for deceit. He jerked his arm and the needle came out. It took several pokes before I was able to administer the full dose. The patient looked at me with fire in his eyes. I knew he wanted to kill me.

Tired of watching the battle, I went to the front nursing station and sat down. After a while, I saw the ambulance crew wheel him by. The patient was tightly tied to the gurney and was no longer struggling.

The psychiatrist was a little worried about the patient, given the massive amount drugs we had given the patient. He called the facility several times during the night to make sure the patient was still breathing. Some time the next day, he finally woke up.

At the psych facility. the patient finally cracked and explained what happened and why. He was a sex addict and out of control. His doctor had refused to give him any medications to blunt his sex drive, so he decided to take matters into his own hands. Self-castration was his solution.

He is now out of the psych facility. He did return to visit the security office. He looked at one of the guards and said, "I remember you" and then left. We're not sure if that was a threat. I'm really hoping that he doesn't remember me. Anyway, I hope that his surgical solution solved his problem. The doctor doesn't think it will because the addiction is in his brain, not testicles. Too bad we will never know how things turned out.

The Same Day, A Year Apart

2009-07-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

It was June thirtieth, the first anniversary of the death of my brother. Normally, I visit my parents every day to spend time with my father and help take care of him, but I had another stupid early work meeting to attend. There wasn't time to visit, so I called my mom and said that I would come over the next day instead.

At the stupid work meeting, we started off with a potluck to celebrate the birthdays of those born in April, May and June. That included me. I didn't feel like eating, so I just sat silently, while everyone ate and talked. It was a day of mourning for me.

Four hours into the shift, the house supervisor gave me a note and told me to call my brother. It was urgent. This wasn't good. As soon as my brother answered the phone, I asked if dad died. He answered, "yes."

We discussed what to do about our mother. I said that I would ask to leave work, go get mom and take her home with me. As I walked towards the supervisor, the tears started flowing. From the look on her face, I knew she already knew what had happened. She put her arms around me and I began sobbing uncontrollably.

Word got around fast and soon I was surrounded by my coworkers. They took turns hugging me. My memory is hazy, but I remember being told that I could leave, but not until I stopped shaking and sobbing. It wasn't safe for me to drive like that. I was led into the locker room and my coworkers took turns sitting with me.

Once I regained my composure, they let me leave. I drove to my parent's house and the hospice nurse was with my mother. I expected my mother to be hysterical with grief, but she was calm. The nurse had taken over and was busy calling who needed to be called. The mortuary was on its way to pick up my father.

The nurse asked if I would like to see my father. Immediately, I began shaking my head no and said that I wanted to remember him the way he was. She said it wasn't that bad. I kept shaking my head. My mother then said that she wanted me to see him. Defeated, I started walking down the hallway towards my father's bedroom.

My father died with a smile on his face. It was a Mona Lisa-type smile. As a nurse, I've seen plenty of dead people, but I've never seen any of them smiling. I can only speculate as to what my father experienced that left a smile on his face.

The next day, my mother and I prepared to visit the mortuary. We found my father's Air Force uniform and laid it across a table to look at it. The last time he wore it was to my brother's funeral. Now, he will wear it for all of eternity. We agreed it was a shame to bury such a nice uniform, but we knew what his wishes were. I did, however, remove one of my father's medals. His wings are now my most prized possession. I feel a little guilty and hope that my father wouldn't have minded. When I told Lindsay about what I did, he laughed and said that not only does my father know I took the medal, he wanted me to have it. Isn't Lindsay great in a moral crisis?

In getting the outfit together, my mother and I did argue a little. My mother didn't want to bury him in a shirt. She felt that the uniform was enough. Even though the military only does closed casket funerals and no one would see him, I wanted him to wear a shirt and tie. My mother gave in. Next, we argued about the shoes. Mom wanted to bury him barefoot. Eventually, she agreed to hand over a pair of dress shoes. The next fight was over socks. Mom said that dad had very few pairs of black socks and she didn't see the need to give him socks to wear. I settled that argument by going through the sock drawer and pulling out a pair of socks and taking them. Geeez.

The next thing I got ready was Christofur. That was my father's favorite dog, a much loved Dalmatian. Cris died a few years ago and was cremated. There are rules about dogs being buried in people cemeteries, so I gift wrapped Cris's box and asked the mortician to place the box in the casket. The mortician took the box, shook it, smiled and asked if it was a puppy. I didn't answer. The mortician said it was okay. He was a dog person and understood. He has hidden lots of dog's ashes in caskets for burial in people cemeteries.

Tomorrow, my father and his dog will be buried at Riverside National Cemetery with full military honors.

The Caretaker's Girlfriend

2009-06-28T22:18:00.000-07:00

My father isn't doing well. He is on hospice, so our goal is just to keep him comfortable. My father survived being a fighter pilot and three wars only to slowly die from smoking. Emphysema is not pretty. It takes all of his energy just to breathe. He just lies in bed and needs to be turned, bathed, fed and have his diapers changed. Occasionally, he chokes, wheezes and coughs.

My father can't swallow because of his stroke, so we feed him through a tube in his stomach. The hospice nurse wants us to stop the feedings, including water. I am not comfortable with allowing my father to die of dehydration. The nurse said that his body would produce endorphins and he wouldn't suffer. I wonder how she knows that dying by dehydration is a good death. I've been thirsty and know how miserable it feels. I don't want to die from thirst and I won't allow that for my father.

Hospice provided us with morphine, so I have been sneaking it to my father. It is necessary to sneak it because my mother doesn't want him to have morphine. She is afraid it will kill him. I don't like seeing my father thrashing about, gasping for air and grimacing in agony. A little bit of morphine relaxes him and allows him to breathe easier. I'm a nurse and am comfortable with giving morphine to ease pain. My father isn't going to suffer because my mother has mistaken notions regarding pain control.

My father's former caregiver, the one who is in jail, did not take good care of my father. The day he landed in jail, we discovered that the tips of two of my father's toes were completely black. My father's toes must have been resting against the foot board. In addition, he has a black pressure ulcer on one of his heels. The caretaker was careless in keeping my father properly turned and positioned with pillows.

The caretaker's girlfriend dropped by to collect his belongings. Unfortunately, I wasn't there. My mother let her in. The girlfriend pulled a dresser away from the wall and a pile of beer bottles rolled out. The caretaker is a so-called recovering alcoholic and goes to AA meetings everyday. He also stole the beer that my father bought for me when I visit.

The girlfriend also went into my father's room and disconnected every cord connected to the computer. My mother watched and said nothing. It wasn't until she started to walk out of the house with the computer keyboard that my mother said anything. The girlfriend put it back and laughed it off as an honest mistake. Next, she started to walk away with my father's briefcase. It was the one he used for every court appearance when he was practicing law. It has priceless emotional value to me. Thank goodness my mother stopped her. Again, it was just an "honest mistake".

Now, there is a tangle of cords all over the floor and I have no idea how to connect them. I want to kill the caretaker's girlfriend. Of course I won't, but I want to. What kind of person walks into a room with a dying man inside and knowing that the wife has dementia, tries to steal a computer and briefcase?

Jail Bird

2009-06-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

My father's caretaker is in jail. He got caught driving with a suspended license. Now, I'm back to square one in managing my father's care. It's annoying, but at the same time it is a relief. The caretaker was a fool.

When my mother kept calling and complaining about him, some of her concerns were legitimate. He would leave the house for several hours everyday. A couple of hours would have been fine, but to disappear for most of the day meant that my mother would have to change diapers. Some days, he would sleep until noon. This meant more diapers for mom.

The caretaker once showed up several hours late to take my father to a doctor's appointment. His excuse about slow freeway traffic didn't hold water. He either forgot, couldn't tell time or just blew it off.

Another time, my father had a doctor's appointment, so I came as "back up" in case he forgot again. I started getting my father dressed, but he told me that he would do it. I left the room and came back when it was time to leave. My father wasn't dressed yet. I got him dressed, but by this time we were running late. The caretaker came in and said in a whiny voice that he was going to do it. I mentioned the time and then he realized his mistake. He thought it was an hour earlier than it was. This confirms my theory that he can't tell time.

During the brief time the caretaker worked for my parents, my father became deathly ill twice. The first time, I found my father barely responsive. My mother had called and said that my father's diaper was filled with bright red blood. The caretaker had insisted that it wasn't blood, my father was fine and left the house as usual. He also borrowed my mother's car. Of course, I called in sick and came right away.

I figured that my father either had a urinary tract infection or was bleeding internally from too much coumadin, a high-risk blood thinner. Either way, he needed to go to the hospital, but I couldn't take him because my father's wheelchair was in my mother's car. I'm strong, but not strong enough to carry my father through the house and out to a car. I had to call 911.

The hospital determined that my father had a urinary tract infection and was severely dehydrated. The dehydrated part annoyed me. I had told the caretaker how much water to give my father a day and he hadn't followed my instructions. He had only been giving my father about a cup of water a day. What kind of fool would think that was enough?

My father was treated and released after a few days. This time, I removed my father's catheter, to avoid future infections. He didn't need it to void, it just made caring for him easier. The caretaker called and chastised me for removing the catheter. I'm still angry about that. He didn't care about my father's health. It only mattered what was easier for him.

My father later got dehydrated again on the caretaker's watch. I thought that he had learned his lesson the first time. He had increased the fluid intake, but when my father developed watery diarrhea, he didn't give him extra fluid to compensate. The diarrhea was the result of the caretaker deciding to give my father Milk of Magnesia. He made an honest mistake with the Milk of Magnesia, but to me, it is just common sense that if a person loses excess fluid, it needs to be replaced. I wanted to fire the caretaker, but my mother wouldn't let me, because although she also was unhappy with him, she felt sorry for him.

I have a long list of stupid things he did, but I think you get the idea. I'm glad he's gone. He's nothing more than a great big screw-up. And now, I'm back to going to my parent's house every day to provide care.

The Ordeal

2009-06-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

I have procrastinated for so long, that I no longer know where to start. The situation with my parents absolutely overwhelms me, so I have avoided blogging about it.

It turns out that in addition to my father's emphysema and congestive heart failure, he also had a major stroke. That is why he is now fed through a tube in his stomach. He has enough strength in his arms and legs that he should be able to walk, but he doesn't remember how. He also doesn't remember how to turn over in bed. He wears a diaper and needs to be changed regularly.

I have no idea how much he understands. He can speak in complete sentences, but rarely says a word. When asked a question, there is a long, long pause. He may give a one word response or no answer at all. He doesn't know how old he is, but he does seem to recall the past, I think. I'm not really sure. At least he remembers that I'm his girl and tells me he loves me and that I'm the greatest.

My mother isn't doing all that great either. Recently, she called me and with slurred speech, said that she was having a stroke. She refused to call 911. She didn't want the embarrassment of big red trucks with sirens and flashing lights coming to get her. My mother hates being the center of attention. I had no choice but to go get her and take her to the hospital. By that time, the window period for giving a clot-busting drug had expired.

The stroke mostly resolved itself. Her speech is fine, but she leans to one side when she stands. When I remind her to stand up straight, she can, but soon she forgets and goes back to that Hunchback of Notre Dame stance again.

An MRI was done and showed that my mother has had many tiny strokes in the past. Her brain is like Swiss cheese. That explains a lot. Since my mother's mother also had dementia, I had assumed it was genetic and I might be next in line. It is a tremendous relief to know that I only have to continue to take good care of myself (and maybe take a baby aspirin everyday) and I should be fine.

The problem is what to do with my parents. Medicare doesn't cover nursing home care and it runs about 5 or 6 thousand dollars a month. Even though my parents are fairly well off, it would eventually eat through their savings and then their house. When everything is gone, then Medi-Cal would kick in.

I tried having my mother take care of my father and it was disastrous. She couldn't remember sometimes how to feed my father. When she couldn't remember, I would have to drive over and take care of it. It is 50 miles round trip and she forgot at least once, sometimes twice a day. I was exhausted from having to do this before and sometimes after my shift in the hospital.

My father is on ten different medications given at different times of the day. Even though I organized the pills in little pill boxes labeled for each day and time, it was impossible for her to handle. She also kept forgetting to give my father water. I would call several times a day to remind her of the things that needed to be done, but it didn't help and she resented being told what to do.

I soon hired a nurse's aide to come for two hours a day to take care of my father. He did a great job, but it wasn't enough.

Twice, my father ended up in the hospital with dehydration. The last time, he also had a pressure ulcer on his bottom because he hadn't been cleaned and turned frequently enough. This got us in trouble with social services. The hospital let us bring my father home only if we had a care plan that didn't involve my mother.

Next, I hired an out of work construction worker. A nurse's aide would have been a better choice, but they are too expensive. The construction worker lives at my parent's house and seems to take good care of my father. It costs two thousand dollars a month, which has my mother very unhappy. She calls me several times a week and complains about him and the money. I can't do anything about the money, but I have offered repeatedly to find someone else. She doesn't want the construction worker fired because she feels sorry for him. I get stressed listening to my mother complain.

In a one year period, my brother and both of my parents had strokes. My brother died, my father was left bedridden and my mother has dementia. In the last two and a half years, I lost three dogs (who were really children, not dogs) to cancer. I feel like my family is disappearing.

So, now that I got this over with, I will return to more upbeat posts. I just wanted to let you all know why I have been so quiet lately.

Georgie

2009-06-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

Not that they were ever enemies, but my dogs had become especially nice to Georgie lately. They has always been a little jealous of him. But now, MacKenzie often sat next to him on the couch. She would kiss his face. Tommy, who had always been aloof, would sniff his face. I was happy that we were finally a happily family. But, it turns out the dogs knew something that I didn't.

My sweet, blonde cocker had become a finicky eater over the last week or so. I was begging him to eat roast chicken, roast beef, cheese, bacon, and anything else I could think of. Yesterday, he would only drink water.

He was also panting. The weather was fairly cool, but he has such a thick coat of fur, I thought perhaps a shearing my help cool him off. I sheared the fur around his neck and chest, but it didn't help.

I took his temperature and it was 103.5. His nose was chapped and a little bit of milky discharge was coming from his nostrils, so I made an appointment to see the vet that afternoon. In the meantime, Georgie would not sit or lie down. He just stood and panted. I figured that he had pneumonia and just needed some antibiotics.

The vet took some x-rays and said that his lungs appeared to be filled with fluid. There was also some distortion in his chest cavity, like everything was being pushed to the side. He thought that Georgie had heart failure which was causing his lungs to fill with fluid. Or, it could be cancer.

The vet said that Georgie was in critical condition and needed to go to a 24 hour emergency hospital. While I was in the waiting room, the vet came out and told me that Georgie was crashing. He let me come in the back. Georgie had passed out, but now an oxygen mask was on Georgie's face. He was doing better, but every time they tried getting the mask off, his tongue turned blue.

The vet said there was a good possibility that Georgie would die on the way to the hospital, but there was no alternative. The vet had me turn the air conditioner in my car on full blast and once the car was good and cold, Georgie was put in my car. He did fine on the drive. I think that the stress of being at the vets office was what had pushed him over the edge.

The next vet put him in a glass cage with pumped in oxygen. They let me stay with him. He looked so cute, just like a dog for sale in a pet store. I was able to put my arm through a port and pet him.

More x-rays were done and the vet said the Georgie had a hernia in his diaphragm and that his intestines, liver and other organs had migrated into the chest cavity. This was squishing his lungs and explained why he was so short of breath. It was something that could be surgically repaired. It would be expensive, but when it comes to my dogs, there is no such thing as too much money.

The vet found a thoracic surgeon who could operate on Georgie that night, but it was at a hospital in West LA. They had me wait a couple of hours until rush hour traffic eased up. They checked sig alerts and as soon as it looked okay, they let me take Georgie, again with the air conditioner running full blast. His tongue was a little blue on the trip, but he was a trooper.

So far, the day had cost me nine hundred dollars, but that was fine. My dogs are priceless and get the best of everything. At the surgical center, they asked for five thousand dollars and got it. I would have signed over title to my house if they had asked. I just wanted Georgie well again.

The thoracic surgeon was on her way. They suggested that I go home and wait, so I did. The surgeon called before the surgery to explain the risks and said that she wasn't at all sure that she could save Georgie. I told her to operate and just do her best.

About and hour later, the vet called in the middle of surgery. She said that Georgie had had the hernia for years and that it wasn't the cause for Georgie's respiratory distress. There was a massive growth on Georgie's lung and liver. It looked cancerous. If she removed his lung, the remaining lung would not be able to compensate. His prognosis was extremely grim. She recommended not waking him from the surgery. In tears, I agreed to let him go.

My heart is broken and I can't stop crying. Georgie came from the pound and I only had him for less than two years. It's just not fair. Four months ago, I broke my dependence/addiction to Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug. Now I'm back on it, big time. It's not doing anything for the grief, but at least it made the panic attacks stop.

In the meantime, a candle, with his collar in a circle around it, is burning. Lindsay, my boyfriend, said that it will help guide his soul to Heaven. Lindsay is more spiritual than I am, but who am I to say it won't help? Rituals serve a purpose sometimes.

Swinging In The Wind

2009-06-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

This is an update to my post, "The Misunderstanding," dated April 4, 2009. This situation involved a patient who was made a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) by mistake. The patient died because when he went into cardiac arrest, we let him die. The family claims that the patient never would have agreed to be a DNR and didn't speak enough English to understand what the doctor said about a DNR. The patient would smile and nod his head just to be polite. The doctor took the nods of the head to mean that the patient wanted to be a DNR.

I don't know if we have been sued yet, but the investigation is still ongoing. One of the administrators called me into his office the other day to discuss the case. He had read my version of the events and wanted to know what I was talking about. He had the computerized chart open and the patient was clearly a full code. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.

When the patient had gone into cardiac arrest down in CAT scan, they called me because I was the charge nurse that day. They wanted to know what to do. I told them not to call a code because the patient was a DNR. They soon returned the dead body back to us. The family unfortunately showed up before we had a chance to notify them and found their dad lying dead in his bed. Things went downhill from there.

So, now I'm looking at a chart that shows the patient was a full code and wondering if I have lost my mind. With more confidence than I felt, I said, "He was too a DNR."

One of the great things (and bad things) about our work computers is that you can't entirely erase what happened. We did a search of the order history and discovered that the doctor had deleted the DNR order the day after the patient died. This is evidence that the doctor knew he screwed up and was trying to cover his tracks. He probably didn't give it much thought, but in his haste to protect himself, he left the nurses (and especially me) swinging in the wind. Changing the patient's chart made it look like the nurses just twiddled their thumbs when the patient went into cardiac arrest. Well, in a sense that is what happened, but we did nothing because we had a written order not to call a code.

I should be angry, but my reaction is more astonishment than anything else. It amazes me that the doctor thought he would be able to get away with it. He altered a legal document. If we are sued, the opposing attorney will feel like he has won the lottery when he discovers this.

Getting Dad Home

2009-05-15T18:50:00.000-07:00

Negotiating my dad's release from the nursing home was harder than expected. After finally convincing my mother to let me bring him home, I showed up at the nursing home, unannounced, and said that I was taking him home. They wanted to know why and I told them. In a calm, professional voice I told them how unhappy I was with their facility. How, while under their care my father had gone from being able to walk to now, just lying in bed, day after day, with no one getting him up. He was so weak, he couldn't even roll over. He had also lost an alarming amount of weight. He looked deathly ill and was barely responsive. They called the doctor for discharge orders..

The doctor suggested that my dad go to the ER . That was fine with me. I knew dad was sick and would die if he stayed in that nursing home much longer. The ER sounded great to me.

The nursing home called an ambulance and we met up at the ER. Dad was admitted to the hospital with severe dehydration, malnutrition, urosepsis and aspirational pneumonia. Dad had lost 15 pounds during his two or three months in the nursing home and he was skinny to begin with. That is criminal.

After a week, my father was discharged back to the same nursing home. My mother is not in her right mind and no one consulted with me in advance. As soon as I heard about the transfer, I called the nursing home and said that I would be over to take him home. The director of nursing called me back and begged for another chance to get my father better. She said they had a team of physical therapists who would get him up twice a day. A speech therapist would work with his swallowing difficulties. The hospital had discovered that he couldn't swallow safely and had inserted a G tube (gastric tube) into his stomach through which he was now being fed. She convinced me they had skills that I lacked and that his best chance of recovery was with them. Sometimes, I'm such a fool. I gave her one week.

After the week was up, dad looked as bad as ever. No one had gotten him up and the speech therapist did not even try to get him to swallow. I was livid, but said nothing about the care. I asked for the discharge instructions. While reading through the list of medications, I felt a growing rage. They had been giving him thorazine. That is a drug which is used to chemically restrain out of control psych patients. No wonder dad was such a zombie.

The explanation was that they were giving it for hiccoughs. That is a possible use for the drug, but they were giving it around the clock, regardless of whether dad had hiccoughs or not. They were sedating an old, bedridden man as though he were a young, violent maniac.

Then, I noticed the absence of a critical medication. Dad has A fib, which is a type of heart arrhythmia that causes blood clots to form, if not treated. It leads to strokes. Coumadin is the treatment for this problem. Dad had been on coumadin, but now he wasn't getting it. I looked up from the paper with my eyes in a death glare. The nurse winced.

In a soft voice, I said that my father had A fib. I asked if he had received any blood thinners. The nurse said no. I didn't know who I wanted to kill first, the doctor or the nursing home people who failed to bring an obvious oversight to the attention of the doctor. I took a deep breathe and left to go get my dad in a wheelchair.

Once we got home, I somehow got dad out of the car and into the wheelchair. It wasn't easy. He is dead weight, but somehow, I did it. While going through the garage, dad suddenly stiffened, his eyes rolled back and he started sliding out of the chair. I grabbed him under the arms and yanked him back up. He was stiff as a board. I couldn't stop the fall, so I helped glide him gently to the floor.

I thought he was dead.This couldn't be happening. I went into nurse-mode and quickly determined that he was okay. He had just fainted. He had been laying flat in bed for so long that sitting upright caused his blood pressure to drop. Lying flat on the cold, concrete floor, he was fine. But, now what? I'm strong, but I can't lift a grown man off the floor and into a wheelchair.

I went in the house, got a throw rug and rolled dad onto it. It was a cold day, the concrete was cold and I figured that he was going to be there for a while. It was time for a beer.

While drinking the beer, I considered the options. Calling 911 was tempting, but the paramedics would just take him back to the hospital. It seemed doubtful that they would pick him up and put him in bed for me. My mother suggested having him live in the garage. We could put a mattress on the floor and make it nice. Mom may be nuts, but at least she still has a sense of humor. We laughed at our predicament.

Once the beer buzz took effect, I went in the garage, picked up my dad and put him in the wheelchair. Soon, he was in bed. Then, the real work was about to begin. I had to teach mom how to take care of him.

To be continued, if I get around to it.

The Misunderstanding

2009-04-04T00:05:00.000-07:00

A man is lying dead in the morgue right now, all because of a misunderstanding. The crisis started just as our shift was beginning. Someone called a code blue, so we rushed into the patient's room to do our jobs. The man had stopped breathing during a seizure, but quickly recovered by just being shaken.

At some point, we realized that he was a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). A code shouldn't have been called, but no harm was done. However, the patient was unstable, so the doctor ordered that the patient be transferred to ICU. His heart rate was almost 200.

No beds were available in ICU. It was going to take some time for ICU to make room for him, so in the meantime, he waited in our unit, with a heart rate of almost 200. We are not a telemetry unit. We have no way to monitor heart rhythms. We only knew how fast his heart was beating.

The doctor wanted a CT scan of the patient's head, so since radiology was available, he was sent there. After that, he was going to go to ICU. Only, he never made it. While radiology had him, they called and asked if we were sure that the patient was a DNR. I said yes. At that point, the patient was in full cardiac arrest. A code was not called. He could have been brought back, I'm sure, but we were following the patient's wishes, we thought.

The body was brought back to us. The family was notified and soon they began arriving. It was a large, grieving family. They were shocked to learn that we had let him die. They said that he never would have agreed to a DNR.

The doctor who ordered the DNR, didn't follow our usual protocol. He didn't write any notes regarding his discussion with the patient. All he did was check a DNR box on the computer. We don't even really know if he intended to check that box.

The family also correctly pointed out that the patient was confused. How can a confused person agree to a DNR? The family was also never consulted by the doctor regarding the patient's wishes. And, perhaps worst of all, the patient spoke almost no English. The patient was a nice man who would politely smile and nod his head in response to almost any question. The doctor never used a translator.

I'm sure that we are going to be sued.

So, So Tired

2009-03-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

I am acutely aware of how little I have been blogging lately. There are a number of reasons. The main one is exhaustion. I have been sick for seven weeks now. It started out as the flu and just won't go away. Most of the people at work got it despite flu shots. It is a nasty bug and just hangs on. I still have a low grade fever and come home from work and go straight to bed. I used to do my blogging after coming home from work. Now, I just watch TV and go to sleep. This bug has to go away eventually. I'm waiting it out.

The stress of dealing with my parent's problems is also wearing away at me. My father keeps getting sicker and my mom keeps getting more forgetful and confused. I'm just worn out dealing with their issues.

Rather than have a bunch of whiny, miserable posts, I have been choosing to blog as little as possible. This is not a permanent situation. Once I'm better, I intend to fully return to the world of blogging. Thank you for your patience.

Where's The Sugar?

2009-03-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

I may have committed a felony. Or, perhaps it was just a misdemeanor. Regardless, I broke the law. I took a test for my mom. She had to go to traffic school and one option, instead of class, was to take a test at home. She really should have chosen the class.

A few years ago, she would have gotten a hundred percent on a test like that, but now she couldn't do it. It wasn't for lack of trying. She spent countless hours working on it and even got up at 4 in the morning today to put some more time into it. Her mind just doesn't work like it used to.

Feeling a little resentful, I did the test for her. Considering all of the book reports and school projects my mom did for me over the years, I suppose it is only fair that I return the favor. I just hope that I got a passing grade.

Mom made sweet and sour chicken for dinner, only she forgot the sweet part. It was just chicken and vegetables in a vinegar sauce. I didn't say anything and was just grateful that the portion was small.

On the way home, I stopped at a frozen yogurt shop. I got my usual tart flavor, but they had made a mistake in making it. There was no sugar in it. Frozen yogurt is normally high in sugar and there is a good reason for that. It is amazing how bad it tastes without sugar. Again, I just ate it and didn't say anything.

Tonight, I am going to have a bowl of ice cream. I need it.

The Homecoming

2009-03-11T12:01:00.000-07:00

Daddy is going to be coming home soon. He has been stuck in a nursing home for nearly two months. This has been upsetting to me and it has been hard for me not to be angry at my mother for leaving him there.

After his last hospitalization, he was too weak to stand, so the hospital, without asking, transferred him to a nursing home for physical rehab. I wanted to bring him home and have physical therapists come to the house, but my mother didn't think she could handle him. She was adamant that he would stay in the nursing home for the time being.

Eventually, he could walk again, but my mother still didn't want to bring him home because he needed to wear diapers. She kept raising the bar for what was required to come home. Every time we visited, he would ask when he could come home. It was heartbreaking for me.

I was tempted to bring him home with me, but I'm gone so much, I would need 24 hour a day caregivers for him. I don't make that kind of money.

In the nursing home, Daddy was starting to deteriorate. He was losing weight, refusing to get out of bed and mostly just staring off into space with glazed-over eyes. He rarely talked and wouldn't respond to questions. I thought that he was suffering from depression. His only request was for water.

Finally, a bill came for the amount of the nursing home not covered by Medicare. It was for six thousand, six hundred and six dollars, plus change. It was the sign of the Anti-Christ. Now, my mother was ready to take Daddy home. She didn't know how to get him out, so I took care of it. It was simple. I just went to the nursing station and said that we wanted to take my father home. They called a doctor to get discharge orders, but the doctor wanted my father to go to the emergency room first to be checked out. He was showing signs of developing pneumonia.

I said fine and later we met him at the hospital. The first thing I noticed was that IV fluid was running about four times faster than would be expected for someone with my father's health problems. I knew immediately why. Daddy was dehydrated. With the fluids, he had already perked up. His eyes were sharp and alert again.

He was admitted so that they could continue to treat him for his severe dehydration. I am so angry. First of all, I'm angry at myself for not recognizing the dehydration. I'm a nurse. There is no excuse.

I'm also angry at the nursing home. They should have been monitoring his fluid intake. Daddy would drink anything put in front of him, so I'm sure that they just weren't giving him enough fluids to drink. The nurses had a duty to make sure he was properly hydrated. Even if my father was refusing fluids, which I doubt, they needed to get an order to give him IV fluids. It was below the standard of care to allow him to get dehydrated.

I'm planning on making a complaint against the nursing home's license. Lindsay wants to sue them for elder neglect. This may turn into a big lawsuit. I would love to get them shut down so that they can't abuse any more patients.

Good-Bye Gardeners

2009-02-27T18:25:00.000-08:00

I finally did it. I have wanted to do this for almost ten years and I finally did it. I fired the gardeners. There are so many reasons for this. Let me explain.

The gardeners arrive at seven-thirty in the morning. It might as well be in the middle of the night as far as I am concerned. I work evenings and rarely get to sleep before one-thirty. If Georgie is acting up, I might be awake until three.

I don't sleep well on the night before gardener day, because I need to get up before they come and open the garage door and lock up the dogs. All night long I keep waking up and wondering if its time yet. Once it is starting to get light, I'll go downstairs and give the dogs one last chance to relieve themselves. Then, the doggy door is locked.

Once the gardeners arrive, the dogs bark like the world is coming to an end. Due to all of the excitement, MacKenzie will have a bowel movement on the carpet. Georgie sometimes will as well. And of course, what dog can have a bowel movement without also peeing? The day after gardener day, the carpet gets shampooed. My carpet shampooer gets so much use that it usually has to be replaced every year.

Once the gardeners have left, I have to close the garage and open the doggy door. I also have to stand and watch as the garage door comes down to make sure it doesn't go back up. The gardeners like to leave one of my brooms under the path of the door which prevents its closing. If the door doesn't close, the dogs can escape. I learned that the hard way.

The rest of the day, I'm tired and miserable. It also makes me unhappy when I see what they have done. They are only supposed to take care of the lawn, but they won't keep their mitts off my other plants. They love to prune and they have no idea what they are doing. I live in a warm climate. My rose bushes don't need to be pruned almost to the ground. I want them big and bushy. I also get upset when they weed-whack my dormant plants as they emerge from the ground. The gardeners can't tell irises from weeds. They also till the soil after I have planted seeds. And I'm still mad that last week I was making some soup and needed Swiss chard. I went out into the yard to get some and it was gone. I don't know if they thought the Swiss chard were weeds or if they wanted some for dinner also.

I would have fired them sooner, but my parents have insisted that I have gardeners. Rather than argue with them, it was just easier to do what they wanted. Now, my parents are old, frail
and not entirely with it. My dad is living in a nursing home and thinks he is on a ship. I see no reason to tell him any different. Since his last hospitalization, he just hasn't been the same. I suspect he went too long without oxygen before they were able to intubate him. My mom has the same mild dementia.

It is depressing having both of my parents being cognitively impaired, but it does have certain advantages. I was finally able to fire the gardeners.

Special Event

2009-02-22T19:35:00.000-08:00

There was plenty of warning concerning the "special event." For weeks, road signs had flashed warnings about road closures for the special event. As the date approached, I memorized what day and time I would need to stay home. No mention was made what the special event was about, but I figured it was either a parade, walk or marathon. I didn't especially care. I just didn't want to be caught in the road closures.

On the big day, I woke to dogs barking. The special event wasn't scheduled for another four hours, but workers were already at the bottom of the hill getting set up. It wasn't time for me to get up, so I was feeling cranky about my sleep being interrupted. Getting the dogs to be quiet was hopeless. Everything within sight of our house is the dog's territory and so the dogs get upset whenever anyone trespasses on their property. It is perfectly understandable.

An hour before the special event, the dogs were completely going nuts. People were parking all over the street and walking to the bottom of the hill. Neighbors were walking by with their dogs. I was sitting on the couch with a view of the bottom of the hill. I was trying to read the paper, but I couldn't concentrate with all of the racket. I mainly just stared out the window and wished that the special event would be over soon.

I knew that the special event was near my house when I heard the helicopter coming. A news crew must have been filming. Next a cop car drove by making little whoop, whoop noises. It was followed by a group of bicyclists. They were in a tight cluster and were visible for about ten seconds from my window. They were followed by support vehicles and an ambulance.

The crowd left and finally it was quiet again. It seemed like a lot of trouble for a ten second show.
It wasn't until later I learned that Lance Armstrong rode by. If I had known he was coming, I would have tried to get a picture. Maybe next time.

Busted

2009-02-08T19:20:00.000-08:00

My mom told me that she got arrested. By some odd coincidence, I also got arrested the same week. Well, we weren't really arrested. That was just my mom's term for it. What we got were traffic infractions.

This was my mom's first ticket and my second. What my mom was accused of doing was driving on the wrong side of the road. She says that she was driving into the left turn lane. I'm not sure if mom misjudged where the turning lane was or if the cop was mistaken, but she decided not to fight it. Her fine, not counting the cost of traffic school was about two hundred and twenty dollars.

I got caught in a speed trap. I had just gotten off the freeway and was driving on a wide road coming down a hill. The cop clocked me at 63 mph in a 45 speed zone. I believe the speed limit was deliberately set too low to trap speeders. I could fight it in court, but I don't need the stress and aggravation.

What irks me the most is that the cop used a radar gun. That just seems unsportsman-like. I want the cop to take after me and try to pace me. Many have tried and all have failed. It is an exciting game. I can slow my car down very quickly without lighting up the brake lights. It confuses the cops and they leave. Isn't that why hand-brakes were invented?

My fine was three hundred and thirty dollars. That hurts. I'm also not going to go to traffic school, because I did that once twenty years ago and that was enough. I'm hoping that my insurance rates don't go up. I'll soon find out.

Wet Yosemite

2009-01-24T20:42:00.000-08:00

It rained the last two days in Yosemite. I couldn't ski or skate, but I could walk around and take pictures. This is what Yosemite looks like when a warm, tropical rain storm lands on top of snow.

An Icy Path

2009-01-24T19:37:00.000-08:00

I was wrong about something. For some reason, I believed that anyone who could walk, could cross country ski. I'm not talking about the Olympics version of cross country skiing. I'm talking about the type that even old ladies in Norway can do, where you just slowly slide along on fairly even ground.

Lindsay made a liar out of me. He couldn't stay upright, so I ended up skiing by myself.

One of the things I like about cross country skiing is getting away from other people. Downhill looks like more fun, but I don't like crowds of people. Above, is the ski slope at Badger Pass in Yosemite. It was almost deserted. If I could have whole runs to myself like this, I might switch to downhill. I'm not sure if it was just a slow day or if the economy has hit skiers.

It was just as well that Lindsay didn't go on my little run down the road to Glacier Point. It is a road that have I have skied several times in the past. I have referred to the route as the Bataan death march, but it is actually just long and tiring, not difficult.

My first clue of impending doom was when I passed a young, healthy looking man walking back, carrying his skis. Perhaps his equipment broke, I thought optimistically. Soon, I was on the shady side of the mountain going uphill. It wasn't bad at all.

Then I came to a downhill section. My speed started building and none of my tricks for slowing down were working. The track, pictured above was solid ice. I stepped out of the track, but all of the snow was compacted down hard and icy. I was going faster and faster, out of control. I aimed for a snowy slope to crash into, but went down before reaching it.

The fall didn't hurt me, but I destroyed another camera. What is it about digital cameras and minor trauma? The camera still works, but I can't see what I'm taking a picture of. Well, I can see through the tiny viewfinder window, but the view is different from what the lens sees. It takes a lot of trial and error to properly frame a photo.

There was a meadow next to where I fell, so I took off my skis and walked over to it. I had a nice picnic lunch in the snow and then walked back. It was embarrassing carrying my skis back, but I know that I wasn't the first person to do that and probably wasn't the last.

Once I got near the parking lot, I put the skis back on. I do have some pride.

A Few Good Things

2009-01-18T20:53:00.000-08:00

Some good things happened today. First off, I stepped on the scale and discovered that I had lost five pounds. This was without dieting. The only thing I did was start taking Alli. It interferes with the absorption of fat. Most days I don't touch it because my usual diet is healthy and low in fat, but if I go out for a meal or find myself presented with goodies at work, I can nip the extra calories in the bud.

Having slippery fat pass through the digestive tract has the potential for creating social embarrassment, but so far, there have been no problems. There have been some close calls, especially after the surprisingly oily Chinese chicken salad, but no accidents, yet.

The weight loss has been slow. The five pound loss was over four months, but I'm fine with that. It was without hunger, sacrifice or deprivation and now I fit into my smallest jeans.

The other good thing that happened is that I finally got around to looking at my paycheck and discovered that I now get four weeks of paid vacation a year. I like to divide my vacation time into one week chunks, so now I can take four vacations a year instead of just three.

Lastly, I'm leaving on a ski trip tomorrow. The weather has been so warm and summer-like lately, that I'm not sure that there will be any snow, but it will be nice to get away. Yosemite is one of my favorite places and I probably will have it mostly to myself. Not many people go there during mid-week in January during a warm spell.

My dad is still in the hospital. but he looks much better. All of the tubes are gone except for his chest tube. His lung is still leaking air, but there is hope that it will heal without surgery. At least he can now eat whatever he wants. If he takes a turn for the worse, I can be back in about five hours.

Oh, I almost forgot, I'm also glad that I'm single. I was shopping and tried on a jacket. I need a new jacket like I need a hole in the head, but they were cute and different from anything else I have. As I happily walked away with my new jacket, another woman came over and tried on a jacket. Her husband said in a nasty tone of voice, "You need a new jacket like you need a hole in the head." That poor woman slinked away empty handed. Every time I wear that jacket, I'm going to think about how lucky I am.

Another Week

2009-01-11T21:09:00.000-08:00

My dad recovered quickly from pneumonia and was discharged from the hospital. What a relief. My life could get back to normal. My mom would be at her house instead of mine and I would have my freedom back. I would be able to sleep through the night without anyone trying to climb in bed with me. There would be no repetitive re-orienting. And, instead of getting up early everyday and rushing to the hospital before work, I would be able to sleep in and read the newspaper. Life was good again.

On my first morning of freedom, I woke to the phone ringing. It was mom. She was crying. Dad had been rushed to the hospital again. The ER people wouldn't let her see him, so she drove home and called me. I got dressed, picked up mom and drove to the hospital. We got there just as they were taking him to CCU.

He had been intubated and was breathing on a vent. One of his lungs had collapsed, so there was a chest tube, along with an assortment of other tubes. He was in a drug induced coma. We spent some time with him, but there was nothing we could do. He had no awareness we were there, so we left.

We hadn't eaten anything that day, so we went out for lunch. There were some errands that needed to be run, so we took care of that. I took mom and her dogs home with me. I was sick with worry about dad, but I had no choice but to carry on. Later that evening, mom smiled and said, "This has been such a fun day. " Mom may be confused at times, but at least she is pleasantly confused.

After two days, dad was taken off the vent and was doing well. He was irritable, difficult and demanding and I was glad. That meant the fire was back and he was doing better. He wanted food, but they wouldn't let him have anything by mouth. They were feeding him through a tube going down to his stomach, but he was hungry and wanted food.

I did a swallow test on him and he passed, so I fed him. He ate two slices of bread and some chocolates. Right before leaving, I gave him a sip of water. The nurse walked in and caught me holding the cup to dad's mouth. The nurse was enraged. I fought back. The argument ended with me walking out of the room. If the nurse was that mad over a sip of water, I wonder what he would have done if he had caught my father eating real food?

The next day, dad was transferred to a regular room. My brother visited and brought food from In-N-Out Burger. Dad ate two burgers, two milkshakes and some fries. But, Dad still wasn't allowed to eat under the hospital rules.

I expressed my concern to his next nurse that I either wanted my father to be given a diet or I wanted them to prove that he was unable to swallow. A swallow test was ordered, but couldn't be done for a couple of days. I was unhappy with that because I knew that dad could swallow just fine and I didn't want to to suffer for no good reason. I worked out a deal with the nurse that I would close the door to dad's room and he would not come in. Dad could eat a good meal and the nurse could pretend that he knew nothing about it. It has been an entire week now and that is where we currently stand.

In the meantime, mom suddenly announced that she wanted to go home. I tried to talk her into staying, but she wanted to go home. I try hard to be patient with mom, but I'm worried that she may be sensing my fatigue and frustration. I took mom home.

This evening, I turned on the TV and there was nothing but static. I tried everything I could think of, but I can't fix it. Out of curiosity, I tried the TV in the guest room. It was broken too. The only TV that still works is the one in my room. Thank goodness mom left that one alone. I suspect that the reason mom wanted to go home was because she knew that she had broken both TVs. I am so worn out.

The Impostor

2009-01-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

A crazy lady is staying with me. She is a dead ringer for my mother, but it is not her. This lady is an impostor. Mom is a little forgetful and ditsy at times, but she is nothing like the impostor.

My dad is in the hospital again with COPD exacerbation, so mom is staying with me. I'm going to describe just one day with mom. It starts at midnight when I come home from work. The house is lit up like a retail establishment. The other homes on the block are dark, with maybe just one light on. My house has every light on, inside and out.

Mom has moved her car, so that I'm unable to put my car in the garage. I park on the street and walk in the house. Something is hissing in the kitchen. It is a tea kettle boiling furiously with only about an inch of water left in the bottom. Could mom have gone to bed and left that disaster waiting to happen?

I go looking for her, but mom's bed is neatly made. I check the other rooms. She is not home. I search the yard, front and back. Mom is gone. I'm wondering if she locked herself out and wandered off, not knowing what to do. Perhaps a kind neighbor took her in. Maybe she fell, broke her hip and I need to try harder to find her. I don't want to call the police, but I don't know what else to do. I go upstairs to get a flashlight to better search the shrubbery one last time before calling the cops.

On the way up the stairs, I run into mom coming down the stairs. She had been in my bathroom getting all dolled up. She has her own private bath, but forgot about that and used my bathroom instead. It didn't occur to me to search my own bath.

Her hair and make up were done and she was nicely dressed. She had been getting ready for some visitor who had called and told her to put some coffee on. Mom had forgotten how to work the coffee maker, so she was boiling water to pour through the coffee maker. She is having trouble with the concept of having to push an "on" switch.

There was a message on the answering machine, but it didn't come even remotely close to anyone saying that they were on their way over for an visit and to put some coffee on. It was just a message from my brother asking where our parents were.

Mom, although looking forward to her mystery visitor, was worried because her purse was gone. She believed someone broke in the house and stole it. I searched the house and found the purse in the bottom of my closet.

Her next worry was that her car keys were gone. I searched the house, her car, the yard and up and down the street. The keys were definitely gone. The keys were lost during the dog chase. Mom had gone out front, but hadn't quite latched the door. The dogs pushed the door open and took off in five different directions. It took an hour, but eventually all five dogs were caught or returned home on their own. Mom had driven up and down the streets looking for the dogs and searched on foot. The keys must have dropped on the ground and are gone.

My next day off will be spent getting new keys from the car dealer, having a house key made and hiring a locksmith to remove her gas cap. It will be replaced with gas cap that doesn't lock.

It was very late when I finally got to bed. I fell asleep. The next thing I knew, mom was wandering around my bedroom. I ignored her and hoped that she would go back to bed. Then, she started poking at my legs.

"Mom. What are you doing?"

"Trying to get in bed."

I tried to orient her and tell her to go back to her bed. She left.

I woke up again. Mom was telling the dogs to move over. Once again she was trying to get in my bed. I asked her if she knew where her bed was. She said no. I got up, asked her to follow me and took her back to her bed.

The next morning, mom came in my room a little after seven am and was worried about my getting to work on time. I reminded her that I go to work in the afternoon. She then asked if she drove home right now, would she get home before dark. I told her that she lives a half hour away, but that she would be staying with me until Daddy got home. She didn't believe me that it was such a short trip. I just rolled over and went back to sleep.

Soon, I woke up to the door bell. Mom had locked herself out. She forgot where the hidden key was. I was woken up one last time when mom decided to come in my room again and sing to the dogs.

Everyday when I visit Daddy, he tells me with a wild look in his eyes to "take care of your mother."It is starting to sink in just what he means.

In the meantime, I'm feeling really, really tired.

More Ways To Be Sued

2008-12-30T00:08:00.000-08:00

This would make a great law school exam question. The issue is foreseeability. The patient is admitted with a broken back. The x-ray clearly shows that two of the vertebra are fractured. The doctor decides to treat the patient by ordering the physical therapist to make her walk. The patient protests, but gives in when threatened. She stands up and immediately loses all sensation in her legs. Imagine. Who saw that coming?

The patient is being transferred to another hospital for neurosurgery, because we don't do that at our hospital. Hopefully, the neurosurgeon can remove the fractured vertebra that is now wedged against the spinal cord. If we are really lucky, she may even walk again. We never seem to run out of ways to be sued.

We have another patient who may get an infection because of another mistake that was made. I got report from the recovery room on a patient who had just had hip replacement surgery. Going into the room to get it ready for the patient, I couldn't help but notice that the room was dirty. It would be unusual, but possible that the patient was in that room prior to surgery and it was only her trash all over the room. I enquired and the answer was no. It was not her dirty room, it was the prior patient's dirty room and they forgot to clean it.

That problem could have been corrected before the patient arrived, except for one issue. The patient was arriving by bed and the bed came from the dirty room. ( Our orthopedic patients are place on the bed from their assigned room immediately after surgery.)

I asked about the previous patient from that room and was told that he had a scrotal infection. This is where you say ewwww. This lady's bare bottom was lying where the man's private area touched. I changed the sheets, but it was too late.

Tatts

2008-12-21T00:05:00.000-08:00

One of my coworkers showed up for work with a different look. Her face was tattooed. Black arched eyebrows swooped across her face in a dramatic, permanent look of surprise. Black rings surrounded her eyes and the finishing touch was a black dot on her cheek, a beauty mark. For a blonde, especially, I'm not sure about the wisdom in choosing black, permanent make-up.

Her look is both theatrical and clown-like, in my opinion. She seems happy with it, though. And all of that work only cost one hundred dollars. She was especially proud of the bargain basement price. I hope that someday when she is old and the black lines are sagging, she is still happy about her bargain tattoos. Her next project is lip liner. In my humble opinion, that will be another big mistake. Unless she always wears lipstick, there will be an odd red line circling her lips. It is not a flattering look.

Also on the subject of tattoos, one of our patients has an unusual tattoo. It is in her rectum. I don't mean around her bottom, I mean that the tattoo is inside the first three inches of her rectum. I have no idea why. Except for that, she seems perfectly normal. I really don't understand it.

The Three Inch Disgrace

2008-12-16T00:26:00.000-08:00

We used to get a twenty-five dollar gift certificate for Christmas. Then, the tax laws changed. Because we would have to pay income tax on the gift certificate under the new rules, my employer did away with the Christmas presents. How thoughtful.

To make it up to us, they have been buying us food treats instead. I have no recognition of last year's food gift, which in and of itself is noteworthy. I have an exceptional memory when it comes to things like food. It must not have been good, but also not so bad that it is forever etched in my memory.

Anyway, we got this year's Christmas present. We heard that it was going to be Subway sandwiches. They have a "five dollar foot long" special right now, so we expected a foot long sub. It was disappointing, considering that was going to be our entire present, but at least subs are okay to eat. When the time came, we were each presented with a quarter of a sandwich. I measured it just to make sure. It was a three incher.

We don't mean to be ungrateful. They didn't have to give us anything. And with the bigwigs losing over seven hundred million of our dollars on the stock market, there isn't much money to spare right now. We are lucky to have jobs. And, we have so much else to be thankful for. But still, a three inch Subway sandwich for Christmas?

The day shift did a little better than we did. They got a traditional breakfast with eggs, potatoes, breakfast meat and bread. They were complaining too, though. What they really wanted was rice and fish for breakfast. That's why the gift certificates were such good presents. Everyone could buy whatever they wanted. One year, I got a purple purse. Another year, I got a blue chiffon party dress. This year, I got a quarter-footer.

The Procedure

2008-12-11T00:31:00.000-08:00

They said that the bowel prep would be the worst part of the colonoscopy. It was bad, but I was prepared. For a day and a half, I had nothing but clear liquids. I was hungry, dizzy and reminded why diets don't work. No one can be that hungry for very long before they fall off the wagon and binge.

I was prepared for the salty elixirs, the pills and the quarts of water that had to be drunk. I knew that my day would revolve around the toilet. Everything was going according to plan. What I did not anticipate was the nausea. I don't know about you, but for me, nausea is just about the worst thing. The unending hours of nausea wore me down. I also didn't know that the bowel flushing would last all night. Unfortunately, a couple of times, I failed to wake when nature called. The next morning, even though I was still so sick, I had to wash linens. It was an ugly night.

For the actual procedure, I was a nervous wreck. When they wheeled me into the procedure room, I suddenly felt claustrophobic and wanted to jump off the table and run. But knowing that I could run and they wouldn't be able to stop me, calmed me down. I just needed to know that there was an escape route in order to feel better. When the nurse came at me with the demerol, the panic resumed. My escape route was about to close. While alert and oriented, they could not stop me if I bolted. If drugged, they could hold me down, drug me some more and force me into submission. I'm a nurse, I know how these things work.

Seventy-five milligrams of demerol was put into my IV line. It hit me like a ton of bricks. The room started spinning, my skin flushed hot and I felt out of control. A few seconds later, I went limp. The battle was over. I was now all theirs.

The doctor did not have an easy time. Part way through the procedure, he had to start over with a different scope. I'm a pediatric size. Many years ago, I had some fibroids removed from my uterus, which resulted in scar tissue. The doctor had a terrible time getting past the adhesions. They kept flipping me from side to side and someone kept digging their hand into my abdomen, while the doctor kept inflating me with air like I was a balloon. It was painful, I was starting to moan, so an additional 75 milligrams of demerol plus 4 milligrams of vistaril was given.

The procedure usually takes between 30 and 45 minutes. They worked on me for an hour and fifteen minutes. It was worth it, though. They found a small polyp that could have turned into colon cancer someday. It was removed. As awful as the procedure was, it sure beat having cancer surgery and chemo some day in the future.

Lindsay picked me up after the procedure and it being dinner time, we went out to dinner. I had not had any solid food in almost 48 hours and was starving. I just picked at my dinner, though. My stomach hurt and I was still dizzy and nauseated. After dinner, I wobbled to the restroom. I had just gotten inside the stall when all hell broke loose. I vomited all over the floor and the seat of the toilet. Feeling guilty, I tried to wipe it up with paper towels.

Feeling better, I wanted to stop at Target on the way home to buy some batteries. As I walked out the front door, I became dizzy and flushed again. There was a bench next to the door. I sat down and spent a couple of minutes vomiting in plastic shopping bags. Lindsay went back in the store to keep me well supplied with bags. I suppose it could be embarrassing to vomit next to the entrance of a busy store, but I was too sick to care.

On the drive home, I threw up again in the Target bags. I don't know how people get hooked on drugs like demerol. It just makes me puke my guts out. Demerol was by far the worst part of the colonoscopy. In five years, I get to go back and do the same thing again and I'm glad. The colonoscopy wasn't fun, but it sure beats colon cancer.

Don't Make Me Cold

2008-12-08T15:04:00.000-08:00

I taped plastic bags to the ceiling in our break room. If it stays up, I'm going to start working above the nursing stations next. The engineers say there is nothing that can be done about the cold air blowing from the vents. Ha!

Who Counted The Sponges?

2008-12-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

My descent down into Hell has begun. The doctor has taken my estrogen away from me because it has caused a pre-cancerous condition in my uterus. The hot flashes have returned.

For an entire year, I was good. I slept well and felt fine. Now, the burning, tingling, adrenalin-like flashes are back, alternated with the I'm-so-cold-I'm-going-to die sensations. It's going to be at least three months until I can have estrogen again and there is a possibility I will never be allowed it again. It almost makes me want to buy a gun and hold up a pharmacy. No jury in the world would convict me, assuming they were all menopausal women.

At least I'm not going through what one of my patients experienced. She had a laprascopic hysterectomy. All she had after the surgery were three tiny, band aide-sized incisions. There was just one problem. The sponge count was off.

The doctor decided to x-ray the patient while she was still on the table. An image consistent with a sponge showed up on the x-ray, so the doctor cut an incision from hip bone to hip bone. The doctor searched every nook and cranny, but no sponge was to be found. The patient was stapled close.

The patient had to be told something, so she was just told that although they tried to do the procedure by the minimally invasive procedure, they were forced to open her up. She has no idea that she was opened up for a wild goose chase. Her recovery will be slower and more painful as a result. Should someone have told her the truth?

My Uterus

2008-11-30T11:28:00.000-08:00

This is what I have been diagnosed with: "disordered proliferative endometrium with glandular irregularity and crowding consistent with simple to complex hyperplasia without atypia plus associated glandular metaplastic changes and a focal suggestion of slight polypoid features." In other words, I'm going to live.

I'm officially postmenopausal now. Bleeding after menopause is never normal, so when that happened, I made an appointment with the doctor. It took a month to get in to see him. He then referred me to a ob-gyn. It took nearly two months to see her. I could have used some tricks to speed up the process, but I was confident that the problem was hormonal, rather than cancer. I've been using estrogen cream to deal with menopause. That can cause the lining of the uterus to grow thick with gunk. Progesterone will trigger a period to correct the problem, but I was never prescribed it.

The uterine biopsy was the worst part of the experience. A narrow tube was snaked through the cervix into the uterus and tissue was scraped out. The doctor also found a polyp on the cervix and used forceps to extract it, after several tries. I still get cramps when I think about it. And no, pain killers were not used for the procedure.

I haven't spoken with the doctor since the procedure. I sneaked a look at my chart online to see the biopsy results. I expect that she will prescribe progesterone which will be followed by a period of epic proportions. I'm starting to understand why so many women get their uterus removed. I'm keeping mine, but they can be so much trouble at times.

Calling In Sick

2008-11-27T00:20:00.000-08:00

Getting people to show up for work has reached near crisis proportions. People call in sick in higher numbers in my nursing department than in almost any other nursing unit in my employer's California hospitals. This is nothing new. Management has tried everything from threats to rewards to get people to come to work, all to no avail.

The bigwigs in charge of all of the hospitals have stepped in. To their credit, they are conducting a full investigation to hear everyone's side of the story. They appear to be operating under the assumption that something is terribly wrong at our hospital and if they can find the problem and fix it, then the calling in sick problem will be resolved.

First, we had to fill out an online survey. Now, they have a live person interviewing everyone privately to hear their stories. I'm one of the few people who rarely calls in sick, but I was interviewed along with everyone else. That poor interviewer got an earful. There are many desperately unhappy nurses. Some cried, one even yelled so loudly that the interviewer tried to give her the phone number of someone to talk to. It would be reasonable to conclude that the nurses who call in sick are really sick, although not physically ill.

Aside from rarely having aides to help us, my number one pet peeve is not giving us good staffing even when there are enough nurses. Our department has a new trick for saving money. They give each nurse the maximum number of patients allowed by state law and then put the extra nurses on "training". The nurses on training just do busy work and their time gets charged to the training department. It doesn't save our employer any money, it just changes whose budget the salaries come from.

The official staffing in our hospital is supposed to be four patients per nurse. Management has changed it to five, which is California law. If we are short-staffed, I'm more understanding, but to pull nurses off the floor and then violate our patient ratios annoys me. On the days when staffing is good, it gives us a chance to recover from the bad days. Now, there are no easy days, so the stress just keeps building, day after day. No wonder nurses are calling in sick.

Another Fire Day

2008-11-17T10:41:00.000-08:00

The freeway re-opened yesterday, so I was able to get to the Valley to visit my parents and boyfriend. Today, I'm still feeling the effects of the bad air. My snot is still grayish from all of the ash and it hurts to take a deep breath.

I tried to get my parents to come home with me. My dad has emphysema and is probably going to end up back in the hospital due to breathing all of that gunk, but they refused to leave. They won't even close the doors and turn the air conditioner on. The bottom of their pool is black from ash. I'm guessing their lungs look the same.

While in the Valley, I made a drug buy, my first. It was embarrassing. I took my mom on a Costco run and sneaked into the cigarette cage to buy a carton for my dad. I hate being an enabler and doing something that is going to make my dad sicker, but at age 87, he has the right to live his life as he sees fit. He needs cigarettes like a heroin addict needs heroin.

This morning, as soon as I sort of woke up, I clicked on the TV to check on the fire. My eyes weren't open yet. I was just going to listen to the news. Instead of broadcasters speaking, there was just an annoying sound. It was the emergency alert system.

Bolting upright, I squinted at the screen. Was it saying this is not a test? Scooting to the foot of the bed to get a better look, I saw the screen say this was a test. What a way to wake up.

Now wide awake, I got up, got dressed and walked to the end of the street to get a better look at the fire. I already knew it was bad. From my house, I could see smoke billowing. It also hadn't escaped my notice that my house kept vibrating from the helicopters flying overhead.

The wind direction has changed. The wind is now blowing the fire down the mountain towards Sand Canyon, an area of multi-million dollar homes. I'm still upwind from the fire, but feel uneasy. I watched a super scooper dropping orange fire retardant on the hillsides and helicopters making water drops. I assume that ground crews are in place to put out spot fires. The area is thick with oak trees and brush. With so much to burn, the fire could easily overwhelm the firefighters.

If the wind changes a bit more, the embers could be flying towards my house. I may have to drop the dogs off someplace before going to work today, just for peace of mind.

Nature Woman Faces Nature

2008-11-15T20:20:00.000-08:00

My shift was mostly uneventful. Well, there was the crazy patient who said that I looked like "nature." When she looked at me, she saw mountains, trees and, well, nature. Of course, I must hear that all of the time, she said. She was shocked to hear that she was the first to mention it. She figured that people must think it all the time, but just not say anything. I thanked her for her complement. She was sweet, but as I said, crazy. Do you ever get odd complements?

There was only one real problem, which occurred during the last hour of my shift. Sylmar caught on fire. The news was on all of the patient's TV's. I happened to glance out a window and gasped when I saw the flames. Of course, the first thing I did was grab my camera and take a picture from a patient's window.

It didn't pose a direct threat to me, but the wind was blowing it towards the Newhall Pass. That is the only realistic route between the San Fernando Valley and Santa Clarita. Soon enough, I was on the freeway heading north, roughly towards the fire. I passed through some heavy smoke and violent winds, but made it home safely. A few hours later, the freeways going through the pass were all closed. I'm stranded at home and alone on a Saturday night because I don't have anyone to play with in Santa Clarita.

But, once again, I'm lucky. Nearly 700 homes were lost in the fire. I stayed up half the night watching the fire on TV and from my windows. Even though I live on the opposite side of the mountain, I could see shimmering orange clouds swirling above the mountain top, lighting up the sky. My camera, unfortunately, couldn't capture the eery, gates of Hell effect.

This was the view this ~~morning~~ afternoon when I woke up. The fire was burning on my side of the mountain, but the wind was blowing it back where it came from. The danger isn't entirely over, but things are looking up.

The Sign

2008-11-10T00:15:00.000-08:00

We have a new sign at work. It has a photo of a nurse on it and says to see the nurse before entering the room. We are supposed to hang it outside of any rooms that has a dead person in it. It seems like an obvious thing to do, but no one ever thought about it before. The reason why someone thought of it now is because of an ugly incident involving the patient I wrote about it in "Stiff."

There were some extra details that came to light after I wrote a post about the untimely death of a young woman after routine surgery. Her family was notified by phone of the death, but they lived a good distance away and were not going to come to the hospital. It didn't occur to anyone that she might have friends who would come see her.

The patient worked in our clinic across the street. On the lunch break, nine of her coworkers walked across the street, came up the elevator and walked into her room. What they found was their friend lying dead on the floor.

Codes are messy. The gowns tend to come off in the process of attaching leads. Litter gets thrown all over the floor as packages of stuff gets opened and tossed. There can be blood if lines are inserted or pulled out. Urine, poo or vomit may be present. This isn't a sight that visitors should see.

Because she was such a large woman, they just left her lying on the floor until they could get enough staff together to lift her. It took several hours and six men to get her off the floor. We do have some mechanical lifts for such situations, but no one knows where they are.

The visitors didn't take the situation very well. The visiting nurses from across the street were hysterical and the floor nurses were mortified. No one wants to go through anything like that again, so now we have a new sign, but no one knows where it is.

Money For Nothing

2008-11-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

My house came with an annoying thing in the garage. It was a water softener, which I had no use for. I drink tap water which I prefer without added salt, so I shut off the softener. It has sat in my garage for the last eight years.

It still annoyed me, though. It took up space and presented a challenge in maneuvering my car into the garage. I was also forced to park too close to my other car, which has resulted in my cars dinging each other.

I wanted to be rid of the softener, but I would have had to hire a plumber to disconnect it and someone else to haul it away. It was never a priority, plus I was too cheap to spend the money.

Then, one day I got a letter from the water company. They wanted to pay people to get rid of their water softeners. They would not only remove it for free, but pay the value of the machine. It sounded too good to be true. I downloaded a form, filled it out and mailed it to them. They responded that they would give me $275 for my ~~worthless piece of junk~~ water softener. Woohoo!

The annoying thing is now gone and I'm so happy about the extra room. Even if I never get the check, I'll be happy. It cost me nothing to do something that I've wanted to do for years. I do feel a little guilty, using the water company that way, but it won't stop me from cashing the check.

Ticked Off Over Tics

2008-11-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

With all of our medical records stored online, with only a few clicks, we can view our patient's full medical histories. I routinely check the snapshot page which lists all of the patient's medical problems. I don't do that just to be nosy, but to also help take better care of the patient.

Doctors are human and make mistakes. A good nurse will call the doctor if the doctor forgot to address a problem or made an order that could harm the patient. An example would be if the doctor forgot to write an order for blood sugar checks for a diabetic patient or ordered huge amounts of IV fluids for a dialysis patient. If the doctor makes a mistake like that, it is the nurse, not the doctor who gets in trouble. The buck stops with the nurse.

The diagnosis page, though, also provides me with endless entertainment. We have one patient right now who has a history of "recurrent pregnancy loss." Another patient has "unspecified hemorrhage of newborn." You're probably wondering what is so entertaining about those sad medical problems. The answer is that both of those patients are male.

Because I get my health care from my employer, I can also access my health records. It violates some rule to look at one's own records, but I don't care. I'm as entertained by my records as by my patient's records. Like some of the patients, I have my own rogue diagnosis. According to the official records, I have "tic disorder." I'm sure that I don't. Well, I don't think I have it. Is it possible to have tics and not know it?

I've asked two friends to tell me honestly if they have ever noticed if I have tics. They said they have never noticed that. I'm left wondering if the doctor confused me with someone else or if perhaps at a doctor's appointment, I was twitching and totally unaware. The doctor who labelled me is gone, so I can't ask him about it. I wonder if it is possible for me to erase a diagnosis and how much trouble would I get in for altering my medical record, assuming they caught me?

Stiff

2008-10-27T00:17:00.000-07:00

It's usually not so difficult to get a body in a body bag. You just tie the wrists and ankles together, roll the person over, slide the bag under them, tuck one side of the body in the bag, roll them back the other way, finish wrapping the bag around them and zip them up. It takes maybe five minutes.

The body I was stuck with had been lying around for a good six hours. It was in full rigor mortis. Ever try to tie the wrists and ankles together of a stiff dead body, splayed out in a bed? It was a coroner's case, so I had to be careful not to damage the body. Pushing the legs and arms together so that they could be tied was a challenge. It was more than a challenge, it was impossible. The only way it could be done was to break some bones. There were so many reasons why it would be bad to do that, so I left the person as is.

When I rolled the body on its side, blood came pouring out the nose and almost landed on my shoes. The same thing happened when the body was rolled to the other side, only this time I was prepared and stayed clear of the head. I had never seen a person this dead before. I have no idea if its normal for dead people to bleed like that.

The body was also tall. It was longer than the zipper opening. Normally, I would simply bend the body's legs to fit through the opening, but again, the body could not bend. In my effort to make it fit, the bag broke and the feet ended up poking through the bottom. Good enough. I just tucked the bag around the feet.

Perhaps I should have started over with a new bag, but I had had enough. My back hurt and I was sweating. It's not easy working with a four hundred pound dead body. I was starting to understand why the previous shift had allowed the body to lie around so long. After wrestling with the body, I asked for the full story of what had happened.

Emotionally, the nurses were wiped out. The code blue and gone badly. The patient was young, reasonably healthy and hospitalized only for routine knee surgery. She had taken her first step with her new knee and was elated. By the second or third step, she began gasping and collapsed to the floor. Patients often faint the first time they get up after surgery, so her nurse opened a vial of smelling salts under her nose. There was no response. The nurse broke another eight vials of smelling salts, one after the other, waving them under the patient's nose.

Another nurse asked a doctor, who happened to be on the floor, to look at the patient. He quickly determined that she had no pulse. I'm wondering why it took a doctor to make that observation, but I'm trying not to pass judgment. The code blue started. There happened to be several doctors around at the time, so there was plenty of help. They worked on her for forty-five minutes before pronouncing her dead.

The coroner will have to figure out why she died, but our best guess is that she suffered a pulmonary embolism. Either a blood clot or perhaps some bone marrow or fat traveled to her lungs. When that happens, there isn't much anyone can do. I was happier when it was just a body. Knowing the story behind the death took all of the sick humor out of the situation.

Dance Partners

2008-10-27T00:08:00.000-07:00

Obama and Palin are going to be on Dancing With The Stars. It's on the Internet, so it must be true.

World's Most Dangerous Cake

2008-10-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.

Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.
The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!

Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous).

And why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world?
Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

Thanks, Sarah.

The Vacation From Hell

2008-10-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

It was the most expensive meal of my life and it wasn't even that good. It was just your usual all-you-can-eat buffet. Lunch cost six hundred dollars for two people and we didn't even order alcohol. It was partly expensive because lunch was along the coast with a nice view of the scenic Port of Los Angeles. And, the tab included four days at sea on a cruise ship. But, we left after lunch.

What happened is that after lunch, I had called my mom to see how my dad was doing. We had taken my father to the hospital the night before and he had been admitted. It was determined that he had new onset heart failure in addition to his pre-existing emphysema. The conditions can be managed medically up to a point, so I figured with some changes in his medications, he would be discharged in a day or two. Before the ship left though, I wanted to make sure my dad was doing okay.

My mom had bad news. Dad had an aortic aneurism and might need surgery right away. Lindsay and I got off the ship. I went to my parent's house and moved in for a few days. The cruise clothes worked fine for my stay, although I had no occasion to wear my red ballgown.

By the time I got to the hospital with my mom, they were putting Dad on a gurney to transfer him to another hospital. A surgeon there was going to try and repair the aneurysm by snaking a stent through a blood vessel in his groin. It was a new procedure that only became available a couple of years ago. There was a possibility that the aneurism could only be repaired by opening my father up. With his bad lungs and heart, he was a poor surgical risk for such extensive surgery.

The surgery went well and only the the minimally invasive procedure was needed. It turned out that there were two aneurysms along the abdominal aorta and were about the size of oranges. It was a miracle that they were diagnosed before they ruptured.

It was the week from hell. My stomach still hurts from the stress and I lost a pound without trying, but my dad is now home and doing much better. The first thing he did after we got him home and plopped in his chair was to ask for his cigarettes. Even after all of this, he is still unwilling to quit smoking and there is not a thing we can do about it.

Now, it is time for me to go back to work and I need a vacation. At least I have my dad back.

It's Christmas Time Already?

2008-09-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

Costco made me tear up and that's not easy to do. I don't cry easily. What happened is that on a hundred degree day, as I walked past the Halloween decorations with the shrieking witches and haunted house music, I heard Christmas carols. Looking past the Halloween decorations, I saw Christmas trees. And there was Christmas music.

It is only September. It was enough to make a grown woman cry.

Rock Star

2008-09-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

An honest-to gosh rock star has been staying in our hospital. Okay, he's no Mick Jagger. If I could tell you his name, it's doubtful that you have heard of him. It's unlikely you have even heard of his sub-type of dark, heavy metal music. But, he makes his living as a rock star. As proof, he showed me a magazine article featuring him. I also did an Internet search. He is who he says he is and actually has a loyal following.

Rock Star got sick while touring in Europe and was flown back to our hospital for treatment. That, in itself is really odd. Doesn't he know that celebrities go to Cedars or UCLA? HMO's like us, are for ordinary people. But he is a nice guy. Despite the tattoos and stringy long hair, he is handsome, well-mannered and even has a college degree.

The problem is that he is high as a kite and we are keeping him that way. He may be bright, it's hard to tell, but everyday that I visit him, he introduces himself as if we had never met before. Usually, people remember me, but I'm not taking it personally. Although wide awake and wired, Rock Star's eyes are glassy and he is totally focused on getting another hit.

We have had patients with high drug tolerances, but he is a record holder when it comes to drug dosages. I would die, if given his dose. You would probably die too. We could split his dose between us and still die of an overdose.

This is what he gets:

Dilaudid 134 milligrams by mouth every three hours PLUS
dilaudid 2 milligrams pushed into his IV line every hour.

The usual dose for severe pain is 4 milligrams of dilaudid by mouth every three hours or, one or two milligrams in the IV line every two hours. The first time I saw someone preparing his medication, I was sure she had made a terrible mistake. No one takes 33 and a half tablets of pain medication. She had to be off by a decimal point. (The last time a nurse was off by a decimal point, the patient spent some time in ICU on a vent.) But, 33 and a half tablets was what he needed to just barely get by.

Despite the high doses, Rock Star constantly complains that he is under-medicated. He was especially angry at one nurse who, instead of pushing the concentrated drug in his IV line, mixed it with a bag of IV fluid and infused it over fifteen minutes. That robbed him of the rush. If he really just needed pain relief, the slower infusion would have done the trick. Rock Star was sure that the nurse was just doing that to spite him.

Rock Star needs to get back on tour. We'll probably send him on his way with a big bag of pills, but he won't be getting any IV pain meds. That part is non-negotiable. We have another patient who is also addicted to dilaudid. He refuses to leave unless the doctor gives him X number of pills. It is worth it to us to give them what they want so that they will leave. It is odd that we have to negotiate with drug addicts who are holding our rooms as hostage. If I were in charge, I would have security escort them to the door and leave them by the curb. Perhaps that is why I'm not in charge.

A Train Wreck

2008-09-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know about other areas of the country, but the train crash in Chatsworth is a big story here. We treated some of the victims in our hospital and everyday, the front page of the local newspapers has some news of the crash.

A not very reliable source at work told me that one of our nurses was killed in the crash. I tried to independently verify the information. As the days went by, the Times kept adding the names of victims, but the nurse was never mentioned. I decided that the rumor was false.

Coming to work today, I noticed that the flags were flying at half-staff. After considering the possibilities, it seemed most likely that we did lose a coworker. I checked my E-mail and found the notice of her death. It was official.

I didn't know her, but I knew of her. I knew her name and what she did at the hospital. Her job was to get involved whenever the hospital made a terrible mistake and do whatever it took to make amends in order to avoid a lawsuit.

She was the peacemaker, although her official title was hospital ombudsman. It must have been a difficult job. I will not be applying for her old job. I would rather clean up poop and vomit than deal with that kind of stress and conflict. It is a good thing that there are people like her that thrive in that kind of environment.

One of my patients died at the end of my shift tonight. It was expected, but watching him slowly die all evening and then stop breathing, I kept thinking of our nurse. She was dead too, only instead of being old and terminally ill, she had been in her prime. Life is dangerous. You never know what is coming at you from around the curve.

Wetting A Finger

2008-09-10T00:24:00.000-07:00

There is a new sign up at work. It tells us not to lick or spit on our fingers at work. Amazingly enough, that is becoming a problem.

Our pyxis machine, which holds our medications, will not open unless our fingerprints match its records. It will not read our fingerprints if our fingers are bone dry. We have become desperate in our attempts to moisten our fingers so that the damn drawers will open. We all have our own ways of getting a finger wet.

If I'm anxious, rubbing my finger against the palm of my hand will work. If my palms aren't sweaty enough, then a quick wipe on my forehead or nose will do the trick. This is one of the few times that oily skin is a blessing.

Other people have resorted to licking their finger or spitting on it. We wouldn't really care, except that then their spit gets all over the machine and who wants to touch nurse spit?

They want us to use either alcohol wipes or moisturizer to moisten our finger. We don't like alcohol because it dries out our skin. We don't like moisturizer because it leaves a white gooey substance behind that has to be removed with alcohol.

I'm going to continue to use sweat or facial oil to get my meds. Nursing just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier.

Coccydynia

2008-09-07T20:24:00.000-07:00

The number one way that people are injured at work is by falling out of chairs. Considering that we routinely work with biohazards, sharp objects and heavy bodies that need moving, I found it odd that chairs are more dangerous. And, exactly how does a person fall out of a chair, anyway? In my entire life, I had never fallen out of a chair.

I fell out of a chair a couple of weeks ago and now I get it. The chairs have wheels. All I did was stand up for a second to reach something and sat right back down. The chair was gone. Had I just landed on the floor, I would have been fine. Unfortunately, my tail bone hit the wheel. Now, I'm suffering from the heartbreak of coccydynia. That's just a fancy way of saying that my butt hurts.

It hurts to sit down, stand up, walk and worst of all, go to the bathroom. It is a type of injury that is slow to heal, but usually gets better without treatment. I did not report my injury at work like I was supposed to. It's a hassle and I really didn't want to have to go to the ER and have a doctor I might know, examine my bottom.

Who knew it was so hard to sit in a chair?

The Latest Camera

2008-09-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

I bought a new camera, my fifth digital one. Being clumsy is expensive. Although, in my defense, I didn't drop all of them. One was already broken when I got it out of the box. Fortunately, I got it at Costco, so returning it was not an issue.

I was tempted to buy another shock resistant Olympus camera. That camera has survived countless falls from ladders and even some water dunking, but it just doesn't take great photos. It still works, but it takes photos when it wants to, not necessarily when I hit the shutter button. My patience has run out.

I bought a Canon Powershot A590 IS. It is another fragile camera, so its life expectancy is short. The photo above was my first picture with the new camera. I'm also glad that Blogger will upload the photos. With my Nikon, I had to go through a tedious process of posting photos on Photobucket and from there, downloading to Blogger.

The picture above was taken at bedtime. I'm watching TV and the boys are watching me.

Dragging A Leg

2008-09-02T20:48:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why a person would drive around with a leg dangling out of the car trunk, but considering that this photo was taken in a hospital parking lot, it does make me wonder. Either something horrible happened or the driver just enjoys being pulled over by cops.

Tricks For Improving Morale

2008-08-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

At work, I came across a book that had been given to all of the managers. It was about building morale and letting employees know how much they are appreciated. I don't think any of our managers have ever read it.

It listed, literally, hundreds of ways to increase morale. Many of the suggestions were, well, interesting. Here are my favorites:

1) Instead of casual Friday, have dress up Fridays. Everyone comes to work in formal wear.

(I actually love this idea since dressing up is my idea of fun, but I'm not sure which of my gowns would work best on the floor. Should I wear the silk, low-cut white gown with the train that would sop up all of the nasty stuff on the floor? Or, perhaps the tight, beaded gown that requires a good girdle would be a better choice for changing patient's adult diapers and diarrhea soaked linens. The red taffeta ball gown, that I can barely breathe in, might also be fun to work in. And, don't get me started on the fun shoes that these outfits would require.)

2) Have a bring your pet to work day.

( Again, I love this idea since it makes me so sad to leave my three dogs at home. But, do the MBA's who run this place know that the business they run is in the business of health care, as opposed to say, manufacturing widgets? I'm fairly certain that it is against the law to have ordinary dogs and cats wandering around in hospitals and medical clinics. )

3) Reward employees with a "give your coworkers the shaft" day. The two lucky winners would have lunch in an elevator. There would be a fancy table set with linen, china and gourmet food. A violinist (I am not making this up) would serenade them during lunch.

(Um, I'm quite certain that eating lunch in an elevator would be something less than pleasurable for me. I'm claustrophobic. In fact, if you wished to punish me, that would do the trick.)

4) Have a bad hair day contest. Everyone recreates their worst hair day and a prize is given to the winner.

( This would be fun, but my bad hair days involve hair coloring mishaps. I'm not dying my hair charcoal gray or orange for anyone.)

I can't imagine why none of the managers have borrowed any of the fun ideas from this book. The only possible explanation is that they have never read it.

I Want To Marry A Rich Man

2008-08-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

Work has always been a pain in the butt, but now it is becoming even more so. Who thought that was possible? With computerized charting, administration can now monitor our charting in progress. Before, they had to come to the floor to see the charting after we were done. There was time to make it nice and pretty before anyone could see it.

Now, they can see in real time how the charting is progressing. We are required to make rounds on our patients every hour and chart what we saw and did. It is usually possible to do the hourly rounding, which, if the patient is fine, takes about thirty seconds. But, to log onto the computer in each room and record the round takes two or three minutes. Multiply that by five patients and that is a ten or fifteen minute chunk out of every hour.

To someone sitting at their desk in an ivory tower with all the time in the world, that may not sound like a big deal, but to nurses on the floor, that time makes the difference between patients getting their needs met now as opposed to later. For patients, every minute of delay in getting what they want is an eternity. And, they let us know it.

I usually try to catch up on my charting about halfway through the shift when it usually quiets down a little. Charting on all of the patients at once on one computer is the most time-efficient way to chart. It takes about ten minutes every four hours to chart as opposed to ten or fifteen minutes every hour. So far, management has left me alone. Perhaps, they are checking my charting after the halfway mark. But, just knowing management is looking at our charting in progress is stressing me out.

The nurses are starting to quit. We hate the new hospital, the cuts in support staff that increase our work load and the micro-managing. The nurses have been told that if they don't like it, they know where the door is. More nurses are going through that door.

Sound Explanation

2008-08-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years, my computer has tormented me with odd sounds. First, it was a cat meowing. I practically tore my kitchen apart looking for some poor, trapped kitty. Later, it was some guy yelling, "MOM." Sometimes it was people laughing or sighing. On New Years they shouted, "Happy New Year." On Halloween, it was "Happy Halloween." There were dozens of different sounds. The sounds came at random times. I could be lying in bed and hear my computer taunting me.

I figured it was either a virus or some hacker was picking on me. I complained about it on my Blog, but no one had ever heard of such a thing. Lindsay was sure it was my computer reacting to something I was doing. It wasn't until one evening we were just watching TV and heard the sounds that he went into action.

He believed it was AOL. That made no sense to me. Why would AOL do that to a paying customer? And why just me? No one else had this problem.

Lindsay began an instant message dialog with an AOL tech. Which, by the way is a great way to communicate with them. There are no issues with trying to understand each other's accents.

It turned out that AOL was behind the sounds. Someone on my buddy list had been using those sounds. Every time they connected with AOL, my computer let me know with whatever weird sound AOL offered at the time.

Lindsay changed some settings on my computer and I thinned my buddy list. The sounds have stopped. Now, I kind of miss them.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

2008-08-15T19:51:00.001-07:00

This is a commercial, sort of, but it's so cute, I can't resist sharing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Blonde Aura

2008-08-12T22:28:00.000-07:00

Most patients and their families are nice. I rarely mention them because, let's be honest, what's the entertainment value in that? It's the evil people who are the most fun to talk about.

For example, there was a jerk last week who, when I answered his call light, said that I wasn't fit to wipe his butt. We had never met before. He was on a bedpan, however, and needed someone to wipe him. Not that I wanted to wipe his butt, but it irritated me that he didn't want me.

I didn't need to ask what was wrong with me, he told me. It was because I'm blonde. He said that he hates blondes because they are all idiots. I joke about that, but he meant it. He said that it has something to do with the "chlorine" that blondes soak their head in. It leaches into their brains.

In a soft voice, I sweetly asked him to look at me closely. I then asked him what color he thought my hair really was. After a second, he said that I was a natural blonde. I told him that he was correct. He then began apologizing, which I graciously accepted. He even let me wash his ass. What a great guy he turned out to be.

Of course, I saw no reason to tell the idiot that no one my age has natural hair my shade of blonde. I'm blonde naturally, but my hair is dirty blonde with white streaks. It takes hair color to make me presentable.

It is funny, though, that the idiot thinks that blondes soak their heads in chlorine. That just turns my hair green.

Anyway, back to the subject of nice patients, I usually get compliments on a daily basis. Most people like to try to figure out which actress I look like. (Mostly, Darryl Hanna , occasionally, Diane Keaton) But I got a complement the other day that was totally new. The patient told me that I had a strong energy force. He raved about my aura and when I left, told me what an honor it was to have met me. All because of my energy force.

If he hadn't been an old, dying man with his wife at bedside, I would have thought that he was coming on to me. I'm not sure if he was getting too much morphine or if he can really detect energy forces. What do you think?

Lust For Money

2008-08-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Why oh why does solicitation have to be illegal? At work, my heart has been racing lately because of my unrequited desire to solicit. On my off hours, I think about it and discuss it with my lawyer friends. We are all salivating, but know of no way to do what we desperately want to do.

There have been two patients who are the victims of egregious malpractice. One patient had a led amputated due to a misdiagnosis by a nurse practitioner in one of our clinics. I can't go into the details, but I have seen the smoking gun document. It is a once in a lifetime lawsuit and as bad as I feel for the patient, I also feel bad that I can't get a cut of the action. Does that sound callous? Yes, it is. People don't hate lawyers for no good reason.

The other case involved another hospital, a trauma center that stabilized her before sending her to us. They operated on the wrong hip and failed to properly anesthetize her. Although paralyzed by the anesthesia, she was wide awake and unable to let let them know that she could feel them drilling in her hip, the wrong one.

I know a great law firm that would do these cases justice and pay me a referral fee. But I can't risk my license, either my law license or RN license, for money. It is so hard sometimes to do the right thing, especially when there is so much money involved. I'm relieved that the patients have been discharged, so that I no longer have to white-knuckle it.

Mystery Destination

2008-08-07T00:22:00.000-07:00

I agreed to go on a vacation without any idea where it was going to be. I have a week off in October and we had talked about possibly going on a cruise then. There was a cruise around New Zealand that sounded particularly nice, but although the cruise was cheap, the airfare was ridiculous. A cruise up the East coast into Canada also sounded good, but although not as insane as flying to New Zealand, it was still expensive to get there.

Lindsay mentioned something about going to Mexico since we live where the ship leaves from. That saves a ton of money, but the problem is that the trip is to Mexico. I won't get off the ship if it goes to Mexico. I have this phobia thing about third world countries.

Anyway, Lindsay left a message on my answering machine saying that the cost of the cruise had come down in price and did I want to go. I was in a hurry to get to work when I got the message, so I quickly just said okay.

While driving to work, it occurred to me that I had no idea which cruise Lindsay was referring to. New Zealand was too much to hope for, but New England was a possibility. When I got the chance, I called Lindsay and asked, as casually as possible, what ports the ship was going to visit. That would tell me what I needed to know without admitting I had no idea what I had agreed to.

He answered San Diego, Catalina and Ensenada. Oh well. I'll live. San Diego is okay even though I have been there only like a hundred times before. It will be my first time to Catalina, so that will be fun. And as for Mexico, they still have lots of onboard entertainment for those who refuse to get off the boat. I won't be the only one.

Unclear On The Concept

2008-08-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, someone leaves a surprise on the carpet. This shouldn't happen. There is a doggy door and they all know how to use it, but still, about once a week, poo is left on the carpet.

I'm tired of shampooing the carpet every week, so I decided to put down some plastic lined paper pads that come pre-scented in dog urine to encourage dogs to go on the pad instead of the floor. (I do not want to know how they get the scent on the pads.)

Now, I'm finding two or three poo piles a day plus pee ponds and it is still on the carpet. The pads seem to have delivered the message that it is fine to do their business in the house, but for whatever reason, the dogs don't want to get the pads dirty. Now, there are sheets of plastic across the carpet. The ball is now in the dogs' court. We'll see what they do next.

Scanner Guns

2008-07-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

It's not easy being in the hospital. The patient woke up just in time to see me standing over him, pointing a gun in his direction. He shrieked. That startled me and caused me to also shriek. We were in a stand-off. I hate it when I get caught pointing a gun at a patient.

All I was trying to do is scan the bar code on his wrist band without waking him, but the dang scanner makes a beeping sound. I'm never sure if I should first wake the patient to warn him what I'm about to do or just do it and hope that he sleeps through the beep. Or, perhaps they should design the scanners to look less like guns.

Shaken

2008-07-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to calm down. I was minding my own business, busy making a smoothie, when I was suddenly pushed up and to the side. I grabbed the counter to maintain my balance. At first, I thought that I was sick and perhaps having a stroke. Then as the rolling continued, it occurred to me that this was an earthquake.

Calling to the dogs, I walked out the door to the backyard. The dogs followed. We were safe. Tommy looked at me and whined. I'm whining in Blog form. I wish I could call in sick today, just in case it is a pre-curser to a bigger quake. The preliminary number is a 5.8. EEEK!

What Recession?

2008-07-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

Sarah has a new set of wheels. In the process of demonstrating what the car could do, she scared me. My arms were stretched out in front of me and I was braking the imaginary brake as hard as I could. I knew how I was going to die and it was going to be in a porsche. Fianlly, she took pity on me and slowed down. Now I know how other people feel when I'm doing the driving.

Beach Day

2008-07-27T21:50:00.000-07:00

I can body surf without a board, but it is so much easier with one. In my teens, the only thing I needed to ride the waves was a bikini. Now, I like a wetsuit and a boogie board. I'm warmer, get better rides and no longer have to frantically pull my bikini back on after a wipe out.

That is me above. The picture is dark because my latest camera broke after a tiny fall, so I have gone back to my first digital camera. I have forgotten how to use it properly and couldn't find a back-light setting like what was on the camera that broke before the last camera that broke. I'm beginning to think that butter-fingered people shouldn't own digital cameras.

The riptides didn't amount to much, so the lifeguard boat didn't need to scoop anyone out of the water. In a way, it was a shame. A good riptide day can provide hours of entertainment.

The people on the little red vehicles are Sheriff's deputies. Their job appears to be driving up and down the beach and writing tickets to people caught drinking alcohol. I'm guessing that drinking tickets are a major source of revenue, otherwise, Los Angeles County would prominently post the rules where people could actually see them. None of the people I saw who were busted had made any attempt to hide their beverages. Openly drinking bottles of beer indicates that they had no idea that drinking is prohibited on the beach.

The sea gulls must be tired of just eating live fish from the ocean. They are quite aggressive when it comes to stealing food. I don't really blame them. If it was a choice between raw fish and stolen fried chicken, I would become a thief also.

Money Trap

2008-07-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

It didn't seem possible, but things have gotten worse at work. Our nurse's aide fell and broke his arm while trying to keep a patient from falling. The patient is fine, but our aide will be gone for six to eight weeks. If his contract is like ours, he will get full pay while he recovers.

The problem we are having is that management will not replace him. Other aides have asked to work for him; it is not a problem to find a temporary replacement, but they won't replace him. For the last quarter, we are nine million dollars over budget.

In the meantime, the nurses are at the breaking point. Nurses are working a couple of hours extra on overtime a day to catch up with the charting. The new computer charting and scanning devices are a royal pain and even the I.T. people are struggling to make them work.

Plus, now that the unit secretaries aren't entering orders for us, they keep wandering off. Answering the phone, which I really hate to do, takes up a ridiculous amount of my time. What time I have left is spent answering call lights and cleaning up whatever bodily fluids or solids I come across. Oh, and apologizing is time consuming as well. Every time I hear that someone is unhappy, whether it is a patient or a nurse, I have to listen to them vent and then apologize.

Many of the nurses work two jobs, so I have been asking them about their other jobs to see if I might be happier elsewhere. All of the nurses like their other jobs better, but they work here because of the money and benefits. I think I know why we are over budget. No other hospital even comes close to paying what we are paid.

The next best paying hospital in the area is U.C.L.A., but their base pay for me would be about eight dollars less an hour. That is sixteen thousand dollars less a year. Plus, nurses have to pay nine dollars a day to park and their health insurance and care isn't free like ours. They do have support staff, though. They pay people to answer the phone and answer call lights, so the nurses can actually take care of their patients.

I never complain, but others have been told by management that if they are unhappy, they know where the door is. It is so tempting to go through that door and take as many people as possible with me, preferably all on the same day. I fantasize about taking all of my coworkers to job interviews with me, all getting hired elsewhere and leaving on the same day in a mass exodus. But who wants to take that kind of pay cut?

So, anyway, that is why I haven't blogged much lately. Who wants to listen to people complain?

Yogurt Thief

2008-07-15T00:29:00.000-07:00

I am tired of being a victim. It is time to go on the offensive and make a victim out of the perpetrator. The yogurt thief must be stopped.

Everyday, I take two cartons of yogurt to work and leave them in the fridge. Once or twice a week, one or both cartons disappear. It doesn't matter if I seal them in a bag or leave them loose. The thief is relentless.

I want to put something icky in a carton and wait for the thief to take the bait. I don't want to actually kill the thief, diarrhea would be sufficient. Ex Lax would probably do the trick. Or maybe I could put something horrible at the bottom of a container, like some dog doo.

What do you think? How can I keep my yogurt safe?

Doctor Lies

2008-07-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

The new computer system is not just driving the nurses crazy. The doctors hate it as much as we do. They have to enter all of their orders into the system. To avoid doing this, some are calling the nurses and lying about where they are in order to get the nurses to do the work for them.

If the doctor is calling from home or is in the middle of surgery, of course we will enter the orders. But when they are calling from their office inside the hospital and say they are not near a computer, we know they are lying. Perhaps they are not aware that the phone identifies exactly where they are calling from.

I'm too nice to tell the doctor that I know for a fact that a computer is sitting right in front of him. I just do the work for him.

Some of the patients are staying longer because the doctors don't know how to discharge them. One patient walked out without any discharge instructions at all. Others have had to stay an extra day to be properly discharged. This must be costing a fortune. The software alone, cost over a billion dollars. I wonder what the learning curve is going to cost on top of that?

On top of that, the scanners we are using to scan patient's armbands and medications are being a royal pain. We have been told that if we scan closer to the doorway, they will scan better. It is annoying, but we can walk over to the doorway to scan the meds, but what about the patients? Do they think we are going to roll the patient's beds to the doorway every time we want to give them a medication?

I'm counting the years until retirement.

More Work Woes

2008-07-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

It was chaos. We have gone paperless at work and the class to teach us the new system sucked. We didn't know that until we got to actually use the new system. It is nothing like the "playground" we trained on. The general stress level at work is high, bordering on the same level of insanity as when we opened the hospital. Why can't they leave us alone and stop forcing new technology on us?

We do have tech support hanging around, which is a good thing. Otherwise, we would just quit our jobs and run from the building. But, they are not nurses and don't fully understand what we need to do. For some of our questions, we just get a glassy stare in response. If the computer guys can't do everything on the computer that has to be done, what hope do we have?

There are some major, even life threatening glitches in the computer system. For example, all of the medication orders state that the medications start now, even though some should not start until the next day. If it is not fixed soon, patients will be overdosing or bleeding out.

We also are now scanning patients as though they are going through a check stand. I suppose it creates an added level of safety to scan the patients, but I feel like I'm a store checker and the patients must feel like groceries. Maybe if we can get the scanners to work, it will work out. I don't know.

It just takes so long to do the smallest task. They promised us that they were going to empty the hospital for a few days when we went paperless, but instead, they filled us up. Each nurse is going to have hours of overtime and I predict the heavy use of sick time soon.

Law is looking better all the time.

My Big Brother

2008-07-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-20T12:07:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-18T00:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-14T00:15:00.000-07:00

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.

The High And Low Life

2008-06-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

Our cruise was quite cheap. It only cost about a hundred dollars a day each. Considering that they have almost as many crew as customers, plus adding in what their food expenses must be, they must barely be breaking even with the stated cost of the cruise. My guess is that they make their profit with the alcohol, shore excursions, alcohol, photos, alcohol and gift shop.

I did contribute my fair share to the bar, although, I did later start smuggling booze on board. Their prices were outrageous for watered-down drinks.

The drink in my hand was the exception. It was a black martini and poured by a great bartender. When shaking the drinks, he danced for the ladies. His pouring technique was also unusual. He placed the glass on his side of the bar and filled the glass to the top. It was not possible to pick up the glass without spilling it, so it was necessary to lean over the bar and sip from the glass. The bartender would then hold the ladies' hair to keep it out of the drink. What you drank with the first sip, he quickly replaced with more hard liquor. That one drink was my limit for the day. The business at his bar was brisk, especially amongst the ladies.

While living the high life, it was hard not to feel a little guilty. The crew lives a hard life. It borders on being indentured servitude. Out of the nearly two thousand crew members, only three were American. That is usually an indication that the pay and/or working conditions are bad.

The vast majority of the crew comes from third world countries. I spoke with one crew member who said that he signed a ten month contract and works seven days a week, twelve hours a day. His English wasn't that great, so I may have misunderstood what he was saying, but if that is true, it is inhumane. The crew lives down below, three or four people to a room and does nothing but work and sleep, for ten months.

It would be nice if the cruise ships that go to American ports had to comply with American labor laws, but I don't see that happening. If you are having a bad day, think about the kind of life that others live just because they were unlucky about the circumstances into which they were born.

Reasons To Stay Up Late

2008-06-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things on the cruise were formal nights. I love to get dressed up and it is so rare that I have an opportunity to do so. It is fun to feel like Cinderella at the ball every once in a while. Above is the first formal night. Below is the second formal night.

Below is a shot of the filling of the champagne glass pyramid. If I remember correctly, there were something like 700 glasses in the stack. We were given champagne to drink and musicians entertained us while bottle after bottle was poured over the pyramid. We were both feeling thrashed, so we went to bed early, after about 50 bottles.

Like all of the other nights, we had to see the shows. There were four large production numbers like you would see in Las Vegas, only the women had their tops on. There were also comedy acts, a comedy-juggling act and talent shows. It was a challenge to see even most of the shows and impossible to see them all. We had to eat too. Every night, we ate dinner twice, before and after the shows. It was impossible to get to bed before midnight.

Photographers were all over the ship. We called them the Princess paparazzi. They were constantly putting cameras in our faces and then trying to sell the little snap-shots for twenty-five dollars each. We didn't see any reason to pay for what we could get for free.

On formal nights, they had formal sittings with different back-drops. The first formal night, I got into an argument with a nasty photographer who wanted to pose us according to his formula of poses. The poses were not from my best angle, so I wanted to change how I stood. It didn't sound like a big deal to me, but he was sarcastic and rude about my having a so-called good side.

The last formal night, we went to four different photographers in order to make sure that I got some shots that I was happy with. Below is a photo of my favorite photo. Because I can't get my scanner to work, that was the best I could do. The photo shows my best angle with a nice gauzy effect that I prefer to sharply focused photos. At my age, a nice camera filter can erase 20 years. Too bad that I can't walk around with a piece of gauze over my face.

Reasons To Get Up Early

2008-06-09T17:55:00.000-07:00

For my fifty-second birthday, Lindsay took me to a fish hatchery. I've already forgiven him. After all, on his fifty-second birthday, I took him to a ballet. We're even now.

My birthday fell on Ketchikan day. I may look cold, wet and miserable below, but I was really only cold and wet. It was a great day. We rented a car and Lindsay navigated with his GPS. There is only one main road, but Lindsay likes his GPS. It wanted us to make a right turn down a boat dock and into the ocean, so I'm a little leary of the things.

But I shouldn't complain. I spent at least as much time playing with my camera as Lindsay spent playing with his GPS. We each have our favorite toys.

In town, I got hugged by a polar bear. They are sweet, gentle creatures. I don't know how they got their reputation.

This bald headed eagle lives at the fish hatchery because she has an injured wing. I don't think she likes me. Look at that glare.

The eagles are larger than they look. Lindsay is posed in front of a chart that shows an eagle's wing span. We saw bald headed eagles flying around everywhere, but I wasn't fast enough to get a photo of the ones in flight.

One of the problems with cruises is that they are on a schedule. If it had been up to me, I would have spent a couple of days in Ketchikan, but the ship waits for no one. In order to see as much as possible, we had to get up early and leave as soon as they opened the door. It was better to lose some sleep than to miss seeing something that we may never experience again.

This is why we got up so early on our vacation.

Still Rocking

2008-06-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

I'm home and am really wishing that the ground would stop swaying. A week on a boat has disrupted my equilibrium. I need to go to the store and buy groceries, but am not sure that it is safe to drive.

It is probably just as well that I go hungry. I gained two pounds and am a little tired of eating five big meals a day, plus snacks. Hunger is not a bad thing right now.

I am also exhausted. Silly me; I thought that cruising was a leisurely, restful type of vacation. It never occurred to me that I would have to get up before six on most days, rush around and not get to bed until after midnight.

Anyway, I had a great time and would gladly take the same trip again.

The cruise left from Seattle and we arrived a day early so that we could do the tourist thing. I had driven by Seattle several times on my way to other places, but had never seen the city. It was gorgeous. It reminded me of San Francisco. Too bad about the weather, though. The cold, damp gloom made it a challenge to enjoy the natural beauty of the city.

At Pike Place, I came across an artist who did sketches. I'm guessing that it was the same guy who did Dave's avatar at Emusings (http://dkgoodman.com/). I just let the artist do his thing, which was a mistake. Dressed modestly in a rain coat, buttoned from neck to ankle, it never occurred to me that he would draw me scantly clothed, perched on top of the Space Needle.

This will not be my new avatar, but at least I got a laugh out of it.

Alaska Or Bust

2008-05-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

Failure was not an option. I got up at 6 am, after only a little over 3 hours sleep and went to work. The sprinklers needed to be fixed today. They have been broken for a good 6 months, but I have been able to manage by attaching a sprinkler attachment to the hose and moving it around. Tomorrow, my trip to Alaska begins, so, the yard must be self-watering or I will come home to a dead garden.

Lindsay tried to fix the system a few weeks ago and gave up. He said something about needing a volt meter, but didn't get around to it. I used the old fashioned method of working with live wires to see what sparked. It has now been rewired, the timers work and I didn't even shock myself.

Now, there is a new problem. The dogs managed to break three sprinkler heads and it wasn't just the heads. The pipe leading to the heads, deep underground broke. After two trips to the hardware store, I got only one fixed.

I'm tired, can't dig anymore or make any more trips to the hardware store. I'm done. I'm hoping that the geysers will spray out sufficient water to keep the yard more or less alive.

In the meantime, I have finished packing. I have my evening gowns, high heels, down jacket and mittens in the suitcase and managed to come in under the airline weight limit. It's not easy packing for a trip involving hiking in cold weather, dancing in formal gowns and getting it all in one suitcase that weighs less than 50 pounds. I had to leave out the tiara.

Anyway, I will be gone a little over a week. Take care.

Icky Stuff

2008-05-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this monstrosity is a ring holder, I don't really know. Whatever it is, it gives me the creeps. It looks like it should be coming out of the ground on Halloween.

Sarah is back and we did the lunch and marathon shopping thing. We just picked up where we left off and it was like she was never gone. I've got to be honest, though, it was more exhausting than working a shift in the hospital. Sarah hasn't had any fun stores to shop in during her year on the Central California coast. Making up for lost shopping time, Sarah bought a couch, recliner, ottoman, bench and a shopping cart full of stuff for her new house. I got off a lot cheaper.

This creepy thing was on the back of someone's car. Whenever they hit the brake, the red eyes on the skeleton lit up. Ewww.

Finally, this icky photo is of Meat Loaf performing Paradise by the Dashboard Light. It is true that he is only acting out the lyrics and is demonstrating reaching second base. He is also just trying to be funny and entertain the audience. But I really don't like it.

It is disrespectful to his back-up singer, Aspen Miller. Meat Loaf could simply run his hands up and down her sides like he did in the original video with Ellen Foley. The audience can use their imagination for the rest.

This makes me uncomfortable because I can imagine what it must be like for her to go to work everyday and be pawed by her boss, even if her workplace is the stage and Meat Loaf is her boss. She can't really make him stop it without risking losing her job. He has all of the power and acts like he owns her. I would have much more respect for Meat Loaf if he would treat Aspen like a lady.

Perhaps we are lucky that Meat Loaf didn't do this song with his other back-up singer, who is his daughter. But Aspen Miller is someone else's daughter. She deserves the same consideration and respect.

Paradise by the dashboard light

2008-05-23T18:05:00.001-07:00

OCD And Meat Loaf

2008-05-23T17:21:00.000-07:00

I don't recall living in a cave for the past thirty years, but I'm starting to wonder. There are other worlds out there that I never knew existed. This realization happened a couple of weeks ago while watching a commercial. I liked it. It is the rock and roll, AT&T commercial where a dad agrees to buy his son a cell phone. It is cute, but completely went over my head. My problem is that I had never heard of Meat Loaf (the singer, not the recipe).

Lindsay mentioned that the song was a parody of Paradise By The Dashboard Light. That meant nothing to me. He found the video on You Tube and made me watch it. I haven't been the same since. I'm not exactly obsessed with Meat Loaf, but I can't stop watching his videos. Well, maybe I am a little obsessed. I have cut down on my blogging because there is only so much time in the day and I have to make time for Meat Loaf. There are thousands of videos of him and I must see them all.

I was already familiar with some of his music, I just didn't know whose music it was. It didn't interest me enough to find out, much less buy it. What I like is watching him perform and analyzing him. His performances over the past thirty years range from genius level to embarrassing. I've been studying his life history and trying to understand his performances in the context of what was happening to him at the time. I could go into a long dissertation on the subject, but who really cares but me?

In the meantime, I'm trapped in this obsession and hope that it goes away soon. But there is hope. My Princess Diana obsession was bad too, but eventually I came to my senses. That only took about fifteen years. It is all ancient history now, but some day I will have to write about how the Princess of Wales affected my life. I'm not expecting as much from Meat Loaf, although I may have to buy some of his CD's.

Crazy Rules

2008-05-23T16:48:00.000-07:00

At work, we are all walking around with dead beepers in our pockets. Administration occasionally checks to make sure that we are wearing our beepers and if anyone is beeperles, there is hell to pay. They don't work, but if our carrying a small, dead electronic device makes the bigwigs happy, we will comply.

Actually, we are happy that the beepers died. When they were alive, they drove us nuts. If any patient anywhere on the floor hit their call button, then all of the pagers would go off. The noise or buzzing was non-stop. Several times, I threatened to soak all of the nasty noise-makers in a bucket of water. Perhaps, someone beat me to it. Anyway, they are dead. Woo Hoo!

Administration has come up with a new rule that makes as much sense as carrying a dead beeper, only it is much more dangerous. It involves restraining patients. Administration will not allow us to both put a patient in restraints and have a sitter watch them.

What this means is that if a strong, highly agitated, confused patient must be tied up for their own safety, we are not allowed to have anyone watch them to make sure that they remain safe. We must all leave the room and just hope that they don't break the restraints or hang themselves when they wiggle down and try and jump from the bed. A few years ago, we had to watch a video about a patient who died this way.

We will continue to do what is right and will watch people in restraints when necessary. It is one thing to carry a broken pager, it is quite another thing to allow a dangerous, out of control patient to be left alone. Some rules are meant to be broken.

Angry Wet Dog

2008-05-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

I don't know what the big deal was. It was over a hundred degrees. A bath should have felt good.

Georgie was so mad that he refused to sit on the couch with me afterwards.

Creative Parking Solution

2008-05-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

This is one way to park two vehicles in a too small garage.

Shopaholic's Dream

2008-05-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

Some big development has been going in along the freeway near my house. As usual, the top of a hill was cut off and the sides were terraced like little rice paddies. The steep sides along the freeway were covered in cloth of some kind to protect it from erosion. It is ugly, of course, but nothing worth Blogging about. It is just the kind of thing that happens all of the time.

My first inkling that this development was different was the edge of one building that is visible from the freeway. The building, even in the land of McMansions, was just too big to be a home. It is a residential area, so I figured that it was a new school being built.

Next, a couple of stone monoliths appeared on the side of the steep slope. I didn't know what they were, but didn't really care.

Now, I'm excited and happy. The monoliths are signs. The name Target appeared on one of them. Next came a Kohl's sign, then Circuit City and Lowe's. There is still plenty of room for more store names. Please let there be a Pinkberry up on that hill somewhere.

I live on the side of Santa Clarita that has few stores. If I want something besides food or gas, I have to drive to the other side of the valley. It is so thrilling to have stores a few minutes from my house. With gas at $4.1699 a gallon, I want to drive as little as possible.

Current Cheesecake

2008-05-15T00:19:00.000-07:00

Sarah says that her photos in the previous post are out of date. This is a current photo. (In case you are wondering, they are real.)

Life Is Getting Back To Normal

2008-05-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

Sarah, my best friend from nursing school is returning to L.A. The central California coast was freezing, windy and overcast. How can a Valley Girl tolerate such conditions? Why should she have to? L.A. is paradise.

Sarah sold her L. A. home over a year ago at the peak of the market and rented a home up north, a couple of blocks from the ocean. In the meantime, the housing market collapsed. Sarah has now purchased a house in the Valley and made out like a bandit. In the meantime, I'm a hundred and fifty thousand dollars poorer, but it's just a paper loss, I keep telling myself. *sob*

Anyway, I'm looking forward to our "ladies who lunch" days and our shopping marathons. The photo above was taken a little over a year ago on our last shopping adventure. We were testing out furniture by lying on it.

We bought so much stuff that day, the only way to get it home was to put down the top on my convertible and pile the stuff on top of Sarah. She could barely breathe underneath the pile.

For the gentlemen who may be new to my Blog, these are a couple of extra shots of Sarah. Yes, she loves to cook and is good at it. I'm looking forward to a good, home-cooked meal.

A Coming Home Surprise

2008-05-12T00:16:00.000-07:00

So, the idiot husband went to Thailand and decided to have some fun, which consisted of unprotected sex with prostitutes. In his place, I would have just visited the sites and taken lots of pictures, but that is just me. He is now lying in a hospital bed waiting to see what the cultures grow.

He has a nasty rash in his groin and some of his joints are swollen, red and painful. His lovely, sweet wife thinks he has perhaps gout, although, some rare tropical disease can't be ruled out. It is a terrible shame. They are such a nice couple with two well-behaved, beautiful daughters. The husband appears to have everything, a lovely wife, children, house, good job and gonorrhea. We will know for sure when the cultures come back.

Hopefully, he will have a strain that responds to antibiotics. Some strains of Gonorrhea are not treatable. Who knows what strain is going around in a South-East Asian whorehouse?

He says that he and his wife use condoms, so with some luck, she will be fine. I would expect that the wife will need to be told of her husband's little problem, anyway. Condoms aren't infallible.

I hope that the family isn't torn apart by this, but I could understand why the wife would not want to be married anymore to such an idiot. Perhaps if I were a man, the situation might make more sense, but I honestly don't know what would possess a man to do something like this.

A New Camera

2008-05-11T00:15:00.000-07:00

My new camera arrived, so of course, I'm playing with it. It has a pet setting, which is a great idea. It can focus on a moving target, like Georgie, below.

He needs a hair cut, but I like him the way he is. Sometimes I put a pony tail on top of his head to keep the fur out of his eyes. He really hates that. The rest of the time I just put spit on his head, which acts as a styling gel.

Last Fall, I tossed some larkspur seed across the ground and it came up. I really expected the gardeners to think it was a weed and pull it. That is usually what happens. I'm still fuming that the gardeners weed-whacked my day lillies just as they emerged from the ground.

I'm still working on learning the macro setting. The photo below is out of focus, but I liked the artsy effect. I love photographing flowers at an extreme close up. The new camera appears to have more potential to get in close. I like my new toy.