Why?

This woman hasn't cut her nails since 1979.

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Clearly she hadn't changed her hair style either.
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However it does not go without notice how skinny she is. So I will no longer be cutting my nails either. It's been three days and despite my efforts I think I may have gained three pounds.

Too Tired For Words...

I was up around 4am this morning. Had to be at the hospital by 6am. (San Bernardino County Hospital aka the Knife and Gun Club of San Berdoo) After a day of hospital work I managed to fight my way through Friday afternoon southern california traffic to arrive home by 3:30 pm. But my day didn't stop there. Noooooo. I took a 45 minute nap (most sleep I've had all week) and then put my scrubs back on and headed off to ANOTHER hospital to work a second shift. It is now 3am, I just got home, and I am tired.

However, whenever I want to feel sorry for myself, I think about the woman at county hospital who was forcefully taken out of her home by her boyfriend, who then proceeded to call 911 to say that a woman had been shot. He held his girlfriend against her will until he could hear the ambulance near by. At that time he shot her in the back of the neck and fled the scene. He didn't want to kill her, he just wanted to make sure that she suffered the rest of her life as a quadapalegic. As it turns out, this is not an isolated event. Lately the hospital has been getting a string of this type of crimes. Because the ambulance is close by, they rarely die. They do, however, suffer tremendously. It is just unreal what people can do to each other.

All in due time...

Sorry... this week has seemed to pass by me faster than I could blog. I have a few internal blogs in my head, but no time (as of yet) to get them online. Give me time.

Whore-ably Wonderful

Have you ever looked at something and not been able to immediately recognize what it was that you were looking at? So you scrunch up your face, squint your eyes, and turn your head just a little to the side. All to get a better look? In a sense, that is how I see the world every single day. I suspect my perception of life is a little different than the rest of the world. I'm utterly convinced that I am genetically incapable of conforming to the social norm. But somehow it works for me.

Case in point: this week. While in the middle of a job interview I actually used the word "whore". According to my husband, most people don't do that.

Over the past few weeks, I'd been hearing rumblings that my current employer just happened to be the lowest pay in town. I figured it would be wise to check it out, so I tossed my resume online to see if there were any takers. Evidently there were. I had an interview on Friday afternoon. After the first round of questioning by the department director, he deemed me qualified for round two and promptly ushered me down the hall his bosses office, where the three of us would endure the usual pre-employment formalities. Or so they thought.

Halfway through the interview I still couldn't tell if they liked me or not. I had only managed about two and a half hours of sleep the night before, so I may have not been in top form. Whatever the case, for the life of me I could not get a read on these two men. While I was doing my best to reset my internal radar, the "big man" asked me something about my current job (I wasn't really listening, I was working on my radar!). I explained to him that in my department, everything we do for a patient (that we can charge them for) is worth a certain amount of points. We are required to have a specific number of points at the end of each shift. "Big Man's" hospital does not yet have a way to quantify the productivity of his employees, so he immediately got defensive:

"That can certainly lead to some abuse of patient care" he stated.

My response?

"Well, it's not like we are whoring-out the patients or anything"

I have one week to decide if I will except their offer of employment. (With a $7/hr pay increase from my current job.)

Twenty Nine and counting!

I just wanted to welcome my beloved friend to her 29th year!

We met over eighteen (holy cow!) years ago, and I am very blessed to still have her in my life today.

Congrats, Sarah! Hope you have a fantastic day!

I love you!!!!!!!!!!

My happy dance.

Today I worked my very first 18-hour shift. You. Have. No. Idea. I think I was able to sit down from 3:45-4:15. That's it. My feet hurt. And I signed up for another shift tomorrow. Why do I do this to myself? One word. OVERTIME. I just found out that I made more money in ONE hour than Randy did bartending all night. For some reason he doesn't want to to the happy dance with me! Boys can be so strange! Hopefully this will only encourage him to get through school this year.

Ten Points For My Team!

This time next week will mark the 1/3 point of the fall semester. 1/6 of my year. Trust me, I didn't think I'd make it this far. I know I said that last year too, but last year was different. Last year I wasn't sure if I could do it. I wasn't sure if the bills were going to get paid. I wasn't sure if the car was going to handle nearly 500 miles a week. I did. They did. It did.

This year is different.

Every single day is a painful lesson in tedium. Don't get me wrong, I am eager to learn new things! But answer me this... where is the logic when I, an actual Respiratory Care Practitioner, licensed by both the state of California and the National Board Of Respiratory Care, an individual who provides life-saving patient care every night I work, must be forced to sit through nearly 50 hours of class time learning how to do things like, say, GIVE A NEBULIZER TREATMENT!!!! Hello?!? That is analogous to forcing a licensed contractor to take a class on hammering in nails! Painfully pointless.

I know that I have many days ahead of me that will serve a greater purpose. I have faith that I will eventually be rewarded with more knowledge and experience, but right now, on a day when I didn't get much more than three hours of sleep before crawling out of bed and speeding to class, I am soooo over it.

So I raise a toast to me! 1/3 of the way through this semester!

Ten points for my team!

They need this sign in America!

Have you ever spent time praying that God would give you a "sign"?

Apparently the sign is out there.

Unfortunately it's in Japan.

Handicap? No! Handicapable? Yes!

I just loved this story so much I had to put it up on my blog!

NEW YORK (AP) -- Margaret Johnson might have looked like an easy target.

But when a mugger tried to grab a chain off her neck Friday, the 56-year-old Johnson, while riding in her wheelchair, pulled out her licensed .357 pistol and shot him, police said.

Johnson said she was in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood on her way to a shooting range when the man, identified by police as 45-year-old Deron Johnson, came up from behind and went for the chain.

"There's not much to it," she said in a brief interview. "Somebody tried to mug me, and I shot him."

Deron Johnson was taken to Harlem Hospital with a single bullet wound in the elbow, police said. He faces a robbery charge, said Lt. John Grimpel, a police spokesman.

Margaret Johnson, who lives in Harlem, has a permit for the weapon and does not face charges, Grimpel said. She also was taken to the hospital with minor injuries and later released.

Champagne anyone?

Just off the 15 freeway, between Orange County and the Wine Region of Temecula Valley lies a little piece of heaven. Nestled in the foothills of southern Corona is the Glen Ivy Hot Springs and Spa (not to be confused with Glen Eden, the nudist colony one exit further. While I have not actually experienced Glen Eden, I have taken a peek through the fence as I drove by. don't judge! You know you would too). Today Glen Ivy is a high-end spa catering to the many OC transplants, with the increased fees to prove it.

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While I don't partake very often, I still try to go once in a while to sit in the warm mineral baths, play in the mud pit, and relax in the underground grotto.
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Last time I went to the hot springs, I decide to splurge. The brochure promised a "relaxing journey" of exfoliation and moisture restoration followed by a Swedish massage. At that pont in my life, no price was too high for a stress relieving massage.
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Unfortunately, my tension only increased as I entered the The Ivy Massage Building. Despite the elegant decor highlighted with freshly cut flowers, gurgling water fountains, and the minty-fresh scent of lavender and rosemary in the air (all obviously designed to inspire relaxation) , I was overcome with tension. The usual bout of insecurities and concern began to fill my brain. "What if my massage therapist is a man? Even worse, what if my therapist is a really skinny woman? Do you think she has ever seen thighs like mine? No. Probably not." Maybe I should have been more specific when I made my appointment. Could I have asked for a "fat one"? No. Probably not. Dang!

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I decided that depending on how skinny she was, I'd have to tip more. I tip on an inverse sliding scale of fatness. The fatter I am, the more I tip. The skinnier they are, the more I tip. Unfortunately when my therapist finally called my name to come back, I was so busy trying to calculate the immeasurable amount of possible tipping quantities, I didn't even pay attention to what she looked like. I just remember walking into my little room and being told that she'd be back after I was on the massage table and under the sheet. Double dang!

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So there I was, face down with no way to see the person that was delivering my "relaxing journey of exfoliation and moisture restoration". After a few minutes I was able to get a peek at her feet and ankles. She appeared to be a size nine shoe, with less than normal ankle thickness. Things were not looking good. I'd probably have to tip her more than expected.

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Somewhere during the treatment I resolved to give her a nice big tip and then just try to enjoy my massage. Fortunately there was no snickering, not even a little. I managed to relax for about ten whole minutes! As the treatment time came to an end, she invited me to spend some time in the "relaxation room" at the end of the hall and said there would be complimentary hot herbal tea and crisp fresh fruit to enjoy.

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I wrapped my soft fuzzy robe around myself and shuffled on down to the relaxation room. I had no idea that the woman sitting across from me would soon be the answer to all of my tension. She appeared comfortable in her swimsuit, drinking hot tea. She smiled at me as I sat there sizing her up. I estimated that she had more than 50 lbs on me! This was great news! Apparently the massage therapists see beefcakes all the time. But she seemed a little more comfortable with herself than I did. So I decided to make mention of this. "You look like you are quite relaxed!" I said. "Well" she responded, "After that first bottle of champagne, I didn't care what other people though of me in my swimsuit. By the second, I wouldn't care if the massage table crushed under my weight! I'm havin' a great time!"

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Turns out she was totally right! I'm now a two-bottle-of-champagne spa girl too.

Playing with Acetylcysteine.

I set off the fire alarm at work. Not just the little "beep beep beep" kind. Noooo... I set off the fire alarm for the entire hospital. There I am, in the patient's room, and suddenly over the intercom to the entire hospital (all five floors), "CODE RED, THIRD FLOOR, ROOM 3212. CODE RED, THIRD FLOOR, ROOM 3212." The pathetic part is that it took me a few seconds to realize that yes, I was on the third floor, and holy crap, I was in room 3212! OH NO! Within sixty seconds, people were everywhere in my room. Some were standing in the entry way with fire extinguishers (three in total) and some standing in the doorway trying to get a peek at the fire. Mostly they were watching a big dumb therapist (me) climb over my bedridden(Mr. I Can't-Run-Away-From-The-Fire) patient while wearing a pair of big plastic goggles to protect my eyes, a mask over my face, a giant yellow gown tied over my scrubs, all while making a feeble attempt at waving a washcloth around in front of the smoke detector. That's what I usually do when I burn dinner, I figured it would work at the hospital!!! I can only imagine what my patient was thinking. Would it be worse to die in a fire or to have me, currently on tip-toe, tumble off that chair that was propped up against his bed and come crashing down on top of him? I am not so sure that the odds were in my favor.
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Fortunately, there was no fire. Not even a spark. And really no smoke either. It was more of a mist, really. Mucomyst to be exact (also known as Acetylcysteine). It's a drug that when aerosolized creates a smoke-like-mist that can really irritate the lungs and eyes, thus my protective covering. It is used for patients with pneumonia.
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As I stood over my patient waving that white washcloth (mostly in surrender!), suddenly a few memories came back to me. The first was from last year when the director of the respiratory program warned us about Mucomyst. "It can create a smoke-like cloud that can be mistaken for real smoke by the sensitive smoke detectors in a hospital, so be careful with it." Oh yeah, now I remember! The second memory was when our pharmacology professor told us, "Every so often, some idiot will use Mucomyst without any ventilation in the room and set off the smoke alarms!" Ummm... I guess that makes me the, "IDIOT, party of one"!