Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

A couple weeks ago, as I was drifting off to sleep, I realized something that could change my perception of the universe: "lemon" and "melon" are spelled with the same letters . Wow, I thought, I hope I remember this when I wake up. Well, I did remember, but I've spent several weeks trying to figure out the significance of the statement, and I've got nothing. Okay, not quite nothing: lemons and melons are both fruits, and sleep is weird. I've had multiple occasions where I have thought in my semi-conscious sleep state, "Self, this is important, " or "Self, this is hilarious, " but the truth is, in the light of day, these epiphanies are just the illogical musings of a slumbering mind. To my husband's amusement, sometimes my actions while asleep are equally illogical. Apparently I put my pillows on top of my head in the middle of the night, and a couple times I've startled myself awake by finding that I am basically doing

Lately, the hospital work has gotten so demanding that it is incredibly discouraging to face the 12 hours ahead of me. Especially because I have become not-a-morning-person (or at least not until 9am). Anything that helps the time go either quickly or funly (yes, that's not a word, but I'm using parallel construction here) is a welcome relief. Anything that makes me feel marginally needed helps the day feel like a success. So I am proud to say that I saved a life yesterday. It was a small life. No bigger than my thumb. Despite its size, there's something definitely out-of-place (one might say it sticks out like a sore thumb . hahaha) in the moth flying the hospital hallways. You know what else sticks out like a sore thumb? A nurse erratically walking the hallway closing her hands on empty air. But by golly, I was gonna save that tiny life. Finally, with a cup and a flier on an upcoming nursing conference, I caught the little guy (or girl. I don't know moth biology) a

My sister Rachel and I have different perspectives--like basically all the time. We had a hard time with that growing up, but the more I learn the more I realize I don't know anything [someday I hope to reach the realization that I know nothing. haha jk]. So I need to concede that she is right--that daily duties mean more than epic quests. That realization came while working with a patient whose wife was suspicious of the medical team's every action. I had been (somewhat) warned of this, and thankfully when I saw her I introduced myself as her husband's nurse (Big Win for a Small Act!). But when a lack of medical literacy led to a misunderstanding, I was unable to stand down to her anger. I didn't shout (I'm not a shouter), I didn't use a negative tone of voice; but I did question her logic and, ultimately, not acknowledge her feelings.    Side story: I am a fighter. Usually not literally. But if some threat confronts me, I will face it head-on and work to te

And I am a person. A definitely quirky, peculiar person. God would be proud. The other day at work, I ran into one of the pulmonary nurse practitioners who had been my clinical coach when I first started working. She was wearing a neon pink/orange (maybe salmon?) top, and I remarked to her that it made her look tan. This would be perfectly fine...except she's African-American. **face palm** It didn't occur to me until later that my comment was incredibly stupid. I do dumb things, too. Yesterday I was getting impatient with the slow cooking of my stove-top frittata, so I stuck the skillet in the oven. That actually wasn't dumb; nor was the burn I got on my hand from touching the skillet handle (careless, but not dumb ). No, the dumb part was when I went to practice intubating mannikins and puncturing their epidural spaces and inserting central lines (IV catheters that are in the big veins in the femoral and subclavian area), but my hand still hurt, so I would periodic

As a concept, death isn't that bad. It's just a marker, noting the end of life. When you are born, your spirit enters your body and you live. When you die, your spirit leaves your body. And your body rots. But you, glorious divine you, go on. The whole eternity of you  involved just a small little chunk of mortality, a short opportunity to try out flesh and bone. Imperfect though it may be, life--in a body--is pretty good. Which is exactly why most people avoid death, if possible. Why trade the flawed good of life for an unknown and pretty irreversible death? You don't, not if you can help it. Basically that's the whole purpose of the field of medicine [and nursing]. We try to figure out a way to keep you going, if you are willing and we are able. And that is precisely why two of my patients--one man and one woman--this past week faced death. My first patient no longer was willing. He'd been in the hospital for a month, and then one day decided enough was eno

EXTRA! EXTRA! 1st-person Account of Being in Houston during Hurricane Harvey! The experience really has not been too bad. Which is kind-of why I haven't posted anything much on social media, because other stories deserve more attention. But diversity is the spice of life, so here is a not-so-scary account of riding the storm. Thursday and Friday of last week was a panic rush to grocery stores and gas stations. But I had gone grocery shopping on Wednesday, so we were okay there; we didn't even try. And Mark filled up with gas in the late evening when the lines didn't occupy the whole parking lot. So nothing much going on there. I did end up cooking a quiche in-between the normal shifts at work, so that we would have some healthy food that is still delicious to eat cold. That's it. Saturday it was raining all day; I knew things would be closed, so Mark and I basically stayed in the apartment and watched episodes of The Wire . [We're on a season that highlights t

Once again I am in-between semesters (yay!). This calls for a trip. Except the trip involved a lot of cramming. Before I could even go, I crammed as much as possible into my brain for my semester final. Then I crammed work, meaning that I worked 2 days in a row and those days were FULL of  running around, frustration, and vows to not work again for a week [quick fulfillment tip: set simple and completely doable goals]. After work, I went with Mark to pick up his car from state inspection, and then packed for our flight early the next morning (those are actually on 2 separate days, but I don't really need to list out the schedule for y'all. and I ate dinner at 8pm and...j.k. that's enough. ) This is how you nap with bling Mark and I flew out to visit my parents in Utah early early [and I hate getting up before 4am. I prefer no movement before 7am, but as life has taught so many before, preferences and reality don't always match.], so the first activity of the tri

All of the nurses I know are religious. That is what happens when you go to a private religious university for nursing school and then work in a cancer hospital;--if you don't have some sort of hope in a beneficent God, and in life after death, then working with cancer patients can get pretty depressing. But because of what we see every day at work, we are more likely to focus on relieving suffering than on prolonging life. Which is how I found myself praying for my patient to die. This patient, alias Bob, was on the highest oxygen flow possible without having a machine (aka ventilator) breathe for him [For those medically-minded, that means he was on high-flow oxygen 40L 100% FiO2 and ALSO had on 15L NRB mask]. Yet he was still in significant distress; he was using all of his chest and abdominal muscles to pull in more oxygen, and on top of that, he had blood constantly pouring out of his nose and mouth. He looked exhausted, agitated, and downright ghastly. After my morning

Once upon a time I was in kindergarten and we had a show-and-tell assignment. I don't remember if the purpose was to show baby pictures or not, but according to the story [poor memory--sorry] I brought pictures of myself as an infant. When I got home after school, my mother asked how the show-and-tell went. "Oh, it was great. Everybody thought I was the cutest baby they've seen." Not that my mom didn't think I hadn't been cute as an infant, but suspicious that such a sentiment was widespread, she asked me, "They said that?" To which I replied, "No, but they were thinking it." Two decades later, I have the (optional) assignment to bring to work one of my baby pictures as part of an effort from the retention committee to make work Fun. Even though one of my co-workers has been asking for my baby picture for years [I see him like once a month, we don't know each other's names, and quite frankly the request is creepy], I didn't

It's a shame that summer break in Texas means that free time is aligned with the super hot outside. But fun fact, this past weekend in San Antonio was 10 degrees F cooler than Houston. Less humid, too. Like reverse osmosis, the city drew us in. Which may be why our favorite part of the trip was the Riverwalk. Mark, the Riverwalk, and a boat in the background For some reason, we did not take many pictures of the favorite trip event. This is a red tunnel on the Riverwalk. It made us look sunburned You will just have to go see for yourself. Apparently the Riverwalk was partly designed with recommendations from the company who also designed Disneyland--which makes the Riverwalk the closest I've been to a palpable Disney enterprise. Also apparently, the history of the Riverwalk starts in 1536...but I think that's a stretch.    Interesting sidenote: we got a recommendation for a restaurant on the Riverwalk called Iron Cactus, where Mark experienced mole for

I have several faults. One is that I nearly always drip water on myself when drinking from a water bottle. Another is that I ALWAYS (or 99.99999% of the time) make a mess in the kitchen. The third is that I rarely generate my own body heat. In Texas, it isn't much of a problem...but it is in Idaho. Also Utah. Guess where my family is. Which is why we went to see Mark's fam--no, just kidding, they are in Idaho and Utah, too. We still visited. Nephew #3 We flew into Salt Lake and visited with Mark's brother's family to see baby Russell and adult penguins. Nephew #2, upon seeing me, declared that he was so glad I wasn't dead. Sometimes you need to see things from a child's perspective to really appreciate what you have in life. Mark and I then had some dedicated nap time on the bus up to Idaho, consequently missing most of the scenery, but making the journey seem pretty short. Our trip coincided with the Open House of the Idaho Falls Temple, meani

Salt is kinda strange. It has its own adjective (salty), without which it's near impossible to describe. And while most people think of salt as just for fries/pretzels/chips/crackers/etc., it is also used in sweet things: in cookies and cakes and, of course, salted caramel. Sometimes I put it on watermelon to enhance the flavor [a faintly sweet, faintly salty water flavor]. Basically, my point is that without salt, things are pretty bland. My past few weeks have been salted. Not in a terribly adventurous, MSG way, but in a good old ah-that's-more-interesting way. ***The following story requires reader discretion for the amount of grossness each individual can handle*****For the first time in my career as a nurse, I did digital rectal stimulation. That sounds awfully salty, but there's nothing racy about it. My patient was constipated--to the point of impaction [which means the poop is solidly stuck]. The milk and molasses enemas weren't working, so after getting an

At the beginning of the year, facing an upcoming semester of full-time work and full-time school, I tried to make my future life easier. Guessing (accurately) that I wouldn't have time for cooking, I spent two days in early January prepping a score of freezer meals. Our freezer got REALLY full. I had to evict the ice maker. And stop buying frozen fruits and vegetables. Mark's job was to put the meals in the crockpot. I made sure we had all of the non-perishables needed for the meals, labeled them, and used color-coding in writing the cooking instructions so that Mark would notice if the recipe called for additional ingredients. Looking back on it, I have to say that a lot of those recipes weren't that great, but I don't remember making them...so I can't really say how to make it better. Also, apparently I know my husband really well. For one of the meals he was supposed to add 2 quarts of vegetable stock, but only found one quart in the pantry. Then he saw a qua

Really, there are two different types of confusion: pleasant and combative. It's hard to say which kind is more amusingly frustrating. Case for Combative: The night shift report was uneventful, so I was quite surprised to go in at start of shift and find that, although he is the only person in the room, he is talking to his wife--who is apparently in the bathroom wearing a helmet. And she must have been talking back, because every once in a while he would try to clarify something she said. Really not sure how that conversation continued. But then, I can't imagine how it started either. So; Visual and Auditory Hallucinations. Cool. One of his doctors cut down the amount of narcotics he was getting, but as far as I saw it didn't help. We're trying to figure out what is going on with this man--blood cultures, urine cultures, x-ray. Good times getting those. He jerked away from the phlebotomist, he tangled himself up in wires while I tried to help him get the urine s

Mark hates when people are shown others less fortunate than they and told to feel grateful. He sees it as feeling happy that someone else is worse. --You don't like your shoes? Well, some people don't have feet! I had a thought as I was drifting off into a nap: what if those people think, "I don't have feet, but at least I don't have to buy shoes!" Which just goes to show you that you can be (un)grateful in whatever situation you are in. Earlier this week, after a morning of schoolwork (and my nap), Mark and I went to the gym and worked on our butts. Or at least he did, since he sat and rode a stationary bike; I worked off my butt, since I did the treadmill and stairclimber. [ Hahaha, I'm soooo clever ] When we came back home, I noticed as we walked up to our door that the apartment across from us reeked of turpentine, and made the entry reek too. And as soon as Mark opened the door, we found out that it made our apartment smell like a chemical plant

Last week was my school's summer break, so Mark and I planned a small getaway that fit around my work schedule and still allowed me time to play catch-up on schoolwork. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to graduate. We decided on visiting NASA, because that's just really cool. Mark booked a hotel so that we could also do some other things in the area without worrying about driving back. Tuesday morning, Mark felt like he was coming down with something, so we didn't leave until later in the day to accommodate for nap time. I drove us down to Webster, which is technically the town where the Space Center is, and we headed to our hotel. It looked really nice and comfy. Unfortunately, when the receptionist looked up our reservation, it was for the following week. And they were booked this week. Oops. Well, we had a nice drive down. At least we could catch some dinner before heading back. Mark convinced me to have some Buffalo Wild Wings, and even convinced me to get three diff

When nothing is true, anything is possible.             An environment that is buried in misinformation, propaganda, lies, and conspiracy theories is an environment where nothing is true.  Efforts by independent organizations and individuals to research and fact-check are quickly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of misinformation.  Truth takes effort to find, establish, and defend, while lies – especially when the lies don’t need to be consistent or make sense, they just need to take up time and space – can be generated with abandon .   Even when a lie is repeatedly debunked, it can continue to cause problems.  If you repeat the same lie over and over and over and over again, it eventually becomes accepted as true, or at least gains a sheen of validity. When nothing is true, those with power can do as they please.  When nothing is true, then political, economic, and religious elites have no external or internal checks on their actions.  Tyrants, oligarchs, and religious extre

Love is a weird state, but I'd rather be in Love than anywhere else. As long as Mark is there with me. The Young Women in our church congregation threw a Valentine's dance this weekend as a fundraiser for Girls' Camp. Mark suggested that we go, and who am I to turn down a man's offer to dance, especially when he is the Love-of-My-Life? So armed with that-one-free-dance-lesson-we-had-together-last-year, we showed up to show off. Just Kidding. We showed up to have fun. Which is what we had. We slow-danced, we upbeat-danced, we swing-danced, and after a rough start, we sort-of latin-danced. Or at least we danced while a Latin song was playing. That's like the same thing, right? Altogether we are dance novices, but I was happy, and he was happy, and nobody told us to leave the dance floor. So it was a success. We retreated to a table to snack on some goodies, and got recruited to play a version of The Newly-Wed Game. Which I've never played before, and