Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

There's a poem by William Shakespeare that describes man as inconstant, with one foot on sea and one on shore. I feel like it is a good metaphor for experiencing life. There are things that are easily understood, firm, everyday, just there . That is shore. [because it's sure; get it?] Then there are things that whip around you, confusing wheres and whys, and cause you to miss your footing, or at least your grasp of the situation. That is sea. And I feel like Wal-Mart can be the very juncture of sea and shore. I went there with perfectly logical intentions. I had moved apartments, and decided it was too difficult to cook and eat with just a bowl, a crockpot, and some tupperware. That, and a lack of basic food ingredients. I didn't even have salt. So, trying to keep costs down, I visited Wal-Mart. That, and it was the only grocery store I knew of in my new area.  So I drove the really strangely back-roads route to the Wal-Mart parking lot, grabbed a basket, and, seeing a...

There's a mantra that the medical field goes by when assessing for pain in a patient. "Their pain is whatever they say it is." We have to go by what the patient says because there is no accurate way to measure pain; sure the heart rate and blood pressure could go up, but what if your body experiences pain for a long time and learns to adjust those measurable measures? There is just no sort of pain thermometer (pain-o-meter, or dolor-meter, if you will) that we can stick anywhere in the body that will give us that information. And because in our culture we are fairly well-trained in hiding weaknesses, it is possible to have very high pain and look mostly normal. Just depends on the tolerance level of the person. So if we have no data to use, the closest thing to accuracy is what the patient says. Just go with it. If they say their pain is 10/10, and are chatting with their family, you still better be getting that narcotic. [actually, the only time we can override what the...

I had a patient for two consecutive days. The first day, he seemed pretty normal. The second day, though, I was in another patient's room when my nursing assistant came up to me and said I was needed in his (the person of interest) room. When I  went into the hallway, I could hear him yelling for his wife, cussing out the doctor, and complaining of abuse. I apprehensively entered his room, and asked what he would like help with. He started complaining about how his wife was controlling his life, and not letting him finish breakfast, and withholding his phone. When I talked to the wife, this list of complaints focused into a clearer story: his daughter was going to drive him home in her car, and he wanted to smoke, but she didn't want her car to smell like smoke.  He promised that he would smoke 50ft away, but I pointed out that HE would still smell like smoke. He told me that he was old enough to make his own decisions. This amused me, because while he was pointing fingers at ...

I've been studying for graduate entrance exams (which hopefully will excuse my blogging absence), and I've rediscovered something that I knew when I was two: language is difficult. Ironically, I discovered this while studying prefixes and roots, which are supposed  to aid me in figuring out the meaning of any word (assuming it is Greek or Latin based). Instead I find myself pondering how two such different meanings could be linked to the same root. Examples: Ami . means love (amorous) also means friend (amiable). May explain the friend zone, although if ami is love AND friend, maybe there IS no friend zone. Bell . means pretty (belle) and war (belligerent). Were wars fought for beauty (well, check  on the Trojan War), or did some ancient culture think wars were pretty? Is this why love and war are paired in "All's fair in love and war"? Fort . means luck (fortuitous) and strong (fortify). Usually, if someone says, "oh, you were just lucky in that game,...

Yesterday morning at shift change, one of the night nurses was telling me how she was so tired, because it had been a long night (literally, since she stayed an extra hour or so finishing up charting), but that she needed to go to church or else her mother would yell at her. I was missing church, too, and so I shared with her how I consoled myself: "How can being here be bad? Didn't you know Jesus healed on the Sabbath?" At this point, the nice eavesdropping doctors sitting next to me laughed, so I know I made an impression, but I don't know if I made my point. It's a tricky situation, really. I've been told that if you go to church every week, you will never become inactive. That's a rather tongue-in-cheek adage, because if you attend services every week, I'm pretty sure that means you are not inactive as a member of your church, because you are there. It's like saying that you always find something the last place you look. Well, duh. Except the...

Isn't it funny that the times when we have the most to blog about are around the times when we have the least time to do it? I think that should be a corollary to Murphy's law. [though actually, I could have blogged earlier, but I was more interested in my book.] This morning, I received an interesting request from my roommate: she had a friend who needed someone to spy for her. At a wedding showcase. Well, I had just been reading a novel about spies, and was anxious to try this out. So I called up another friend, and asked if she wanted to be an accomplice in a secret mission. She agreed, so on our drive up I showed her the mission requirements. That  information I will not share, as I am supposed to be a spy, you know? And a professional one, too, because I was getting paid by the hour. Anyway, Heather agreed to pretend to be almost  engaged (we didn't have a fake engagement ring) to a sales advertising representative named Justin, who planned to propose to her on Val...

Last Christmas (which, as you may recall, was less than a month ago), I found myself at home without family and with limited friends around (reason being, Christmas is a family holiday, so my friends were with their  families). So I was in my apartment doing I have no idea what (we'll say I was fixing the ceiling fan light in my room. that happened at some point) when a neighbor rang the doorbell to tell me I had a package at the front door. It was wrapped in a plastic bag, and although it came with a card, the signature was "Secret Shepherd". Inside was a colorful fleece blanket. It literally brought color and warmth to my Christmas holiday. Today brought a different mystery gift. Not actually as exciting, but I found it just as meaningful. My hospital shift had ended, and it had been one with death, emotional tension, heartache, fatigue, and frustration. No matter how my shift was, I always end it with two things: handwashing and wiping my phone off with alcohol. This ...