On the Seventh Day...

I woke up this morning at 0700 and suddenly realize that it was Saturday! I had slept for a solid 24 hours. I didn't even wake up once. I wasn't sure if I should be happy that I got that much sleep or disappointed because I had lost my whole day off.
This week at work has been a particularly tough one. We're in the midst of a giant staffing crisis. It's not enough that we are working 3 to 4 times as hard, but we're also working twice as long too. It doesn't seem to matter how fast you move or how efficient you are, they always want/need more from you. Thursday night I got called to come in early, I didn't end up leaving until 18 hours later. That was one heck of a night! My first patient (26 years old) died in a very bloody open chested mess. "Strip that room fast, we've got another on the way," was the response I got to that one. Next came a lady with chest pain. Yep, you guessed it, a big ole heart attack. So I rushed her off to get 2 stents and an angioplasty. Two more assignments later I find myself back with "heart attack lady" who has now officially gone bananas. By this time she had torn out her IVs, kicked another nurse, kept taking off her oxygen, pulled off her EKG monitor, and just about fell out bed multiple times. What could I do but tie her into the bed? What... It's perfectly legal. As many times as I tried to tell her that she was having trouble breathing because she kept fighting me so hard and that she couldn't get out bed because she had just had a heart attack, she didn't seem to get it. So... I spent the last four hours of my shift putting her back in the bed as she threatened to kill me, kicked me and tried to bite me. I had to laugh a little about that one, she didn't have any teeth!
FYI:
It's a felony to threaten or assault a nurse.
If you ever find yourself restrained by a nurse, it's generally not beneficial to let them know about your plans of a killing rampage when they let you loose.
I've never heard of anyone being gummed to death.
You might not want to bite a nurse anyway, you never know where they may have been!
Sometimes it's all you can do to pray that you'll make it to the end of your shift without hurting anyone (or getting hurt by someone). Then you've got to pray for the strength to do it all over again the next day.

Clicking Send and Other Delights...

Yesterday for the first time in seven years, I did my own taxes. I've never done my taxes completely devoid of help with a mortgage, a retirement plan, tuition credit, and a stock portfolio before. Let me tell you, it's a lot more challenging than it looks. I ended up using Turbo Tax online and after about 2 1/2 hours I think I got it right. I must say they did a good job of building up the suspense, especially with the audit risk meter at the end , that was great. By the time you've put in all your infomation and W2s and 1099s and 1098 Ts and all that stuff, you're so worried about missing something that it's a little hard to finally click send. However, I have discovered the feeling you get from doing your taxes early and knowing that you will get strategically timed refund beats the intial tachycardia involved in pressing the botton.
So... My delights for today:
I'm done with my taxes!
I discovered the excitement of the Electrasol 2 in 1 gelpacs (on sale at Target) in my Maytag washer.
I can have all the overtime I want. :0
It's no longer dark when I head out to work! YAY

Delights

A friend of mine regulary catagorizes many of her experiences under "delight." The more I think about it, the more appropriate that it seems. Some things just can't be anything else. Today I was feeling a little overwhelmed by sheer amount of tasks in front of me. I finally decided to take a minute to remember some of lifes little delights.
Delight #1:
I LOVE wool. I recently discovered the wonder of working with wool. I love everything about it, even the way it felts. A few months ago a Russian friend of mine made a little trip to Moscow and brought me back the BEST WOOL EVER! It's made from camel, goat, and dog hair and it was spun totally raw. We called it the "Russian Barn Yarn" as it smelled like a barn yard. I smeared it with Orvus (basically horse soap available at feed stores) and soaked it water. It worked well, and you wouldn't believe how yucky the water looked afterward! The yarn smells much better now.

Delight #2:
Borscht: I recently learned the three c's of making Borscht: carbs (potatoes), cabbage, and color (beets and carrots). I love it when tasty food is also pretty!

Flying Dutch

I finally did it, I booked my flight to Rwanda! After compulsively searching bookingbuddy.com for weeks on end and missing out on a couple of good ticket prices I decided that it was time I actually took the plunge. So... I am now officially going to Rwanda! (My tickets are NOT refundable.)
I had a difficult time trying to find an itinerary that didn't have me waiting in random African airports by myself for 15 plus hours but I finally found one where the price wasn't as much as my house! I will be flying Royal Dutch Airlines to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam I will fly to Uganda to make the connection for the final leg to Rwanda. I only have 1 hour and 45 minutes to make the connection so I hope all my flights are on time! I haven't flown internationally by myself yet so I'm a little nervous about that. I just hope to be able to fly Dutch without the becoming the Flying Dutchman wandering randomly around the ports of the world never to return home!
I'm hoping that having tickets in hand will be just the "reality check" I need to make me get cookin' on the curriculathons!

Sew-athons

Well all, it's been quite a while since I was able to blog last. I've been so blasted busy working and going to class and writing my curriculum that I just haven't had time. You'll be happy to know however, that I did find an outlet for all this craziness. That's right folks, I went to a sew-athon!
Both my sisters are addicted to sewing and one used to be a professional seamstress. They apparently decided that I needed to sew too and so for Christmas and my birthday (which happen to be quite close to one another) my family pooled their funds to buy me a sewing machine.

Since the purchase of my lovely little Pfaff both of my sisters have been inviting me to sew with them regularly. You might be surprized at how relaxing and even addicting it really is. A couple of weeks ago the women folk of my family and a few of our friends gathered at my sisters house for a day of sewing. It's actually kind of inspiring to see what everyone else was working on. My mom finished her table runner, Lisa worked on a picture quilt, Becky was doing something too intricately elaborate for me to fathom, my friend Marina had her first taste of quilting, and I revised my proposal for the 119th time. Once I finally finished the proposal I joined the fun.
I had accidentally left my original project at home so I had to start to a new one. My mom had some rubber ducky print flannel and some yellow so I started a baby quilt for the special care nursery at the hospital in Rwanda.

Julie (my nurse friend in Rwanda) says that often times the swaddling that the mothers bring to wrap their babies in is filthy. Before she used to travel from church to church having "baby showers" to raise awareness of global marternal child health concerns and to receive donations of baby items for Kibogora hospital. She is now at Kibogora and probably won't be back in the states for the next several years. So... we've been having sewathons to keep her well supplied.