How Long Have We Been Working?

Yesterday my friend Naomi and I met at a coffee shop to work on the curriculum for Rwanda. After some amount of coffee we both managed to "enter the zone," each of us concentrating heavily on our sections. When we finally looked up from our work we noticed it had begun to snow. The flakes were huge and the snow was sticking. We started our work on clear spring day and finished in the midst of snow storm. Just how long had we been working?
As we left the coffee shop we soon found visibility to be pretty poor. Our first attempt was to drive to Naomi's parents house which was only a few miles away from our meeting point. Sadly, the Weed house is perched on a hill. As we slowly drove we passed several cars either stuck or slipping around on the blanket of snow. We decided (I guess it was actually my decision as I was driving) not to attempt the hill and to drive to Naomi's apartment in the downtown area as we knew there would be less snow there. We both made it safely to our respective houses.

Trip Preparations

This morning after work I walked down to the UW Travel Medicine Clinic to schedule an appointment to get my shots to go to Africa. Interestingly I learned that there is a nationwide shortage or the yellow fever vaccine. Apparently there are only a few specific days that the vaccine will be available at the clinic. The multi dose vial has to be used within 1 hour of opening it. I now have an extremely inconvenient appointment for the yellow fever vaccine. But you've gotta do what you've gotta do when it starts to come down to the wire.

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm"

A few months ago a patient came to the hospital with a life threatening aortic aneurysm. He had surgery to repair it however unfortunately during the surgery he suffered a massive stroke. After the stroke he showered clots throughout his body leaving him comatose and in a vegetative state. He remained in the ICU for several weeks on life support with little to no hope of awakening.
He was an immigrant from a country far away and he still had many relatives living in that country. Hospital staff tried many times to speak with the man's family regarding his grim prognosis and possible decisions to withdraw life support. Each time the subject was approached, staff was told that they needed to wait for the rest of the family (who weren't even immediate family) to arrive from his home country.
We waited and waited continuing to care for the man as best we could but nothing changed. We were merely taking care of a body, a shell, the person he once was had already gone. We were running out of time and we needed to come up with a plan.
Finally someone suggested the idea of placing a web cam in the patients room and having a family conference over the Internet. I must admit that is a very creative plan and even a good plan if we were looking for a way to include the rest of his family. However, it didn't stop there... Staff were then asked (by the family members present) to keep the web cam on while withdrawing life support until the patient finally passed. I suppose it's not like we were posting this on youtube but it certainly did make me go hmmm...

Blin Cake and a Happy Maslenitsa!

Perhaps you have all been wondering why my blog address in blincake. There there is a good reason and here it is. Several months ago during one of my many academic misfortunes, a Russian friend of mine taught me the word 'blin'. Not only is it a scrumptious pancake but apparently it's also slang for darn it. Don't worry, I did my research and found that it's just as mild as darn it.
Some History:
At that time I had mentioned that I felt I was being buried under huge pile of blin frantically trying to dig myself out of it but the blini seemed to just rain down from the sky. It was like Jack and the Blin Stack. While discussing this with my Russian friend who takes every opportunity to feed me, I was made aware that it's possible to take all those piles of blini and make them into a cake. That is exactly what we did and when we were finished, we had 17 layers of chocolaty goodness!
Last week, my computer and my thesis were stolen. Conveniently, I learned that last week was also Russian pancake week! Hurray for Maslenitsa! Maslenitsa is a week of grand celebration in Russia much like Marti Gras (which I know nothing about) happening just before Easter and also welcoming in the Spring. Everyone cooks and eats copious amounts of blini, plays obnoxious games, burns a scarecrow (bidding goodbye to winter) and somehow a trained bear is involved. Here I was once again with Marina making 17 layers of chocolaty goodness out of my blin stack.
So what does all this mean? Here's the good part. I called some friends who work for Microsoft to ask if they knew of anyone who might be selling a decent used laptop. After my friends heard about the "thesis incident" I was invited to breakfast to discuss what could be done. After having a lovely breakfast (of course any breakfast is lovely to me) we went to a computer store where my adopted family chose a wonderful new laptop, purchased it and handed it off to me. "Your work is too important to lose any time on, we want to help." For once in my life I was speechless. What a blessing! Though the road has been rough, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is the project I should be doing.
So... Here I sit with a new computer working on a project that is so much bigger and better than anything I could have done alone. It's 17 layers of chocolaty goodness!

Unspeakable Tragedy

Well... I am being a little dramatic, but what happened was pretty terrible... Last night/this morning my laptop was stolen. To make matters worse my thesis was on that laptop. "Didn't you have it backed up," you might ask? Of course I did, however the jump drive I had it backed up on was with the computer at the time of its abduction.
The story goes:
I took the bus to work last night and took my laptop with me as I had an appointment in the morning with my committee chair. I don't have a locker at work so I took the case to the substation between my patients rooms and put it under the desk. Two of us were working out of that substation and for most of the night either myself or Katy was occupying the desk. This morning when I reached under the desk to get my bag, it was gone!
Poof, just like that my entire life's work was gone. I suppose it wasn't my whole life's work, but it sure seems like it. I had worked for months on that. My literature review, my needs assessment, my research data, and my curriculum all vanished.
I now have 53 days to recreate my entire project, have it translated into French and have a deliverable project on plane en route to Kigali, Rwanda. Logistically, it's impossible but I am reminded that with God all things are possible. I just has to happen, there's no other option.
So here's to minty coffee and late night curriculathons!

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