kapachino

Author: Kathleen

  • Mondays

    Working on the Monday after I’ve worked a weekend is always the worst. The only good thing about working weekends is that they are usually a lot more laid back. The bosses aren’t there, patient testing is cut down to a minimum, and there aren’t a million doctors, residents, and other random people swarming the unit. Plus, the people I work with over the weekend are my favorite coworkers.

    But Monday…ugh. It’s my fourth day in a row to work, and we have admissions all over the place. I’m still training a new nurse, which takes a lot of patience. Not to mention we’ve had some really tough patients lately. That sentence doesn’t even begin to describe what I mean. There are times when I think about what a depressing place my unit can be. At the end of the day I am beyond exhausted. It’s a constant struggle for me to continue pouring myself into these needy patients day by day. It drains me, yet it is so gratifying.

    But the other day I was in the middle of helping a patient when out of nowhere she looked at me, smiled, and said, “You sure do love your job, don’t you?” I can’t think of a better compliment. Because I really do – I love my job. And I’m so glad it shows.

  • recovering

    For those of you who don’t know, my husband found out in the middle of last year that he has a condition in both of his hips that causes the bone to die due to lack of blood flow. The disease is very advanced in his right hip especially. It’s an extremely painful condition because it causes a deep, aching bone pain, similar to cancer of the bone. If left alone, eventually his hips will collapse.

    Since he’s so young, and hip replacements don’t last forever, we’ve tried a different procedure to help prolong the need for them. What they do is drill holes in his hips to clear out some of the dead bone and relieve the pressure. He had the surgery done on his left hip first, since there was more of a chance of it working. Yesterday he had it done on his right one.

    The doctor’s very words were that the procedure is a “Hail Mary” for his right hip, and if this doesn’t work he will have to get it replaced. Obviously we want to avoid that.

    Anyway, he came through the surgery alright, and I was able to get a really cute picture of him with his surgical gear on lying in the stretcher, but sorry ladies, that one’s for me to enjoy!

    Unfortunately, this recovery so far has been a lot harder on him because this hip was so much worse to begin with. He really should be staying in a hospital for a few days, but they just gave him a bunch of pain medicine after surgery and then sent him home within 45 minutes. Well, that medicine wore off in about 3 hours and what he has to take now isn’t covering it. I took today off work to be with him, and I’m doing all I can to make him comfortable. It’s so hard to see him like this.

    So right now, this is what is consuming our lives. That, and cleaning my house, which I needed to do for my own sanity. It’s not easy for either of us to be going through this. Him in miserable pain, unable to be of much help around the house and practically immobile, and me helpless to make his pain go away, with all the duties of the house and dogs and work on my back.

    There are times when I start to feel myself get irritable – not at David, but just at the situation. But all I do for him is worth it when he compliments me. He’s the best patient I’ve ever had, and taking care of him is definitely the most fulfilling.

  • Back and On the Attack

    Hello again!

    Did you miss me? I missed you. Seriously, even though I’ve been blogging for about 8 years now, I didn’t know how important it was to me until I had absolutely no access to my blog. I don’t consider myself a writer, but apparently I like to write. If you consider this writing.

    Anyway, most of the technical difficulties have been worked out, and now my brother is very diligently working on a long overdue redesign of this site, considering how the header still says “engagement edition” and I’ve been married for five months now. I can’t bug him about it TOO much though, because he does have an actual job that he has to do. Somehow, I’m not the priority. Hm.

    Obviously, life has been happening to me during this forced blog fast. Some of it I will be talking to you about soon. But now, it is past my bedtime. One more thing though: my husband is having surgery tomorrow on his hip, and it is very important for a number of reasons. So if you pray, please pray for him. If you don’t pray, well, give it a try – you might find that it changes you.

    I’m so excited to be back. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

  • Technical Difficulties

    Please bear with me as this website undergoes some changes. I’ve been having some difficulty in the technical arena and as a result I am migrating from one hosting company to another. Once that is resolved hopefully the software issue can get fixed and then I will be able to post pictures again. THEN the new design will go up, which is way overdue! I am very excited about it, but until this all gets worked out posting will be light. I’m not anticipating that it will take TOO long, but who really knows?

    There are some good things and bad things happening in my life right now, and I hope to share them with you soon. In the meantime, my birthday is tomorrow and I would love for you to give me the gift of commenting and letting me know that you’re still there! Or, comment and let me know that you’re reading if you never have. It would make my day! Thanks, friends.

  • I Guess They Trust Me

    Well I’ve been trying for days to post pictures from our new house and our wedding. After trying on three different computers and three different browsers and still getting faced with a blank page, I called my brother, my web-design guru. Turns out something has gone wrong with my software, so he will be fixing it soon hopefully!

    So I decided that just because I can’t put up pictures doesn’t mean I can’t write about SOMETHING. So here is something. I have been a nurse for about eight months now, and my director has asked me to precept (train) a new employee. Some have told me that I must be doing a great job to warrant this trust, but I personally think it’s more the case that we are running out of experienced nurses that can precept – we have had a lot of people leave for other jobs lately, for various reasons.

    My director had told me the nurse’s name that I would be training, that she was younger than I, and that she had graduated around the same time as I did and had been working at another job up until this point. Today she let me know that the nurse would be coming by the unit tomorrow and I’d get to meet her.

    Well, she showed up today, and as soon as I saw her, I recognized her! It’s an acquaintance I went to school with, recently married with a new last name, who is extremely friendly and who I always thought would be a really great nurse. This relieved a lot of my anxiety, because I am unsure of my ability to make a good first impression. Also, she is really easy to talk to. We’ve already had a phone conversation, which is crazy for me because I’m a chronic phone avoider.

    So the moral of the story is that I’m actually kind of excited about this now instead of nervous. I’m still not that experienced, but I know that the rest of our staff will help me whenever I need it.