kapachino

Author: Kathleen

  • Thankful

    I’m sitting here at a computer in the hallway of my unit, Methodist Main 8 Northwest, finishing up my shift. I’ve had a sore throat since Sunday, swollen and tender glands since Monday, and a hacking, persistent cough since yesterday. It gets worse throughout the day, and by 8 p.m. I’m passed out in bed. I’ve had to be very careful to stay sterile here at work, although I don’t think I’m infectious.

    Although I don’t feel very well, I want to say that I am thankful for my health, and the health of my family. Yesterday, a patient of mine died on my shift. This was a man who we all knew very well around here, because he has been with us for a few months. He loved the University of Texas. Just a few weeks ago, he was depressed not because of his condition but because UT lost to Texas Tech. He had a very supportive wife and grown children about my age. When he was assigned to me yesterday, I was scared because I knew he didn’t have much longer. He was gasping for breath all day long. Right at the end of the shift, they told me they thought he was gone. I went into the room, and although I knew it was true, I felt for a pulse anyway. His wife was looking at me expectantly. I whispered to her, “I don’t feel anything,” and she just nodded and put her head down. His lips were white. His hands were cold. There was no more struggle in him.

    As I watched their family console each other, how could my mind not jump to my own family? To my own new husband, who I love more than anything in the world? I immediately wrote him an email to tell him that I will love him forever, and the most important thing is that he always knows that. There is a friend of a friend whose blog I read who lost her husband in a boating accident two years ago tomorrow. Today, she reflects on their last moments together. It is a beautiful and sad story, and it makes me want to hold onto my husband forever, but mostly it fills me with love for him.

    My job is a calling and a ministry, but sometimes it is a very very sad place to be. But I am grateful that every day it gives me perspective, and I pray that I will never forget this first death, and how my heart broke and I cried, and how tightly David held me when I got home.

  • Twilight on Opening Night

    I have to say that my husband is awesome for taking me to see Twilight on opening night, and he only complained a little bit. I did very much enjoy the movie, although I will say it was a little cheesy. I don’t think the hundreds of teenage girls who were there with us thought that, though. They would burst out in squeals at the tiniest thing. David would rub his head, shift in his seat, and say to me, “I just don’t get it! Nothing happened, why are they cheering?” And I would say to him things like, “It’s because Edward is wearing sunglasses now.” Admittedly, it wasn’t the circumstances I prefer to see a movie in either, but I just couldn’t wait.

    As I’ve mentioned before, David doesn’t like fantasy much. But he has somehow seen the Lord of the Rings movies. During the movie, Edward was climbing trees like Spider Man. I whispered to David, “I didn’t realize vampires had sticky hands and feet like that.”

    “Yeah, I didn’t realize they were so much like hobbits.”

    “Hobbits don’t climb trees like that.”

    “They did in the movie…Murkwood Forest and all that!”

    “No David, that was because the trees were alive and they picked the hobbits up.” He was too exasperated to continue the argument.

    On the way home we discussed the movie like any normal couple would do. One thing (among many) that annoyed David was when Bella said, straight from the back cover of the book, “About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him – and I didn’t know how dominant that part might be – that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.” It annoyed him because it sounded out of place; Bella didn’t speak like that throughout the rest of the movie.

    This became a jumping off point for him to express all his other thoughts about the movie. I was entertained by statements such as this on the way home (spoken in a very dramatic voice):

    “FIRST, I am in love with Edward’s hair, which is really huge. SECOND, I have very sultry lips. And THIRD, Edward’s dad looks just like Joel Osteen.”

  • Catching Up

    Hey friends! I’ve been AWOL for awhile again, so since I have the day off I figured it was a good time to let you know what’s been going on.

    David and I are still looking for a house to buy. I really want one in an established neighborhood with trees and an either side-entry or detached garage. And we’re looking in a certain area of town, in a certain price range, so it is proving to be a little difficult. We’re trying to be patient though, because we want to buy one we really love!

    In the meantime, we have moved in with a friend of the family who goes to our church. Her children are just a little bit younger than us, and are both moved out. She has graciously offered us her large upstairs bedroom with its HUGE closet! We have a lot of space and privacy here, and it’s a great location. We have been so blessed by this, and it is allowing us to save up a lot of money to put towards the house and moving costs.

    Work has been kind of rough this week. After a relaxing weekend off, I came back Monday and had the absolute worst day of my short career. I had very needy patients, tons of medications to give, two discharges, an admission, not to mention all the regular charting and routine care. All of that was bad enough, but because I was worn so thin and ragged, I ended up making a couple of mistakes. The first one wasn’t too big of a deal, but I still had to write myself up. The second one happened right at the end of my shift, caused me to stay late, and someone else caught it and wrote me up, all the while speaking to me in a very patronizing manner. I felt completely incompetent. I had to work so hard not to cry until I got home. It’s hard to recover from a day like that, but I’m doing my best.

    I finished reading the whole Twilight saga, and then I read Midnight Sun, the unfinished online novel which is Twilight from Edward’s perspective. I wanted to immediately start re-reading Twilight, but I let a friend borrow it. What to do until the movie comes out next week? Watch trailers, read articles, and listen to the soundtrack, I suppose.

    I recently read an interview with Anne Rice, the writer of (among other things) Interview With a Vampire. She now writes about her newfound Christian faith, but she doesn’t repudiate any of her previous works. When she was asked about this she replied, “The supernatural world has always been more real to me than the real world. I feel a great surge of energy when I acknowledge that there is a world beyond this one…. My old novels and characters were sincerely created and deeply felt, and also I think these novels and characters are complex and these novels mirror a pathway to Christ. I think they retain tremendous value for readers, especially young readers who may not be willing to pick up a book about Christianity. There is a moral compass in these novels, and the grief for a lost faith, and the search for redemption — these are the main themes. I remain a believer in them, though they are partial and flawed.”

    I really like the way she put that. Sometimes I feel that I need to defend my love for fantasy and the supernatural, as if I’m not satisfied with reality and my own life. I love my life, though. I just feel a deep yearning for more, which I believe I was created for.

  • Sleeping Habits

    You never really know much about how you sleep until you start sleeping in the same bed with someone for a period of time. Take me, for example. I’ve never been told that I snore, talk in my sleep, sleepwalk, or anything like that. I assumed that I curl up on my side, eventually roll over onto my back, and stay like that without moving for pretty much the whole night.

    I go to sleep much earlier than David does, so he tucks me in at night and then comes to join me a few hours later. Most of the time I don’t even notice when he gets in bed. But the other night I vaguely remember rousing to him shaking me and saying my name.

    “What is it?” I mumbled.

    “Nothing,” he replied. “I thought…you don’t want to know what I thought. I thought you were dead!” And then he gave me a big hug. I was so tired that I drifted off again right away, but I remembered enough of it to ask him about it later.

    He thought I was dead when he came in the room because I was frozen in an unnatural position. He said that my arms were in the air, as if I was trying to climb something. They were just stuck there: not as if I was having a dream about climbing and my arms were moving, but as if I had already undergone rigor mortis in that position. And he shook me at least three times before I finally responded.

    Apparently it’s not the first strange position he’s found me in. Next time, I hope he takes a picture!

  • Ugh

    I was in an elderly patient’s room this morning giving her medications. She was complaining to me about how she drank her coffee too hot and it burned her tongue. Then she asked me, “Will you brush my teeth? Maybe that will help it feel better.”

    “Of course,” I replied, since she has difficulty caring for herself. So I went into the bathroom, got her toothbrush and toothpaste, then came back to the bedside.

    She had popped her dentures out and handed them to me. Was not expecting that one. Aaaand, that is another activity I can add to the list of Things About Nursing That Make Me Gag.

    P.S. I still love my job.