Blog

#33. Get Promoted!

I am just knocking these goals out all over the place! Now I need to work on getting some more of the easy ones out of the way so I can get cracking on the time-consuming and difficult ones.

Yesterday I was promoted! I knew that I would achieve this goal, because it happens after one year of employment. But it wasn’t just like all I had to do was stick around for a year. There was a very lengthy process involved before I was ready to have my evaluation. I’m so glad to have it behind me! Now I am officially a “clinical colleague”.

The evaluation itself wasn’t too intimidating; all the work had been done previously. I had to rate myself in about 50 bazillion categories and be prepared to give reasons why I gave myself that rating. My director and manager rated me on the same categories, and during my evaluation I read over what they said about me. For the most part the ratings were the same or one point lower/higher than I gave myself, and I had no disagreements. We talked about my goals, some classes I want to take, and my involvement in hospital committees. Then she told me what my pay increase will be, and when it takes effect. It’s very nice to work for a company that, as told to me by its lawyers during orientation, “will never run out of money”.

I feel a lot more relaxed about work now, and with camp out of the way I have a lot more discretionary time. I’m looking forward to tackling some more home improvement projects soon, finding more furniture that we need, attempting to cook more often, and of course spending quality time with David, which is my favorite activity. :)

July 2, 2009
#46. walk the kemah boardwalk

The weekend right before I went to camp David and I were adult sponsors and small group leaders for a Disciple Now event for the youth group in our church. One of the fun things we did with the kids on Saturday was go to Kemah. I was excited because it was one of the items listed on my 101 goals!

Really bad picture of the entrance

The very first thing we did (before David lost his nerve ;)) was ride Bullet, the wooden roller coaster. And although it was jarring, it was a blast! If I was rich I would have bought the photo that they took of us while we were on the ride. It showed me smiling, and David with his eyes about to pop out of his head. I was more than likely smiling because I was watching his expression. :) He actually enjoyed it, though!

Then we spent a bunch of time just wandering around. We realized there wasn’t much to do without money; all it is is shops, rides, and restaurants. But we were with my friend Lauren and another friend from church, Steve, so it was a good time. We challenged Steve to take the test of strength. He was talking a big game and he almost hit the mark!

After awhile we met up with the rest of the adults from the church and had a yummy (free!) dinner at Landry’s. I made sure there was enough time to grab some ice cream. Then we went back to meet up with the crazy teenagers. It was definitely a fun day!

Me and Lauren at the end of the hot day.

One more item down!

June 30, 2009
Diary of a Rookie Camp Nurse
I’m back from camp and it’s good to be home. I’m going to attempt to sum up the week I had for you, and I’m going to start by getting a few points out of the way:

>If you grew up going to camp every summer as a kid, then worked all summer at camp until you graduated from college, and even wanted to work full-time at camp for awhile, and therefore you are very excited about going back as the camp nurse, know this: it will NOT be the same thing. It won’t be what you remember. Especially if it’s a different camp than the one you grew up with and you don’t know that many people. Being the camp nurse is a somewhat lonely and isolating experience. You have to be available at all times, and if you leave your cabin (like for meals, or all-camp gatherings) you have to leave a sign on the door and take your phone with you. I realize now more than ever that I would hate to be a doctor because I would hate to be on call. I like knowing when my time is truly my own. So at camp I would end up spending long hours at a time alone in my cabin, but I couldn’t really relax because someone could come in at any moment.

>If you think that you’ll go to camp and get a lot of exercise and continue your triathlon training, think again. My sleep schedule was thrown all off, so I was way too tired to wake up early and go run or swim until the next-to-last day. And early in the morning is the only time that was feasible to exercise.

>It’s a lot harder to give meds to kids at camp than it is to give meds to adults in a hospital. I had to track the little suckers down. I found it easiest just to carry all the meds around with me in my backpack at all times so I could catch them. That, and a homemade first aid kit for fixing cuts and scrapes on the run.

So anyway, I arrived at camp last Sunday night and promptly received my first lesson: be flexible. They couldn’t find the key to the nurse’s cabin. Turns out the nurse from the previous week (an older lady who has been there for years, and is kind of protective of her “space”) had kept it, along with all the registration supplies, on purpose so that she would have a chance to “talk” to me. Lecture, more like. She practically ambushed me at the infirmary and made me late to registration. Thank goodness I’m such good friends with the directors, or I might have made a bad first impression.

My home for the past week

Registration went fine. Afterwards, I finally got a chance to settle in to my cabin. I organized health forms, made a list of food allergies to give to the cook, went over the schedule, unpacked, and read over the previous nurse’s notes. All of a sudden I started to get super nervous. I was thinking, if a kid actually comes to see me, will I know what to do?

The high-tech “clinic”

My first patient (child? customer? patron?) came at 11:30 p.m. that night, right before I went to bed. Keep in mind, I’m used to going to sleep at 9 p.m. and waking up by 5 a.m. I was tired. She claimed an upset stomach. I had to call her mother to get an OK to give her some Pepto, because it hadn’t been checked on the health form. (I was going to get to know this girl really well by the end of the week; I think she just liked the attention.)

My sleeping quarters. It’s not quite a Tempur Pedic, and no that’s not my comforter.

That second day I was quite frankly overwhelmed with loneliness and homesickness, something I’m not used to. Mostly I missed David, and our loving home. At camp no one paid me much attention because they didn’t know me, and I’m not exactly an outgoing person. I started to get the hang of things, but I was completely on edge every second I was alone in my cabin. Also, I couldn’t shake the feeling that people were judging me based on how young I look. I’m 27, but people think I look anywhere from 16 to 22. Usually I don’t mind because I know I’m competent with what I do. But at camp, I really didn’t know what to expect. It’s probably silly, people probably weren’t thinking that at all, but it made me feel insecure.

Thankfully, soon enough I got a chance to talk to my good friend Emily, who is the camp director along with her husband Bobby. Then the evening came, and I got to leave the confines of my little hole. I actually got a chance to talk to the kids and get to know some of them. And I actually got a good night’s rest.

Each day was better than the one before. David came to visit for an evening which was wonderful. He tried to kidnap me and take me home with him, but I don’t blame him for that. :) The kids were really adorable, and I started to kind of feel like I knew what I was doing. I got to know some of the staff’s names. I started to master the art of taking cat naps, which meant I was finally able to relax a little. I began to enjoy mealtimes, mostly because I got to sit with Emily.

Bobby, Emily, Emily’s sister Camille, and Bobby’s brother Danny singing a song by camper request

By the last day, I almost felt normal being there. I wasn’t exactly sad to leave, but there was a certain nostalgia about it all the same. Here’s a rundown of what I dealt with:
- 13 upset stomachs
- 12 cuts/scrapes/abrasions
- 8 cases of fiberglass (from the canoes – apparently you can remove the shards with pantyhose? Wasn’t expecting to come across this one)
- 5 headaches
- 3 insect stings/bites
- 2 minor joint injuries
- 2 splinters
- 1 nosebleed
- 1 pulled muscle
- 1 blistering sunburn
- 1 case of a wood chip in the form of a spike being impaled into a kid’s knee. THAT was exciting, but rather easy for me to deal with. I tried to pull it out once, it wasn’t coming, and I sent him to a doctor.
Before I left I accidentally pulled the door off its hinges. Guess I don’t know my own strength! That, or it was just a really old door. Oops.

Oh, and as for my week without internet? I missed it. A lot. I was not anticipating all the downtime and isolation, so I did allow myself one liberty: I downloaded a few apps from my iPhone. (Sally’s Spa, anyone? Love it.) But I got a lot of reading done, and the entire week was oddly relaxing, I think, if not mentally then physically. And at least I got to mostly stay out of the 100+ degree heat.

Me and Emily. She’s the one who’s pregnant, although this picture makes my stomach look swollen as well.

So there you go; an honest account of my camp nurse experience. Now I’m going to drag myself away from watching reruns of Law & Order SVU and go run for the first time in a week and a half. As always, thanks for reading. :)
June 28, 2009
When Even A Looming Vacation Is Stressful

On Wednesday I finally gave my presentation at work entitled “Blood Products in Oncology Patients.” I have worked hard on it for months and it has been hanging over my head for even longer. It went well, so I would have been relieved except that only six people showed up to hear it. Thankfully two of those people were my director and my manager. It’s almost impossible to get all the nurses from the unit to be away from their patients for 30 minutes to hear an inservice. But since I am evaluating the effectiveness of my presentation via a pre- and post-quiz, I need more people to hear it than six. So I’ll probably have to give it again, and again, and again.

On Thursday I was forced to go to a boring class for half of the day. Afterwards, my unit gave a surprise baby shower to one of our patients, a 23-year-old girl with a heart tumor who was pregnant when she was diagnosed and had a C-section when the baby was 26 weeks old. He will be coming home next week, and because she is from out of town and living in an apartment, she has nothing for the baby. The shower was great. She cried, her mom cried. I almost cried.

But afterwards I was told that I would be taking over the patients of another nurse who had to go to a meeting. All five were new to me, and the nurse I took over from conveniently left some of the most difficult work for me to do. I left work an hour late, my nerves frazzled. This morning she asked me why I didn’t chart assessments on the patients (which must be done once a shift). I told her that it wasn’t my responsibility to do this when I was only with the patients for two hours. The assessments are supposed to be done first thing in the morning, anyway. Apparently she complained to my director, but my director agreed with me. Victory is mine.

After work last night I had a nice, relaxing evening planned with two of my best friends and former roommates who now both live out of town. But the day before our pastor informed us that we need to host a group of five teenage boys at our home this weekend for an event going on at church. David and I are involved in the event and are going to be staying with our groups from 7 p.m. Friday to Sunday after church, but my house was not prepared for this. So as soon as we got home yesterday David and I went on a whirlwind cleaning spree. It’s still not extremely hospitable, but at least when the boys throw their sleeping bags on the ground they won’t suffocate in dog hair. I was still able to have a wonderful time with my friends, but I stayed up a little later than I’m used to.

That brings me to today. The church event starts at 7, and before that I have got to pack not only for the event itself, but for camp next week. Yes, I said camp. Starting Sunday evening I will be the camp nurse for Camp Good News down near Galveston. I’m excited about this because I grew up going to camp and my good friend Emily and her husband Bobby are the directors. But I also hate being away from David, and I’m nervous about going from taking care of adult oncology patients in the hospital to taking care of kids at camp. It’s a little different.

I won’t have internet while I’m gone, so I figured it’s a good time to knock out one of my 101 goals: spend a week without internet except email once a day. I’ll have my phone with me, so I should be able to do the email thing. I’ll have to resist the urge to Twitter. It’ll be tough.

So that’s why I’ve been silent this week, and it’s why I’ll be silent next week. Miss you, and catch you on the flip side. :)

XOXO,
Kathleen

June 19, 2009
Meet Our Furniture

Hello. Let me introduce you to the furniture in our home. Don’t worry, it won’t take very long.

First up we have our bed:

If I weren’t already married to David I think I would marry this mattress. It is the single most expensive thing in our house but worth every penny. We will have this baby for the rest of our lives. Obviously it needs some dressing up. I’m thinking an upholstered headboard, a bench at the foot, some regular nightstands instead of TV trays, painting the chair rail white, and something on those blank walls.

Next we meet our one and only dresser, which stands across from the foot of the bed:

It’s a good thing we have decent closet space, because there’s not much room in this solid wood chest. This was David’s before we got married. It’s very well made, but not too pretty. I’m not sure what will become of it. We don’t really use that TV on top, it’s just there because that’s where the cable line is. (Although there was that one time I discovered that if I watched the results of Dancing With the Stars on this TV, I could get ready for bed at the same time! I was so pumped. Don’t those cable networks realize that people start getting tired after 8 p.m.? Sheesh.)

Let’s move back to the front of the house now. You’ve already seen my grandmother’s piano:

And here’s the bookshelf in the same room:

This will be a great room…eventually. The red is too bold for my taste, there is no lighting, and the bookshelves are cluttered and unorganized, for starters.

Heading back into the living room, we have David’s beloved recliner:

I think he loves this chair like I love our bed. That is why, although I don’t particularly care for the look, it will remain in our living room indefinitely. Sigh…the things we sacrifice for love! (Although I must admit that he has completely sacrificed his opinions on our home decor to me. Such a sweetie!)

Here are our loveseat, chair, and ottoman, which really aren’t ours at all:

We are “borrowing” them from David’s brother Chris and his wife Kim. They don’t need them at the moment, and we LOVE them. See how we’re taking such good care of them, Kim? How nice they look in our living room? How without them we would only have a single recliner, or be forced to pay lots of money for another good sofa? See how you should just let us keep them forever??

Anyway, next we have our main TV, which is currently perched upon some sort of desk that we are borrowing from David’s parents:

I can’t wait to get that area set up with a proper TV stand. We might just have to “forget” to give back the desk though, which is actually quite nice. Hmm, I see a pattern forming…

And now I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of our furniture family:

Yes, we FINALLY have a table!!!!!!!! Every one of those exclamation points is warranted. You have no idea how I have longed for this day. Six months of eating meals on the couch in my lap has really gotten old!

My mom and I found this table at an antique store last week for only $250. It was the first thing I laid my eyes upon, and I had a feeling I’d be taking it home. But we still browsed the entire day, just to be sure, before returning to snatch it up. I think it’s adorable. Pay no attention to the chairs in this picture, however. They’re just on temporary loan from my parents until we buy our own. I’m thinking white, maybe two sets of mismatching yet coordinating pairs? Not sure what style yet, though. What do you think?

Well that’s it, folks. You have just viewed our entire furniture collection, minus our guest bed which is really boring. In fact, most of the time I forget that room is even there. Our house is pretty much a blank slate, and I’m loving the challenge of filling it up and making it pretty. :)

June 16, 2009