I'm gonna write a book and I'm gonna title it, Life is Just a Bowel Full of Cherries. Right. Just like this blog. I've always known what the book was going to be called, just not exactly what it was going to be about. I knew it would be about nursing and patients but no particulars, until now. Today at work it dawned on me. Twenty years in nursing, ten in the ER and I've picked up on some things the general public needs in terms of education. So, I'm going to write a common sense-type of medical manual for the general public who are, I'm beginning to realize, completely insane.
The book will be a sort of filling-in of the average Joe on the street regarding little medical things that I thought pretty much everybody knew all their lives, like I did. For instance, there will be a chapter titled, "When To, and When Not to Call 911". Under When Not to will be a paragraph explaining that when you have a bowel movement that, how do I put it, let's say "stalls", you have a few options, none of which involve activating the emergency medical alert system. One option is to end the attempt by employment of the anal sphincter thereby "pinching off" the sluggish substance. Another option involves straining to expedite things. There is always the sit-and-wait option to see if anything changes. And until this week it never occurred to me to tell another human being that getting "stuck" halfway into a bowel movement was no reason to call 911 but I have since been enlightened.
In the same chapter I will explain that if you are in your 50's, in good enough shape to ride a motorcycle to the state park on the mountain and camp, there is no reason for you to call an ambulance because you haven't had a bowel movement for 3 days.. Moreover, if you do call an ambulance and you have a bowel movement just prior to the arrival of the ambulance, you certainly don't need to come on into the ER, anyway, despite the fact that you "don't want to get in that shape, again!". Eat some Raisen Bran, drink some coffee and take responsibility for you own GI tract.
The chapter on "Proper Medical Terminology for Novices" will include, You have blood clots. There is no such thing as blood "clods" or "clogs." And, you have fibroids in your uterus, not "fire balls in your euchrist".
Just because you have a boil on your filthy body doesn't mean you were bitten by a poisonous spider. You probably have an abscess and might want to think about bathing once in a while. In the event you were, indeed, bitten by a spider, it probably was a brown recluse, not a "brown glucose" spider.
When you came to the emergency room once in the past because you couldn't pass urine, you were catheterized, not castrated (at least, I don't think so. However, if it turns out that you were, I'd like the name of that hospital so I can go there and apply for a job).
Under miscellaneous, I'll explain that when you "feel hot one minute and freezing the next" and you're not menopausal, it's no big mystery. You have a fever. Who has not known this since age 5? They actually sell devices that enable you to make your own fever diagnosis at home. They're sold at Walmart and they're called "thermometers". What's more, you can actually take Tylenol or Motrin for a fever and determine the correct dosage yourself by reading the label. Again, having a fever for one hour is no reason to rush to the ER.
Same thing with throwing up. If you threw up an hour ago, you don't have an emergency and you can stay at home. If you do end up in the hospital, throwing up isn't going to kill you and you don't need to send a family member darting into the hall to summon a nurse to the room. A nurse is not going to keep you from throwing up, (which is, by the way pronounced "vomit", not "vomick"). Just throw up and wipe your mouth and lie back down on your stretcher. When the nurse or doctor do come into the room, turn your head when you breath or cough. Your breath smells like vomit. Nobody wants to smell it, not even public servants. And while on the subject, if you come to the ER vomiting, don't get mad when they won't give you a big glass of ice water to drink. I promise you, if you drink a glass of water, you're going to throw up again. It happens every time. Another point, it doesn't matter what you saw in your vomit. Just because you saw, say, carrots doesn't mean you got food poisoning from your mother-in-law's glazed carrots last Sunday. You threw up what was in your stomach. Your stomach does not isolate the one offending substance and throw up only that. It doesn't work that way. Furthermore, you needn't describe it to us as in, my personal favorite, "It was green and slimy". Of course it was. It came out of your stomach. It was vomit. There's bile in it. Bile is green. It's no mystery. And there are no scientists in the lab waiting to analyze your vomit so don't bring it to the hospital with you in a peanut butter jar.
Now for the chapter on Medical History. You may be allergic to sulfa, not "sulpher". It is called emphysema, not "the zee-mee". And it's a hiatal hernia, not a "high up hernie".
Leukemia is considered to be a health problem so if you have Leukemia and the triage nurse asks you if you have any health problems, you should probably mention it.
If you are missing a kidney, we need to know if it was surgically removed or you were born without it, or what. It's not helpful when you tell the nurse, "Honey, I don't have any idea what happened to it". We expect you to research this before you come to the hospital.
If you cut your hand opening a package of bologna with your pocket knife, don't expect general anesthesia during your suturing. You're going to get a local anesthetic and stay awake. Nobody's going to recover you for an hour while you come out from under. We need our lunch breaks, too, you know. You might want to explore why it is you want so badly to be put to sleep.
When you come to the ER, bring a list of your medicines with you. Despite what you think, the nurses don't have copies of your med list folded up in lockets around their necks. If you can't even keep up with your medications while taking them every day of your lives, how do you expect us to?
If a nurse or a lab tech has a needle in their hand getting ready to start an IV or draw blood, the chances of them being successful are much better if you don't first say to them, "You have one chance! If you blow that, I want somebody who knows what they're doing." The employees at the hospital have licenses. They went to school. Despite what you might think, they really do know more about medicine than you do. That's why you're there. If you don't believe that, why didn't you stay home? Next time, you might want to think about doing that. Just stay home and use your Waffle House waitress experience to figure out the correct way to treat your heart attack and I promise you, nobody from the hospital is going to come to your house and drag you out and poke needles in you. They'll leave that to the funeral director and it will be a lot easier on them to just read about you in the obituaries next Thursday.
Anyway, you get the idea. And there's more. God knows, there's so much more.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Madness?
A friend of mine who is a known, sort of conspiracy theorist, suggested I go to a site she found on the internet. She was told about it by a woman she met at the farm supply store buying big, plastic tubs for water storage. The internet site is for women who are, well, I'm not sure exactly. They're survivalists, to a degree. There's a lot of talk about the end of the world and preparedness (how does having a cellar full of canned goods keep you safe from the Apocalypse?) and God and war, etc. I knew better than to go to that site but I did it, anyway. I went to it because my friend told me to look at it and I knew she'd ask me later if I did. But also, because there is a lot of information about making soap and gardening and canning and a lot of things I'm particularly fond of.
My mistake tonight was in reading a thread on the website about "something bad coming in the Fall". Several of the posters shared similar "inner urgings" to prepare (how?) for some unidentified disaster that is suppose to occur this Fall, as in now. Well, economically I think there's some validity to that. And who am I to determine the validity of another's "inner urgings"? Nobody. I have to honor that because I have the same things. And maybe that's what bothers me so much, this similarity in their's and my own strong feelings this summer; their's regarding getting prepared by buying food and storing water, I guess and mine about getting back to basics, quitting my job and trying to get some semblance of sanity back (did I ever have it?) in my life. It was a little weird reading that other people experienced such a close premonition to mine. A feeling that wouldn't let them alone, a sense of urgency to make the changes in question, just a strong sense of being "led" to something (or away from something).
I considered, this in 2001, trying my hand at something of a political thriller-type of fiction writing in which some kind of disaster would happen and my whole family, sisters, brother, my grown kids and, now, grandchildren, my Mom would all come and live, with us, on our 20 acres and we'd have an intentional community, of sorts, out of necessity rather than a higher consciousness. We'd have to build houses for all of the various nuclear families (total of 5, if Freddy and I stayed in the cabin that's there, which we wouldn't because he would cause me to have to beat his head in with that tv blaring and no where to go to get away from it). But it's sort of a dream of mine, that I hope never comes true, to have all my chicks in one nest under my wing. That's why I wanted to write it. Because I'd love to be close to all of them, albeit not that close.
Back to the website for militant housewives. It occurred to me after I got scared like I always do when I read bilge like that, that those people on that website all think the same thing, in terms of disaster for what's the fun of preparing without a disaster? So they all think the same things and they all post on that forum and they all read all those posts and that's what they think about day and night. Dream about it. Disaster and being prepared. So, it follows that it's going to get bigger and bigger and realer and realer for all of them because of the time and energy they're giving it. And I've always known this. Or at least since we moved to the south in 1979 and began being bombarded by these Apolalyptic predictions. And maybe they're right. I have enough sense to know I may be wrong but what if I am? Oh, I'll starve to death sooner than the women on that forum because I only have a pantry and medium-sized freezer full of food but we're all gonna die anyway, aren't we? If it's the end of the world? Unless they're counting on the rapture and then they don't need all that damned food, anyway, do they? More for the rest of us, I say. And besides, these are the same people who were too smart to get caught with their pants down at midnight on January 1, 2000 when....whatever it was that was suppose to happen, happened. They were so superiorly obedient to their premonitions from God that they took their 401ks and bought 5 gallon buckets of wheat and big generators and guns because God knows, they couldn't let their neighbors eat any of their food, right?
Is it me or is everybody crazy? Let me get this right. The Republicans are Christians. Christians=Good Guys. These "Good Guys" are opposed to government policies that lend assistance to poor people. Republicans love guns. Republicans believe in capital punishment. Republicans believe the government should not regulate the people which allows the rich people to continue, more effectively to fuck the poor people. But, again, the Republicans are all about God.
The Democrats, conversely, are heathens because they don't want to persecute gay people and because they believe women should have a right to choose to have an abortion (which I'm not saying I do or don't subscribe to. I'm staying out of that shit.)
I honestly don't get it. I think the entire world has gone completely mad and I want to go hide, now. Yes, and suck my thumb.
My mistake tonight was in reading a thread on the website about "something bad coming in the Fall". Several of the posters shared similar "inner urgings" to prepare (how?) for some unidentified disaster that is suppose to occur this Fall, as in now. Well, economically I think there's some validity to that. And who am I to determine the validity of another's "inner urgings"? Nobody. I have to honor that because I have the same things. And maybe that's what bothers me so much, this similarity in their's and my own strong feelings this summer; their's regarding getting prepared by buying food and storing water, I guess and mine about getting back to basics, quitting my job and trying to get some semblance of sanity back (did I ever have it?) in my life. It was a little weird reading that other people experienced such a close premonition to mine. A feeling that wouldn't let them alone, a sense of urgency to make the changes in question, just a strong sense of being "led" to something (or away from something).
I considered, this in 2001, trying my hand at something of a political thriller-type of fiction writing in which some kind of disaster would happen and my whole family, sisters, brother, my grown kids and, now, grandchildren, my Mom would all come and live, with us, on our 20 acres and we'd have an intentional community, of sorts, out of necessity rather than a higher consciousness. We'd have to build houses for all of the various nuclear families (total of 5, if Freddy and I stayed in the cabin that's there, which we wouldn't because he would cause me to have to beat his head in with that tv blaring and no where to go to get away from it). But it's sort of a dream of mine, that I hope never comes true, to have all my chicks in one nest under my wing. That's why I wanted to write it. Because I'd love to be close to all of them, albeit not that close.
Back to the website for militant housewives. It occurred to me after I got scared like I always do when I read bilge like that, that those people on that website all think the same thing, in terms of disaster for what's the fun of preparing without a disaster? So they all think the same things and they all post on that forum and they all read all those posts and that's what they think about day and night. Dream about it. Disaster and being prepared. So, it follows that it's going to get bigger and bigger and realer and realer for all of them because of the time and energy they're giving it. And I've always known this. Or at least since we moved to the south in 1979 and began being bombarded by these Apolalyptic predictions. And maybe they're right. I have enough sense to know I may be wrong but what if I am? Oh, I'll starve to death sooner than the women on that forum because I only have a pantry and medium-sized freezer full of food but we're all gonna die anyway, aren't we? If it's the end of the world? Unless they're counting on the rapture and then they don't need all that damned food, anyway, do they? More for the rest of us, I say. And besides, these are the same people who were too smart to get caught with their pants down at midnight on January 1, 2000 when....whatever it was that was suppose to happen, happened. They were so superiorly obedient to their premonitions from God that they took their 401ks and bought 5 gallon buckets of wheat and big generators and guns because God knows, they couldn't let their neighbors eat any of their food, right?
Is it me or is everybody crazy? Let me get this right. The Republicans are Christians. Christians=Good Guys. These "Good Guys" are opposed to government policies that lend assistance to poor people. Republicans love guns. Republicans believe in capital punishment. Republicans believe the government should not regulate the people which allows the rich people to continue, more effectively to fuck the poor people. But, again, the Republicans are all about God.
The Democrats, conversely, are heathens because they don't want to persecute gay people and because they believe women should have a right to choose to have an abortion (which I'm not saying I do or don't subscribe to. I'm staying out of that shit.)
I honestly don't get it. I think the entire world has gone completely mad and I want to go hide, now. Yes, and suck my thumb.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Haunting
I have a ghost. The haunting has gone on for as long as I can remember it and it's getting worse, lately. Sometimes I try to write about it in an attempt to make sense of it but it's difficult. I almost never talk about it because it's very hard to put into words. I'll try here.
There is something very deep inside me, in my soul, I suppose. It's so deep I've never seen it fully, just feel it's presence. All of the time. It's always here, sometimes more evident than other times but always it's with me. Always. It feels sort of like a river that runs under the ground, it's current swift and sure and deep. Very deep. And it's old. Much older than I.
I'm not sure what it is, I only know how it feels and some of the things that make me feel it more strongly. I feel it in museums. Inside the two earth lodges I've been in up in Nebraska. It's in old houses and in the old houses I dream about so often. It was in my Mom's bed the last visit I made to see her when I laid down for a nap one afternoon and smelled her on the pillow and saw my grandmother's lamp on her nightstand. It made me cry.
It's in the long, waving prairie grass and in the log cabins at Silver Dollar City. It's in the sound of Irish music and the smell of a campfire and that of the coffee I boil in the blue enamel fleck coffee pot my friend, Mr. Toon gave me.
The smell of tomato vines and the dry air in my workshop loft and the full moon. And I know I'm suppose to write about it or what it tells me to write but I just can't quite hear what it's saying to me. I can't quite understand the message. I can tell that sometimes I'm very "warm" but just can't quite comprehend. It doesn't leave me alone, no matter what. It's as if I'm meant to do something, write something or paint something and it gets more urgent the longer I wait. The urgency is almost deafening now. It's not going to be ignored. It haunts me continuously.
My therapist (you knew there was a therapist somewhere in this story, didn't you?) said a door is open to me and that doors don't stay open forever. That I must act or the door will eventually close. I know he's right about the door being open. But I don't know if its ever going to close. I hope it waits for me to figure it out. To understand what the ghost is trying to tell me.
As I go through the days I recognize things that are connected to it. An ER patient we got one day who was struck by a train. His face looked like chopped beef, his toenails were long and twisted and on his scrawny chest was an unfinished tattoo that said, "Prope of Estelle (somebody)". He was connected. I don't know how, I just know he was. The smell of lavender. Moonlight. Lying on my belly at the end of our dock watching the fish and turtles and the reflection of the fat clouds in the glass-like, still surface of the water. That's all connected. The way I could see the grief hanging in the trees outside our RV parked in my daughter and son-in-law's driveway the 6 weeks following the death of my granddaughter, Anna in 2006. I could still see it even at night from my bed inside. It hung in the trees near my daughter and her husband's bedroom on the second floor.
I'm suppose to do something with all of that and millions of other things that nudge me when I see them or think about them. I just can't figure out what. What do I say about them? How do I express it all?
I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not following my heart. And I think the ghost is disappointed, as well. I feel its disappointment and its refusal to accept my procrastination to do what I know I'm suppose to be doing. And I feel a strong sense of urgency. Time is running out, it seems to be saying. There's only so much time. Hurry up and figure it out.
I fear I'll die before I understand what it's telling me to do. Death is a big part of what it's telling me about. People aren't here forever. I'm not going to be here forever. I see it every day in the ER. People in their 40s and 50s dropping dead. A guy tonight. 44. Dead. I've got to hear what it's saying to me.
I dream at night about big, old, empty houses. Huge houses. And sometimes there are sounds coming from the basements. Or there's a feeling in the house and it paralyzes me and I can't scream and I can't run. I'm paralyzed. I'm not doing what I'm suppose to be doing.
Other people just get up in the morning and go to work and do what they're suppose to with a smile on their face and come home and mow the lawn and eat supper and watch something on mainstream television and go to bed and never think about it. Just live their lives without asking questions. Without a ghost. I've never been like that. I've always had this ghost trying to tell me to do something but not quite talking loud enough for me to hear it.
Pray that that someday I can hear.
There is something very deep inside me, in my soul, I suppose. It's so deep I've never seen it fully, just feel it's presence. All of the time. It's always here, sometimes more evident than other times but always it's with me. Always. It feels sort of like a river that runs under the ground, it's current swift and sure and deep. Very deep. And it's old. Much older than I.
I'm not sure what it is, I only know how it feels and some of the things that make me feel it more strongly. I feel it in museums. Inside the two earth lodges I've been in up in Nebraska. It's in old houses and in the old houses I dream about so often. It was in my Mom's bed the last visit I made to see her when I laid down for a nap one afternoon and smelled her on the pillow and saw my grandmother's lamp on her nightstand. It made me cry.
It's in the long, waving prairie grass and in the log cabins at Silver Dollar City. It's in the sound of Irish music and the smell of a campfire and that of the coffee I boil in the blue enamel fleck coffee pot my friend, Mr. Toon gave me.
The smell of tomato vines and the dry air in my workshop loft and the full moon. And I know I'm suppose to write about it or what it tells me to write but I just can't quite hear what it's saying to me. I can't quite understand the message. I can tell that sometimes I'm very "warm" but just can't quite comprehend. It doesn't leave me alone, no matter what. It's as if I'm meant to do something, write something or paint something and it gets more urgent the longer I wait. The urgency is almost deafening now. It's not going to be ignored. It haunts me continuously.
My therapist (you knew there was a therapist somewhere in this story, didn't you?) said a door is open to me and that doors don't stay open forever. That I must act or the door will eventually close. I know he's right about the door being open. But I don't know if its ever going to close. I hope it waits for me to figure it out. To understand what the ghost is trying to tell me.
As I go through the days I recognize things that are connected to it. An ER patient we got one day who was struck by a train. His face looked like chopped beef, his toenails were long and twisted and on his scrawny chest was an unfinished tattoo that said, "Prope of Estelle (somebody)". He was connected. I don't know how, I just know he was. The smell of lavender. Moonlight. Lying on my belly at the end of our dock watching the fish and turtles and the reflection of the fat clouds in the glass-like, still surface of the water. That's all connected. The way I could see the grief hanging in the trees outside our RV parked in my daughter and son-in-law's driveway the 6 weeks following the death of my granddaughter, Anna in 2006. I could still see it even at night from my bed inside. It hung in the trees near my daughter and her husband's bedroom on the second floor.
I'm suppose to do something with all of that and millions of other things that nudge me when I see them or think about them. I just can't figure out what. What do I say about them? How do I express it all?
I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not following my heart. And I think the ghost is disappointed, as well. I feel its disappointment and its refusal to accept my procrastination to do what I know I'm suppose to be doing. And I feel a strong sense of urgency. Time is running out, it seems to be saying. There's only so much time. Hurry up and figure it out.
I fear I'll die before I understand what it's telling me to do. Death is a big part of what it's telling me about. People aren't here forever. I'm not going to be here forever. I see it every day in the ER. People in their 40s and 50s dropping dead. A guy tonight. 44. Dead. I've got to hear what it's saying to me.
I dream at night about big, old, empty houses. Huge houses. And sometimes there are sounds coming from the basements. Or there's a feeling in the house and it paralyzes me and I can't scream and I can't run. I'm paralyzed. I'm not doing what I'm suppose to be doing.
Other people just get up in the morning and go to work and do what they're suppose to with a smile on their face and come home and mow the lawn and eat supper and watch something on mainstream television and go to bed and never think about it. Just live their lives without asking questions. Without a ghost. I've never been like that. I've always had this ghost trying to tell me to do something but not quite talking loud enough for me to hear it.
Pray that that someday I can hear.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Me & Mother Abigail
I have a new fantasy. When I need to go to sleep I put on the thunder on my sound machine and I imagine I'm sitting on the porch of an old, dilapidated farmhouse in front of acres and acres of grass that's waving in the wind in Nebraska and there's a thunderstorm coming. I pretend I live there and write stories for a living and never go to work at a hospital. I love that fantasy. It makes me feel like Mother Abigail in The Stand. I'm absolutely haunted by the idea.
I've never been much for reality. Never. Why is that? And more importantly, why can't I find a way to live a different reality that I'm comfortable with? One thing is this: I buy stuff because I'm trying to fill the void I have from not doing what my heart tells me to do. Then I have to do more of what my heart doesn't tell me to do in order to pay for all that stuff. And then I get even further away from my heart.
I asked my husband the other day if we could take enough money out of retirement to pay off enough bills so that I could stay home with him. He said we just can't and I understand that but I also know that the chances are that by the time I can afford to stay home with him, he'll be dead. I know it as well as I'm sitting here in the dark typing on my laptop at 12:48am listening to him snore beside me. And I told him that but he doesn't think it's a good idea. So we'll spend our years together like this. Me working and being so incredibly emotionally spent by the fucking insanity of a hospital emergency room that I have absolutely nothing left for anybody on my days off, including....no...especially him. And I'll order another movie or another book or some colonics equipment to fill the void inside me.
I've never been much for reality. Never. Why is that? And more importantly, why can't I find a way to live a different reality that I'm comfortable with? One thing is this: I buy stuff because I'm trying to fill the void I have from not doing what my heart tells me to do. Then I have to do more of what my heart doesn't tell me to do in order to pay for all that stuff. And then I get even further away from my heart.
I asked my husband the other day if we could take enough money out of retirement to pay off enough bills so that I could stay home with him. He said we just can't and I understand that but I also know that the chances are that by the time I can afford to stay home with him, he'll be dead. I know it as well as I'm sitting here in the dark typing on my laptop at 12:48am listening to him snore beside me. And I told him that but he doesn't think it's a good idea. So we'll spend our years together like this. Me working and being so incredibly emotionally spent by the fucking insanity of a hospital emergency room that I have absolutely nothing left for anybody on my days off, including....no...especially him. And I'll order another movie or another book or some colonics equipment to fill the void inside me.
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