Mary’s Pad

We’ve been spending a lot of time talking to doctors and in and out of hospitals because of various GI and ortho issues. It’s all a long story, not one that I necessarily want to rehash here, but so far things are good.

Turns out Mary has a really rare condition that is the underlying cause for her GI issues. To quote her GI doc, “in medicine we have some common conditions that we see and can usually easily diagnose, and then we have the ones that puzzle us and that aren’t as easy to diagnose. They are rare, and you are probably the only patient I will ever see with this condition, and we call such conditions the zebras. You have a zebra.”

This week she went in for shoulder surgery, to repair a Bankart tear, a pretty standard one-day procedure that turned into a painful 3 day ordeal, not because of the surgery but because of a botched up nerve block and pain management issues. Anyway, after she came out of the OR, when the surgeon came in to see her, I asked: “so was it pretty much what you expected when you got in there?” She turned to Mary and replied - “well, not really. I mean, it was definitely a classic Bankart tear, but you have an interesting labrum. It’s not the typical labrum, I’ve never seen anything like it.” When we questioned her further she said: “It’s not really anything to worry about, it’s just like how we all have different hair colors, there are some that are more common, some people have black hair, some are blond, some are redheads, pretty common colors. You have purple hair.”

Hmmm… I’ve always thought she was a tad weird, and now I have the professional opinion of two different doctors to back me up…

I was at the store the other day, and I saw something I had been wanting for a long time, and I pulled out my debit card, and I bought it.

It cost me just over $1000.

It probably wasn’t my smartest idea.

I probably won’t do it again!!

But damn didn’t it feel good!!

I love having a job!

PS: I don’t recommend trying this at home.

I am two-thirds done with orientation, just four weeks to go. It’s a bit scary and I hope that I am making progress towards being able to fly on my own.  I’ve been doing 5-day weeks but this week I am graduating to 4 day weeks, which means I do 2 12-hour shifts and 2 8-hour shifts.  Moreover, I am graduating to nights! So back to my nocturnal ways …bummer! My body was getting accustomed to this daytime thing.

In two weeks I will move to 3 12-hour shifts! I am SOOOOO looking forward to having more time off for my fun stuff, hobbies, sleeping, Wii, and cool stuff like that.  I have some brand new hard drives sitting on my desk that I have been dying to start playing with, some new Wii games, plus the weather’s nice now, so time to fish out our hiking gear!! Yeah!!

I am inexperienced. I know that. I have only been a nurse for a few weeks, but I have seen some pretty c crazy stuff and had some amazing experiences in those few weeks. Much as I would love to share those stories here, most of the people who read this blog know who I am and where I work, so there is the potential for lots of privacy issues (can someone say HIPPA??). So if you want to hear my stories, you have to come and hang out around our fire pit one evening, have some food, drink some stuff, you know how it goes …or else find my anonymous nursing blog…

OK, back to what I was saying… spending time with experienced nurses at my job does make me realize how little I know, and how far I have to go, but even that was topped by the time I spent this weekend with Mary’s mom and her old nursing school friends. They were all in town for their 40th reunion, and we had the opportunity (or should I say privilege) to hang out with them a couple of times. The first time was in a hotel room getting buzzed, and the second was at Sunday brunch. These are all very experienced nurses who practiced before a lot of the modern technology we have now, and three of them were nurses in Vietnam during the war… can you even imagine the stories they have??? It was an awesome experience to sit and listen and swap stories… not that I had much to say!!

Damn, at the end of the weekend I could still feel the shrinkwrap clinging to me.

And today was one of those.  The ER gets really crazy busy sometimes, and often I feel like my head is spinning and everything is crowding in on me, all the things I need to do. If there is a place where time waits for no man, it’s in the ED.  But I am discovering the biggest fear of them all is not knowing what might happen next.  Ironically it’s the biggest fear, but it’s also the most exciting thing, it’s what makes me love the ER, it’s what gets my adrenaline going, it’s the unpredictability of it all.

Anyway, today was busy, steady, not a moment to sit and breathe, but it was a good day. I felt like I was just rolling through it all. I was getting everything I needed done done, and it seemed like it was seamless and effortless, which was really weird.  It was like I was in a zone, a really calm place inside that allowed me to know what to do and to do it right.   If only I could replicate that feeling every single day….

I have had all kinds of days since I started orientation, today was one of the diamond kind of days, and I am thankful for it!

…my feet still hurt though.