Month: October 2021

Jeremy – somewhere? I don’t quite know where.

Went on a beautiful walk with Alice and Jojo and Scarlett.

The other day I was complaining to Jeremy that I’m not fun anymore – that maybe I had lost the ability to enjoy things for no good reason – like root beer floats or just goofing around or doing some silly thing or another. Everything in my life seems to have a purpose or a goal or something (I know this isn’t really true). First, Jeremy apologized that he has been kind of a downer recently and therefore, not conducive to fun and second, he reminded me that we are still in the middle of a pandemic that – you know – makes things not fun.

I mean, we are doing stuff. Jeremy is traveling (right now, he’s in Minnesota). Vince and Edda are in school. I’m working and hanging out with people. But I’m still wearing my pajamas most of the day (OK, the whole day) – I’ll go on walks and Edda pickup in my pajamas. I wonder if I’ll be in regular clothes ever again. I’m still not extending or receiving invitations to gatherings as freely as before. Jeremy and I spend SO MUCH time together. so much. It’s a lot.

I’ve been thinking about Edda turning 18 which she will do in March of next year. It does give me grief of sorts – I didn’t realize this, but it matches the same year I turn 50, I try not to think about it too much. I don’t like these transitions that happen, like I’m going to have to switch her from the Children’s Hospital to a regular hospital or from school to a day program. These things are not things that I want to do.

Vince is far away from me, but calls to check in. It, for sure, is a different kind of parenting. I’m like a mama bird who is easing its baby chick from the nest knowing the ground is far away and can be hard, but you can’t fly without trying.

What is fun, anyways? I have no idea.

Vickey and I have been making progress in Middlemarch. One painful chapter at a time. We text each other when we are done with each chapter with commentary like – that was the most boring one yet! or i’d like to stop now and forever! But I think we’ll get through it. I had to download a character map to keep everyone straight. Vickey likes to talk about narrators, third person omniscient or just regular third person non-omniscient. I don’t notice these things, I just like to plow through the words and keep up with Vickey and not get too far behind. She’s done with Cpt 23. I’m a full 10 cpts behind her.

I’m also strangely working on this felt votive candle pad with cartoon dogs. I showed this to Jeremy yesterday and was like – what’s this? I would have not guessed that you would work on something like this.

Edda’s been doing great so far this year, for this I am grateful. We are still struggling to find evening care for her. This is not surprising to me and we can manage well and are managing well, but it’s a strange spot to be in. I’ve had to subscribe to care.com and my goal is to reach out to one person a day – so far two nicely worded apologetic not interested/not available responses.

I went to the hospital for a shift yesterday – I had two easy shifts in a row last week, so I was due for a mid-week frantic one and it was. Were all my patients bleeding? I think they might have been. I gave three – almost 4 units of blood – which for me is highly unusual – each to a different patient. I haven’t given a single unit of blood in months. I don’t like bleeding patients on my unit, they tend to be unstable and cause me worry and distress. When a doctor orders blood – it’s a complicated order. It fires off little notices simultaneously to the lab (to draw type and screen labs – at least two blood draws) and subsequently to the phlebotomy team (for the two draws, it has to be two different phlebotomists), to the blood bank (to get the blood ready) and to the nurse (to administer the transfusion). I’m trying to match the order to the actual occurrence, because a doctor might have ordered 4 units for a patient and I got report that three were given – one was given in the OR, one was given night shift PACU, one was given day shift PACU (so three nurses), and then finally to me where I’m supposed to give the final and 4th one, but I can only find two units previously documented – so am I giving the 3rd one or the 4th one? Unclear. Because of the new system and everyone learning to put in orders in a different way and response to a new ordering system, all these things got misrouted or stuck in the computer, so I spent a lot of time wrestling with all these spider legs to get them to walk in a coordinated manner all while people need blood. It’s not so much fun.

We babysat a doggie named Scarlett (this name does not roll off the tongue (it’s a very sharp name), I tend to like vowel ending names which is why I call Vincent Vincie forever and always – I’m the only one who calls him that (I wasn’t allowed to call him Vinnie)) for like 1.5 hours yesterday. She’s a golden/lab. It’s a little weird to have this dog in the house because she’s a lot like Ruby, but also a lot not like Ruby. I actually want this dog in the house all the time, but I had to return her.

What is it about turning 50ish? All of a sudden, it’s just bad news all the time from my peers. I mean, there is good news, but it’s overshadowed by 10,000 struggles. When Edda was diagnosed with Rett 15 years ago, it felt like everyone one else was living their best life and my life really, really sucked, but you know? Most everyone’s life sucks in some (usually unfixable) way and what can you do about it? Not very much except to keep going.

I’m lucky to be able to see Vince grow up (a little) even though he’s far away from me. He calls me when he rides back and forth on the bike paths at Davis and tells me how things are going. There are struggles, but these are regular struggles, and one can not grow up into a grown up without them. Pick yourself up, think about how the situation can be improved, don’t dwell, keep going! We are lucky to be here today with each other. Be kind. Be kind to yourself.

Vince in lab gear.

Ben came for dinner last night. Jeremy loved talking shop with him.

I have forever struggled with our electronic health record (EHR) software program which was called Cerner. Jeremy will tell you how much I fought with it everyday. I can get angry at things and then rebel against them in a passive aggressive way which I did almost every shift. But I *love* our new software system which is Epic. It’ll take time to get up to speed, but yesterday, I had kind of a slow day patient wise and I got to deep dive into the software and play around do documentation. I have this separate sheet of paper that nurses call a “brain sheet” which I needed to have with Cerner to keep track of medication times or tests or new orders or whatever, but now I realize that I can cut down on the paper-note taking by about half. And I can text the doctors now, so my calls are also diminished significantly. I love it. My job will be easier.

Julia’s been staying with us this week and canvassing the Loudoun county (Virginia) most days this week. But she took yesterday off and we went on an adventure to Glenstone which is this contemporary art museum that recently was renovated and opened up in Potomac, very close to the house. I’d never been. Tickets are free, but very hard to get and are booked months in advance , but it turns out that if you take the public bus in, you can go anytime. So we took the bus in and walked the extensive grounds which has a ton of beautiful outdoor sculptures (Jeff Koons living floral split-rocker at the top of the hill behind my head) and saw the beautiful art pavilion. I didn’t know much about the place until I googled after we left. Nowhere in the brochure did it mention who did this or why or anything. Nor did they like to put text alongside any of the art – we were just supposed to draw our own conclusions from our personal experience. I was like – who is the really rich person who did this? Everything is free and very, very expensive feeling. Turns out that one of the 11 billionaires living in DC built this to show off his private contemporary art collection. And it was renovated for over $200 million dollars. So you do need to be a billionaire to build and maintain a facility like this.

I came home to Jeremy who instead of getting some tool from Amazon for bike repair, he got Edgar Allen Poe. So he’s getting the tool shipped to him again and we get to keep Edgar. Lucky us. You see the raven?

Jeremy made it home on Monday night. He did try a 2nd time to go up Mt Diablo in under an hour, but shaved just 12 seconds off of his time a week previous. It was much better paced, but somehow didn’t net him a much better time. He declared his season over and done with and he’s thinking what to do next.

Vince has is first set of mid-terms (I guess they aren’t midterms, they are third-terms) this week. You can do it Vince! 🙂

He shaved his head a few days ago. I think he looks a lot like Uncle Robert now.

I went back to the hospital for the first time in over two weeks. A new software program dropped on Saturday – I was glad my first day was Wed because they had worked out a bunch of kinks over the weekend, but everyone was still learning. They deployed like 4-5 people onto our unit wearing bright colored vests to ask questions to whenever you ran into any issues. So I asked them all the time. It was actually great – I mean, I didn’t even know how to add patients to my “list” or scan medications or anything. Everything did take 4 times as long. I’m usually done with morning meds by 10 or 10:30, but at 12:30 I was still working on them. But I can tell once I get used to it, it’ll be better.