Author: Doris

A beautiful day today which is good because I’m anxious.  Today was the day I took Edda downtown to the third to last of her pre-op appointments  – anesthesiology and hospitalist.  This is the only time I needed to go downtown and even though I think I’m prepared for it all emotionally, I am not.  I’ve not been to Children’s on a weekday (my clinicals there were on a weekend), so I walk into the hospital and it’s loud, there are tons of people moving around and there are lots of crying kids.

I am feeling a bit sorry for myself, it was a long day.  We met with two sorts of anesthesiologists – one a nurse practitioner and one an actual anesthesiologist.  Both are asking questions, both are telling me what’s going to happen – I’m not actually sure if I need to know. Two IVs, an arterial line to monitor blood pressure, she’ll be intubated down her throat and she won’t be breathing at all on her own because the pain meds and muscle relaxant drugs will be administered at such a level that her breathing will be depressed and therefore a machine needs to control that.  She’ll be face down which also makes it more difficult to breath.  And because she’s at risk for long QT syndrome, they’ll probably forgo the methadone (longer acting) for pain control during the procedure and go with morphine (shorter acting and therefore more frequent dosing) and also maybe not do the Zofran as an anti nausea med because it could prolong QT.  This careful explanation just makes me more and more anxious. And neither of these two people are going to be actually administering the medications to Edda during surgery, it’ll be one of 40 that rotate through the operation bays and days.  They asked if Edda had loose teeth (which might interfere with the intubation).

Then I met with the hospital pediatrician who’ll be taking care of Edda on the floor (one of four peds assigned, so I’ll likely see her), she’ll be transitioning Edda from the surgical suite to the ICU (hopefully only one night) and then to the ortho floor (hopefully four nights).  She asked about our house – what equipment do we have?  We have: stair lift, bath chair & accessible shower, ramps, accessible van, bed with side rails.  We have everything which will make the case manager’s job simple.  She asked if we have nursing care and I said no (well, except me) and that we wouldn’t qualify for nursing care anyways and she agreed.

Edda likes these bubblers.  I should get her one.  To top it off, I think Edda’s getting Vince and Jeremy’s cold.  She’s having trouble swallowing tonight and is really quiet.  I think her throat is sore, but the pediatrician looked at it in the hospital 12 hours ago and though it did look a tiny bit red (Edda’s been sniffling), but nothing dramatic.

I can not read a book, I can not work, I can not concentrate while I’m at the hospital.  I can only play this particular word game.  I’m afraid it’ll be a week of it during/after the surgery.

I go to Montgomery College to use their track as MCPS has stricter rules about when their track is open to the public and, honestly, the college track is closer to the house.  I don’t park on campus (I have no parking permit), I park on a side street and cut through an apartment complex that has a fence with a door that leads almost straight to the track that is usually open from 5:30 am to 11 pm. There usually isn’t a problem, but I haven’t been to the track in a number of months and today, I find a large bush planted right in front of the gate on the apartment side.  There are also two conflicting signs on the fence, one that says welcome to our tobacco free campus and one that says private property no trespassing.  I think the apartment complex and the college are in a fight.  Anyways, I walked past the bushes to the track where I found a number of community members out walking and jogging including a bunch of very nice people who wanted me to join their Herbalife nutrition club (I politely declined).

******

I indulged Vince in another sick day.  My own tendencies (in all things) is to just suck it up and proceed, so if I was as sick as Vince was today, I would have gone to school and done whatever it is I could do because you’d fall behind if you didn’t just go and hear what the teacher said, but I know he feels crappy, so I went against what I would normally do myself and let him sleep in.  But I did (when he was happy on Motrin) make him get a haircut with me.  He said that he thought the Hair Cuttery was a place where only old people when to get their haircut and I reminded him that we were out at noon on Tuesday and that all non-old people are at school or at work.  Oh yeah, he replied.

And I made him eat a hamburger.  Well, I didn’t have to make him.  See?  He’s well enough to eat a hamburger with gusto.  He should have probably gone to school.

And we shared fried green beans with ranch dressing.  Mmmm..

*******

Gene and Bette gave us their very nice white couches when they bought new ones for their apartment.  Those things need to be slipcovered ASAP before we cover them with poop, sriracha, black dog/human hair, and chocolate.

Small photos today for some reason.  I’ll figure it out later.  Jeremy & Vince both felt ill last night and so today, I let them both sleep in and see if the rest would do them some good.  Edda seemed a little bit sniffly, but otherwise in good spirits, so I fed her breakfast and then off to school for her.

******

Vince & Jeremy both decided to work from home, Jeremy working on catching up and Vince emailing all his teachers to figure out what is due when and if he could postpone some exams this week.

Both the boys are pretty good when the Motrin is at the height of its efficacy, but they both feel pretty lousy when it starts to wear off.

*****

Gong gong and Vince are back at it (it being daily Chinese lessons) – this time virtual study sessions.

******

Date night: grocery store

Cookies.  I wanted one but I didn’t buy any.  Not even a small one.

Jeremy and Vince are feeling sick today so they are both taking Motrin & feeling low.  Edda and I were the only ones who made it to Sunday night dinner.

******

We Facetimed my parents who are now doing their half year on the west coast.

Friday I did my last clinical shift for the week and said goodbye to the floor and my two preceptors.  For this last day, I did get to see an interesting cardiac case where the nurses did a cardioversion on a young patient who was in a sustained afib-rvr rhythm (her pulse had been at 180 for hours) by administering ibutilide after a cardizem drip was not successful.  The first dose of ibutilide – nothing – though you could see on the heart monitor her heart trying to find the regular rhythm, a couple of normal beats and then back to the incredibly fast heart rate. Ten min later, halfway through pushing the 2nd dose into her IV line, her heart flipped back into a normal sinus rhythm, and we all looked up at her and asked how she felt and she said, I feel great.  Later that day, we went running into a room when someone’s monitor also read a heart rate of 180 only to find the patient totally pissed off at her phone and yelling to her friend in the room – he can’t disrespect me no more!  I gotta block him, how do I block him?  A few calming breaths were all that were needed to bring her heart rate back to normal.  I did not know you could get yourself that worked up to send your heart rate into the 180s.  I had a good time on the floor, busy and interesting.  I had my two preceptors who were great to me, Liz & Celine.

****

Kiki’s in town for the climate march.  We’ve been prepping Vince for it for months now, he had to make it to DC for something.  Appropriately, it reached 90 degrees today at the White House, about 20 degrees hotter than it normally is at this time.  Edda and Kitachi were at home in the air conditioning, but the rest of us went out to march!

Jeremy’s work folks were out in force wearing their Stand Up for Science shirts on the front and Union of pissed-off Scientists in the back.  Beaker was making the rounds.

Vince got a selfie with Bill Nye the Science Guy.  Vince was really excited, this kind of perked him up for a while.

We got to 13th street and we were hot and tired.  We needed a break.  It was a nice march though, lots of people, lots of chanting.  Booing as we passed the Trump hotel.

******

Chris and Grafton came over for dinner.  Vince can’t wait to play water balloons with Grafton all summer!

Jeremy is obsessed with his bike fit.  He pulled out the plumb bob and made me take a photo of his foot/knee placement.

******

In my every 11-days check the mail habit, I found this postcard to Vince from his science teacher.  A bit odd, but a nice sentiment.

*****

Weeknight dinner out!

After Edda’s asleep, Vince will come into our room, crawl into our bed and we’ll watch this dude’s corgi videos.  He usually posts once a week and so now we watch them together.  The “host” is a funny guy – we enjoy it a lot.

******

I did pretty poorly on this last exam today – a C!  And kind of a low one at that.  It’s a bit of a shame that I let it go that way, but there were so many other things to do this weekend besides studying.  Like – camping, orienteering, afternoon slacklining and birthday party, evening family Sunday night dinner and then Edda’s bath/shower – you know, regular living. As soon as I clicked “Done!” on the computer test and saw what I got, I kind of laughed and said – yeah, that’s worth the amount I studied. I’m thisclose to being done.  A poster presentation and one more shift at the hospital.  And then… I applied for only one job.  Many of the kiddos (and they are all kidddos – mostly) around me have excitedly committed to jobs this summer.  It is true, your nurse is young enough to be your child.  The doctors also not that much older.

Edda looks particularly squinched in this photo, her spine crookeding inside of her.  Ah. Today we went to the pulmonologist who said the thing I wanted to hear.  Let’s do nothing!  Which is what I’m going to do.  Actually, he’ll just write a note that if her breathing isn’t at a particular level when they extubate her at the end of the surgery, that she should be put on bi-pap for a bit of time to help her with her breathing.  I’m down with that.  He reminded me that I’m not her nurse in this situation, that I’m her mom and to only worry about mom things and not too much on nurse things (because I was starting to grill him about respiratory depression vs pain medications and weekend shifts because we are doing the surgery on a Friday headed into the weekend).

*****

Speaking of nursing school – one more exam.  Tomorrow.  About the most boring things, management, quality control, blah blah, blah.  I can barely make myself study.

*****

I love it when Jeremy works from home because I get deliciousness for dinner.

Jeremy was not excited about going to the Science March on Sat.  It was a dreary day and it’s a little ridiculous in the first place to say – hooray science! because who could possibly not want actual data about stuff, but Jeremy work was all in and so he went downtown.  He biked both back and forth to work in the semi-rain, which did perk up his mood, so by the time he got him, we was pretty jolly.  I worked all day (a repetitive and somewhat sad state of affairs for me, but hopefully not lasting much longer).

Met up with Mike & Hawk from New Mexico.

Found Beaker.  Meep!

Bumped into Lynn, our neighbor.

The march didn’t start marching until 2pm which was too late for us.  I needed to help out with Vince’s campout at 5 pm, so Jeremy just rallied and then headed back home.

*****

Jeremy got home and then we exchanged hellos/goodbyes and I headed north an hour to spend the night camping with Vince and the scouts.  They need three people at night in case there is an emergency and only had two people signed up.  So Jeremy (!) volunteered me to go because it was an orienteering campout, but, really, by the time I got there, the orienteering part of the trip was over.  I was a little worried about the food – I had no time to prep any food for myself and I didn’t want to eat what Vince bought for the boys.  But I didn’t need to worry because the scoutmaster made the grown-ups a delicious dinner.

Vince is suppose to help the younger scouts get some badge requirements – here he is helping I. get his fireman’s badge.

I tried to study – I have a final in a couple of days, but I have no time to study for it.  It’s also soooooo boring.  So I shove it to the side when I have other things to do.

I got up before the boys and was rewarded with a sunrise run!

Last night, around 1am, I was having a dream where I was arguing with Jeremy and then in a moment of fury, I woke up suddenly and slapped Jeremy really hard.  He did wake up and ask me quizzically what I was doing and I said I think I was arguing with you in my head and needed to slap you.  Anyways, when we both woke up for real, I asked him, did I really hit you last night?  Jeremy said – yeah!  and it hurt!

*****

Vince is out scouting this weekend and was in charge of getting the food.  So my regular grocery date night was hijacked by a teenager.

Just to set the record straight – I approve of none of these purchases.  None.

Because they are short on adults and I’m feeling extra guilty for not pulling my fair share of scouting duties even though it is the cornerstone of Vince’s social whatever, I volunteered to camp out on Sat night (which is forecasted to be pouring rain).  Vince promised to set up my tent tonight so I don’t have to do it in the rain.  Jeremy also bought a cot so I don’t have to rest my old bones on the ground.

Vince spent the afternoon playing D&D.  These are new-ish friends.  His closest friends are the scout friends who he’s had since the 2nd grade and they are pretty tight still – surviving both the transistions to middle school & high school.  But it makes me happy to see he’s finding new friends.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Jeremy had his own party at work prepping for the Science March (today).  The weather isn’t cooperating.

Jeremy stayed a bit late for the sign making and I needed to get the kids out to the campout carpool, so we went to Five Guys.

Jeremy meet up with us in town center, I dropped off the boys and then we snuck in some ice cream.