Lindsey's Ramblings

is my sister's birthday!!! And I am here hanging out in MD cleaning my apt. and praying I don't get called into work. Saturday Dan and I went down town(Washingtong. DC for the rest of you) to see the cherry blossoms. They were BEAUTIFUL!!! Right at their peak bloom. Wow. And the weather was perfect. The weekend before that I was out in OH visiting my super cute little sis and catching up with friends and profs. Right now my butt is sore from sitting infront of my computer and I should begin to go on a cooking spree so that I have meals to eat for my 4 nights of work in a row... Sorry that things aren't much more exciting to right about, except for the 'triage-ing" that I got to do of my 'cousin's ' cut hand... it got 4 stiches in the ED, poor kid, I am not sure if he cried more about the injury or about the thought of getting stiches. Oh well. I'll write again soon... hopefully. Remember to get your taxes in tomorrow by midnight! :-)

So things at work have been super busy this past month the second we have one kid leave the floor we have about 100 more come to fill that room. Nothing like getting an admission to the floor 20 minutes before you are supposed to be leaving!! Grrr.... Now we are the official children's burn unit (along with our med/surg patients) so we have been getting lots of those kids, nothing too serious yet lots of minor things like hot soup or coffee or boiling water burns. It makes you realize just how much a parent needs to be watching their kids!! I like it though, it's a challenge and we now get all age kids on the floor so it's been fun having some 20month old kids for a change. Meggie came home for spring break so we got to hang out a few days it was great to see her for the 1st time since Jan!! She heads off to Texas some time this summer for 9 months of school after her comissioning and then she'll be stationed somewhere, we don't know where yet. Well, I must get going just wanted to let you all know that I am still alive! :-) Till next time....

I go walkin' in my sleep... or not. I go walkin' the floors of my unit, that's right only one more night of night shift then back to days I go. Not sure whether to be happy or not. So last week we got to do the coolest thing at work.... LEECH therapy. That's right, we took leeches (grown in a sterile environment) and got to put them on a patient who had this huge flap of skin re-attached. It was so cool! How amazing that God created that and that we still use it in medicine today, somethings work better than any new medicine we can invent. After the leeches were done 'feeding' then we umm... killed them. My dear friend Katie (also an RN, but on the oncology floor) wants to form the leech liberation foundation to "free squilly" it will be a foundation to protect poor leeches from their cruel fate, I think she was going to get a grant to make a 'retirement home' where they could live out the rest of their lives (since you can't reuse them on anyone else). So that's the newest and most exciting thing in my life, other than now being really old, having reached the official age of 23, I am ready to retire! :-) Well, I'll keep you posted if anything else new and bizzar occurs. BTW, the pt no longer gets leech therapy and is doing very well.
Till next time....

Work. In 3 weeks we (my unit at the hospital) officially becomes the pediatric burn unit. Right now we are doing construction to make a treatment room for the burn dressing changes, etc. It's a big change and definitely not something I ever saw myself doing! (ask my fellow classmates!) However, I am looking forward to the change and the new challenges it brings, it's more interesting than asthma or pneumonia that's for sure. My little girl that coded has been back on our floor since new years and is doing better, though she is having a few set backs, but we (all of the nurses on our floor) have fallen in love with her! She is super cute!!

Life. Wedding planning (ugh) very stressful, I have picked out the girls dresses and have narrowed mine down to 2. The big thing now is a church and a photographer and somehow getting this done inbetween work... we shall see.

Life some more. Meggie spent the night before going back to school, it was so good to see her and spend time with her!! She has one semester left and then off to the air force she goes. :-S Not sure what I think, I want her to be near but she'll be where ever they want her. (I am hoping she can get off Aug 5 and 6)!!

That's all that's new for now... my car should be coming back this week, thank goodness! I hate rental cars, it makes me more stressed and paranoid. Oh well. TTYL.

Well, my day was quite an adventure... it started out with work, where I was taking care of this darling little girl, she was missing all 4 of her top teeth and was super cute! The day before she would get really excited every time I came in the room and gave me lots of hugs and a kiss. Today she was really tired and slept a ton, at 10 she desated (she didn't have enough oxygen in her blood) to 60% (we like kids to be above 92%) so the Dr's had to give her lots of oxygen. We thought that would be all for the day.... little did I know. I was sitting down to lunch and had been there for about 15 min when all of a sudden I heard the staff emergency alarm go off, followed by the code alarm! Well, of course we took off running and I knew in my heart what room I'd be running to, mine with my darling little patient inside. Her mother was there screaming and crying and my patient was on the bed limp and turning a little dusky. I ran out of the room and called the code team to come that we had a kid who had stopped breathing. It was a frantic hour as we worked on getting her to breath and to keep her blood pressure up, people and doctors were in and out of the room which got more crowded by the second. The mom was taken to the chaplan and we set about taking care of this girl. We finally got her intubated and sent her to the ICU where they stabalized her and sent her to have a CAT- scan, to try and figure out what was wrong. I have talked to the mom since the ordeal and things seem to be going well. I am definitley keeping them in my prayers and thoughts!! It was dificult as this was my 1st code and on a pt that was mine and I loved so much!

On the good side, after work I came home to a note on my door from Dan, I thought "no he can't possibly be here" but as I opened the door I was right he was there!! He had decorated my apt. with red and white votive candles and flowers and had made me lasagna and peach cobbler and poured sparkling cider for us. It was sooo good to see him after such a long day! After dinner he gave me my christmas presents, a miniature fireplace, white dance shoes, snow white and prince charming in her wedding dress, a Phantom of the Opera CD, some candles and a little black box... with a diamond ring inside, he got down on one knee and told me how much he loved me and asked if I would be his wife. I suppose I nodded (I thought I said yes, but was informed I never actually said anything :-) ) and he put the ring on my finger. What an end to a long day!! So sometime in the not too distant future there is a wedding in store for me :-)

Let me say, I never thought so little snow would be so awful!! Driving home from work tonight was like driving on a giant, and hilly, ice rink. Cars everywhere were stuck, tires spinning, going forward, going back trying to make any progression at all towards their final destination. And of couse that included me and my big van, oh joy! It was awful, it took over 25 min to accomplish a 7 min drive, inching, spinning, sliding my way home, the snow on the road has completely turned to slicker than snot, icy snow. And just when I was about to breathe a sigh of thanks that I was almost home... my turn onto my road was blocked by other cars, so I had to go down and then up another hill till I could make it home... :-P I have now arrived safely at my little appt, which has never looked better!, and am calling it an early night so I can do this all again tomorrow morning (yay) There are some days I just wish I was a teacher!!

Last night I went to a tennis game (that's right, an actually sporting event) and saw Lindsay Davenport (#1 tennis player in the world) play Maria Shorapova (#4 in the world). These people can hit a tennis ball at 115 mph!! Yikes, wouldn't want to be hit with that!!! It was fun, and man are those girls good! Other than that, it's been work as usual and shopping for Christmas presents. One more week!!! I can't wait, only 32 more hours of work before my break! :-D YAY! We'll this is a short blog, I have to work in the AM. Till next time....