Settling In..

Well, I'm getting used to my new apartment. My neighbors are musicians. Yep. Alt Rock. Sigh. Toulouse is not amused.




I love it nonetheless. Here are the aforepromised photos.





There's been a delay on the house closing. Lawyers. Hopefully, we'll finally finalize it this week. In the meantime, I've been popping up there to check on it and take advantage of the laundry. Yesterday afternoon, I was vacuuming and heard "knock, knock, knock" on the door.

I opened it up and, lo and behold, there was the mayor of my small town holding a small ceramic bowl.

I invited Mr. B in and we chatted for a few minutes. Apparently, his son bought the house and the mayor was unaware of the delay in closing. He was wandering around the property last week, found my collection of wheat pennies in the garage and took them home. When he found out about the delay, he wanted to return the money. He was embarrassed. We walked through the house together and he mentioned some things that 'John-John' wanted to change and asked about the family. I had never really known him, his kids were older than me, but he was my brother's little league coach and shared booster club responsibilities with my mom and several aunts and uncles.

After he left, I burst out in laughter. I was robbed by my mayor! It struck me as incredibly ironic.

Work has been remarkably smooth. The nightmare patient that I had mentioned last time was only with us for a few days and since then, our census has been mostly comprised of easy ortho patients.

No more news on the medschool application front. I'm still 'under review' at all of the other schools. The waiting is impossible. BAH.

New Digs

I'm settling into my new apartment. It's a tiny studio in an old Victorian house with ceilings higher than the room is wide...

I'm using an old refurbished library study table for dining.

I last rented a mother-in-law basement apartment, draped in grapevines and filled with books, that I christened the li-burrow. I haven't yet thought of a clever name for this new place. I'll post some more photos when I finally organize the living/bedroom. It's filled with boxes now and not very inspirational.

We have a patient at work. I'm not able to express the turmoil that this patient throws the hospital into when (s)he is here. I've been on the unit for over a year an this is the second visit. It's an incredibly stressful time for nursing staff, manager and hospital administration. This patient only comes to our floor for reasons that I can't go into without violating HIPAA. I can only say that they're unique and awful. I'm not experienced or clever enough to adequately change the details and still portray the magnitude of this person's effect on us. We get extra staff and the nursing supervisor relocates her center of command to our floor for the duration of the patient's stay. It doesn't help with the stress levels of the nursing staff. My manager hand selects the staff assigned to the room. Though he picks his most reliable, most patient and most experienced, it's not an honor.

The last time, the patient stayed 2 months. I'm not looking forward to another two months of complete anxiety before every shift. Bah.

I received my first med school interview offer. I'm thrilled but my loneliness yesterday was amplified in my hunt for someone to share my excitement. I mentioned it to my coworkers but they were more concerned that this means I may not be there next year. My brother disapproves of my ambition (I'm too old) and my west coast friends couldn't talk last night.

I'm still excited though!!

Libraries

I love books. I adore books. I hoard books. When I moved to Seattle, I culled my library from almost 1000 volumes to 200. Four years later, I moved again and culled 500 more from my collection. When I came back to the east coast 3 years ago, I sent 15 boxes ahead. 2 were clothes, one was packed with keepsakes and 12 were full of my favorite volumes.

I have no problem throwing out anything else. My great grandmother's cake pan? Bah, it's rusted and unusable. The faded notebook that she painstakingly copied recipes into? A treasure! Don't ever ask me to give up my copy of The Quiet American that I read while sipping 'white coffee' next to Hoan Kiem Lake in the sultry Viet Nam mornings.

I would rather lose a finger than the tattered A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that my grandmother read to my mother and then to me when I was a child. I was Francie. Knowing that my niece will pick up the same pages next year (when I pass it on) that 3 other generations have caressed thrills me.

I can't do libraries. I try. Over the years, I've moved a lot. I have a system: move stuff, contact PO, contact banks, get new driver's license and car registration and obtain library card. But I have never returned a library book on time. Not once. While packing yesterday, I came across 3 library books, the only books that I've checked out from the local library since moving here.

I can leave my childhood home without a backward glance (stupid albatross) but returning those books brought tears to my eyes. The one was the last book that I read to my mother before she died.

I drove home and cried. Then, I drove back, paid my $82.15 fine and checked the book out again.

Isolation

All five of our isolation rooms are sequestered in one hallway on our unit. I was walking back from helping woundvac dressing change and found myself stopping in each room to chat with the patients. I knew them all well. I chatted with Dean* (MRSA) about his kids; Ira* (VRE) shared his news about his UNOS status; Frances* (MRSA) asked me for a cigarette and we laughed together at the inside joke; and for a few minutes, Robert* (CDIFF and MRSA)and I competed to see who could get the most Jeopardy questions right. He won. Stupid "Sports Venues".

I headed back to the desk and, out of curiosity, checked to see how long my friends on the I-ward had been here. At July 7th, Ira was the newest admission. Three months. Like the others, he's settled in. He has his favorite snacks in the kitchen fridge, a mountain of pillows to burrow into, piles of linens, dressing changes and unopened Nepro spilling out of cupboards and closet. Photos of his dog are on the wall and an extension cord keeps his cellphone and nook within reach.

After her transplant, my mother lived in the hospital for 11 months. We settled her in as best we could with soft throws, poster-sized photos of family on the wall, homemade hospital gowns, radio, magazines, toys, anything that we could think of to make it more comfortable. She hated it. She had no interest in anything but getting home.

I don't see that with my I-ward friends. Both Robert and Frances have been on the verge of going home several times over the months but they got stressed, become enraged and argued with the discharge planners. Then they had relapses, Robert became septic and Frances' tissue flap reopened.

Over the weeks, I've learned bits and pieces about my patients lives. Ironically, the time they spend in the I-ward is less isolating than their home lives. They each have a different story but, without exception, they are lonely and enjoy the 'perks' of living in a hospital: constant company, all the food they can eat, any need/desire filled by just pressing a call bell button.

Over the last year, I've noticed a steady increase of 'social admissions' to our unit. I think it's due to the aging local population, the depressed economy and the cutbacks at the nearby psychiatric hospital. A lot of its inpatients have been reevaluated to outpatient status. The recent flooding also destroyed 2 nearby nursing homes and countless homes.

It's scary and sad to me, that the awfulness of being in a hospital is actually preferential to what awaits outside.

Though my mom never made it out of her hospital stay, she had something better to look forward to, to work for. We all, up until the very end, had hope and desire that she'd make it home. In that way, we were fortunate.

No news on the med school application front.

My Month of Scramble

I sold my mom's house last week; the buyers paid cash and are forgoing an inspection which means a fast closing. EEK. and Yay.

I'm scrambling to find new housing, storage for my parents' things that we're keeping, and all the little errands that one doesn't realize until that time of moving is upon them.


I received my second med school rejection, ironically from my #2 dream school. Bah.

Work is interesting. Last week, one of the patients developed a really weird icky crush on me. He followed me around and asked me every day to join him in a new activity. Play Scrabble? Go to the zoo? In all honesty, it was creepy because he was not mentally impaired in the slightest. Somehow it's easier to understand/think cute/tolerate a patient's romantic interest if they're elderly and demented or young and MR. I don't understand how a middle aged man could rationally think it a good idea to ask out the nurses/aides.

We had a mandatory aide meeting yesterday, a punitive grousefest. Apparently, the aides aren't doing their jobs properly, have bad attitudes and things need to change. This was all based on our recent Press Ganey scores. The nursing aides are the front line to patient care after all. Later, my manager pulled me aside, basically told me that he didn't have any problems with my work and asked me to 'keep an eye on the moods of my coworkers'. I don't really know what he meant by that but I felt manipulated nonetheless.

I love autumn. I drove to work today and noticed the trees preening at their reflection in the river. I can't remember seeing the leaves change last year. It's astonishing how grief and sadness can blind one to such beauty.

Nighttime Serenade

Tonight, I stayed several hours past my shift end to sit with a confused elderly patient. "George" had a psych history and a broken hip. For various reasons, he had a triple lumen catheter and an order for TPN. Just before 2nd shift he pulled out his line and offered it to his nurse like a wedding ring, asking her to marry him.

I had worked with George before. He was unfailingly cheerful and absolutely adorable in his confusion. He was definitely one of my favorite patients. Because he was tugging on his foley and newly placed peripheral line, I volunteered to stay and guard his wandering hands.

He called me his little black Jewish kitty-cat and asked to pet my fur (I'm neither black nor Jewish) but happily acknowledged that I was a cat who didn't like to be petted and sang to me instead: "Kitty-Cat I Love You" to the tune of Bull Moose Jackson's big hit.

George didn't seem to have any short term memory; he constantly asked where he was, did his parents know he was there, why we had kidnapped him, when I was going to have my baby. (I'm not pregnant). *sigh*

Despite his misinterpretation of my physical homage to all things cheese (my little potbelly), we had a great time together telling stories and tearing pictures of cats out of the stack of magazines that someone had left him.

Outwardly, he and my mother were complete opposites. He was a tall black millwright and my mom was a tiny white schoolteacher. She died young and he had reached a blessed age. But their eyes were the same: brown and slightly bulging. He and my mom were both confused but so very loving and so happy to meet new faces.

It breaks my heart that he's transferring tomorrow to a university hospital for surgery and I won't be able to follow up on him.

Disaster

My area is under a state of emergency right now. I worked a 20 hour shift at the hospital yesterday and am looking into another long shift today. The region is devastated, without drinkable water and many homes without electricity. Emergency command centers and shelters have been set up throughout the county.

I'm amazed at how well everyone worked together these last couple of days. The folks who actually made it, driving hours in convoluted directions, without complaint buckled down to work and spirits were remarkably high. We didn't know how long we would be the only ones who would be able to work and so my manager set up a rotating schedule partway through the day so that we could get some sleep.

A rep whose presentation was canceled, dropped the food off on our floor and so we dined. Because we couldn't use the municipal water, our coffee dispenser was shut off (it is connected directly to the water line.) A neighbor of the hospital dropped off a couple of percolators so that we could refuel.

Another aide came in to relieve me around 4:00 this morning and I began my journey home. Only one bridge in the area is functional and so I have to drive 2 hours on a winding path in the opposite direction to get on the right side of the hill/river in order to get home.

I was the only car in the middle of nowhere when a red sports car wheeled in front of me and then over-corrected to go flying into the tree in someone's front yard.

Immediately stopped, I put my hazards on and called 9 1 1. Describing what happened to the operator, I got out of my car to approach the accident. As I'm walking up, the boy who had been driving, stumbled into the yard, turned to look at the car, said "oh shit!" and took off across the road into the woods.

And so I told the operator. She said someone would be out as soon as they can. Considering the area was in a state of emergency, that 'as soon as they can' was 2 hours and 15 minutes. After giving my statement, they let me go and I began the long trek home.