A Shadow of Herself.

I have a patient who is quite young in comparison to the rest of the residents of the facility I work for. However, sadly, she is in the more later stages of the disease process. She always seems to be moving, even though she is as quite as a mouse (except when she's upset). Even when sitting her knee is bouncing or her thumb taps a cadence on my knuckles as she grasps my hand. With her head held bent due to an unfortunate irreversible side effect of some of her medications, she often will walk into walls or get stuck in corners or behind furniture because she can not see. Consequently this also leads to her falling to the floor often because she'll see a chair out of the corner of her eye but her perception of space and depth is altered, both from the angle of her head as well as the disease. And when her husband comes to visit her with their little dog in tow, I can see it in his eyes just how much this all is killing him. I can see that he is thinking "we were supposed to grow old together. We were supposed to watch out children grow, our grandchildren, and share it all as we remember our life together. But this is not the wife I married. She doesn't know me. She doesn't remember our children or even this dog." I can see the guilt he feels for the decision he had to make to put her in a facility because he could no longer care for her alone. I see this all as well as the child-like wonder and actions of this 60 something year old woman with Alzheimer's Disease.

www.alz.org

Word Salad and How Ya Been

Wow it sure has been a long time since I even looked at this website. Fortunately the writer's spark has wedged it's way into my brain frequencies and so I've decided to try once more to dialog with any and all who happen across this very blog (I am so very sorry for the waste of time).

So what's new: new job, new car, new record low of antisocial behavior! Where to begin?

New job: well I'm now a charge nurse in an Alzheimer's Special Care Assistive Living facility. I pass meds, I try to keep my caregivers/subordinates on track, and watch for flying sh*t (literally as well as figuratively). And the word salad...what a wonderful phrase, WORD SALAD! I absolutely love it. For those of you who do not know what this is it basically is when a person cannot string a coherent thought process together because they physically cannot make the mental connections to do so. Thus you get sentences such as "I highly recommend the submarine for her hot plate and the mother is the hubber and the five five five is whatcha know it mmmmmmmmm." What this means....well your guess is as good as mine...in the end I can usually determine what the patient wants by their tone of voice, non-verbal gestures, and perhaps a suspicious smell emulating from below their waist. Ah, the joys of nursing.

New car: pretty self explanatory. I was driving the family 20 year-old car but then I decided to take yet another step into adulthood and thus bought a used Nissan Versa....I've had it for a couple of months now and boy do I ever enjoy driving it. (not to mention that not 3 weeks after I got my can the old car craped out...talk about good timing)

New record low of antisocial behavior: well I'm not sure if I could actually fully classify myself as antisocial, but I certainly am not social...AKA, I have no life. I work, I eat, I sleep, I putz on the computer...repeat. Perhaps someday I'll actually get my socially awkward butt out of the house on a day off and do something that involves talking to other living people who are not drooling out of the corner of their mouth....at least that is the dream.

Ok, so my writer's spark has fizzled....just worked 40 straight hours and am now off to watch some Project Runway and pass out....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

FIN

Vent and Cough

So I'd been dealing with this apparent cold for about a week that seemed to be getting progressively worse. I couldn't breath through my nose, I had headaches, fatigue, hot flashes, and an extremely sore throat. In the end, the throat was my down fall as it got to be so bad that I was taking Tylenol and ibuprofen interchangeably every 2 hours just to take the edge off the pain which was making it basically impossible for me to swallow without extreme agony. So I finally gave in and decided to go to the convenient care Friday morning after I got off of work. Here I'm thinking I just have a really bad cold and that they will just prescribe increased fluid intake and perhaps something to dull the throat pain. They scraped my throat for strep, at my insistence, and then the nurse practitioner walked in and shined a light into my mouth. Immediately she rushed out to get a doctor who came in and they both decided that the back of my throat looked swollen enough that they were thinking I needed to go see an Ears, Nose, and Throat doc over in the clinics attached to the hospital. So I was given a shot of strong antibiotics in the butt, observed for 20 minutes, and then sent on my way across town with the initial assessment that they were thinking I had an abscess growing back where my tonsils used to be. So the ENT looks in my throat, says he thinks I either have an abscess or my tonsils grew back and are angry, and gives me 2 choices: go home with a prescription for antibiotics and hope that clears up everything, or let him numb up the back of my throat right there and lance the apparent abscess to drain it of puss in the hopes it will speed up the healing processes with the antibiotics he would then send me home with. Despite my feeling like crud and worrying over the bills that are now accumulating (even more so because I have not yet worked long enough at my new job to qualify for health insurance) I decide to let the ENT lance my throat since it's the option he preferred to take anyway. So he sprays some numbing uckiness and then injects the back of my throat with lidocaine or something 3 times and then proceeds to attempt to pop this abscess (he poked me 4 more times). And then the clicker....no puss. So the ENT is thinking the abscess must be caused by something growing deeper in my throat. So to identify the problem I'm sent for a CT scan STAT as well as lab work downstairs in the hospital. So I'm given an IV in my right hand (horrible place for a right-handed individual), told to lay in an uncomfortable position for about 15 minutes extremely still, and then poked by the vampires for blood work. JOY. Then back upstairs I went to wait for the ENT to review my results and then let me know what course of action he wants to take. An hour and a half later I'm called back to his office where he plugs in his laptop with the images from my CT scan and to my surprise it's more than either of us thought. The nasopharynx is the area of air way behind the nose and mouth connecting the two together as well as to the overall airway leading down the lungs. It is through this passageway that allows someone to squirt milk through their nose. The soft tissue of my nasopharynx, to say the least, was greatly swollen. The tissue behind my mouth was swollen to the point, in fact, that only a pencil width of airway was open. And the tissue behind my nose was completely occluded. Needless to say, the ENT looked me in the eye and said "I'm going to admit you to the hospital immediately". So after paperwork and wheelchair rides, I was finally admitted to my own room with my parents rushing over from work to be there with me. More blood was taken, (yeah, more needles) and I was immediately set up with IV infusions of antibiotics and normal saline to compensate for the fact that I had not eaten nor drank in about 24 hours by this point. So I wait and wonder. I am seen by the ENT, a general doctor, and the infectious disease team. Finally word comes back that I have been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr Mononucleosis. JOY!!!! So I'm calling my boss to let her know that she might want to inform all of my colleagues of my condition in case they come up with similar symptoms or observe these symptoms in any of our patients. And I'm having to call for a nursing aide to help me out of bed whenever I have to go to the bathroom. Also, but this point, I had not slept in about 26 hours nor had I eaten because of a complete lack of appetite. Oh, and my pain level was a constant 11 out of 10 on the traditional pain scale (they finally gave me vicodin...hehehehe). And then they hooked me up with steroids to decrease the swelling in my throat. So in the end, when I went home Sunday afternoon, I was tired, cranky, in mild pain, and able to swallow soft foods. But I was also told to not got back to work for 4 days so as to not risk infecting my patients. Well today I was checking my email, which I had not done in a couple of days because I've been sleeping and/or out of it, when I noted that Walgreens had sent me an email telling me that my prescription had been filled. Well I had no idea what prescription this was in regards to so I started making some calls. Walgreens told me that they had received a faxed prescription from the convenient care for an order of penicillin. So I called the convenient care to ask they why such an order was faxed since, 1) I had not seen anyone on the day the order was faxed, and 2) Mono is a viral infection and would not be treated by penicillin which is an antibiotic. Well they then told me that my strep swab done when I originally went into the clinic came back positive. So apparently the convenient care doctor called the doctor who oversaw my care when I was in the hospital to tell him of my positive strep infection results. It was determined that I had not received enough antibiotic treatment in the hospital to wipe out the staph infection so the clinic doctor said they would fax the order for the penicillin to the pharmacy while the hospital doc would call me to tell me of the lab results. Unfortunately the hospital doc forgot to call me. So if it had not been for that email from Walgreens, I would never have known that I was meant to go on a 10 day antibiotic treatment for the strep infection I have on top of my mono. Well at least I did finally find out...because it sure does explain a bit about why I'm still feeling crummy.

Boy what a week I've had.....and you could certainly say that when I get sick, I don't go half-assed about it.

Dating Website Angst!

What am I, a magnet for green-card ticketers? Because I don't get out much, and I'm lonely, I have tried to see if there would be any possible connections through various free dating websites. Up to date, I have had messages from a guy from Hong Kong, 2 from India, and a 38 year old math professor from Saudi Arabia. But none from the USA, let alone my area. Am I really just not cute enough to attract the attention of those not just trying to get an American wife? Perhaps I'll try a site where I have to pay for membership....either that or I'll try the outrageous concept of actually going out and meeting people out yonder in the world...*gasp!*

I PASSED!!!

Great news today: I just found out that I FINALLY passed my state boards and am now officially a registered nurse!!! I also have been offered a job working the graveyard shift for a local nursing home..not my ideal job but it'll pay the bills and give me great experience so that I can move forward with my career. YAY!!!!!! Looks like the cards are finally falling in my favor...life is about to get good!

Long Week, Longer Day

So today I took my state boards again with hopes that this time I will pass it and finally be able to call myself a registered nurse...of course, I'm going to have to wait at least until Tuesday to find out if I passed or not. So this week was full of last minute studying of facts, normal lab values, pharmacology (medical drugs for those lay people out there) and a bunch of tips about how to go about reading and then deducing what the question is asking and which of the possible answers are the MOST correct (yes, this means that there were questions where more than one, and sometimes all, possible options listed were correct and not just one right answer). On top of the studying I also had a job interview for a nursing home 40 minutes away this past Tuesday. They offered me a job as a nurse on the graveyard shift...although nothing is finalized until it is known whether or not I passed the boards. And then I actually did something not of the norm for my usual hermit existence: I went out for coffee with a friend....GASP!

So now I'm unwinding from the long day of getting up at 5 am to leave the house at 6 to drive 1.5 hours to sit for an exam which took another 1.5 hours and then to turn around and drive another 1.5 hours home. Tomorrow I have my shift at the nursery where I go to play with kids ages 0-5 years for two hours. And then I think I'll eat chocolate and read romance novels. Cest la vie.

Musings and so forth

Here I am, sitting in front of my computer at half past midnight, and contemplating my life from various angles. It's been a decent life thus far, nothing academy award worthy, but surly it's not been too dull. But it has occurred to me (one too many times in fact) that I am truly only a shadow of who I really could be. I have dreams and hopes for what I want out of life. I have ambition and plans. But what I don't seem to have is courage. I went from being a socially awkward and very invisible little girl to a social awkward hermit 20 something year old woman. I preach female empowerment, spiritual well-being, and personal growth, and yet I look back and wonder just how much I embody of what I believe in.

Now, I don't ask for pity or free hand-outs, like some might do, but it has occurred to me that if I want to achieve what my life is destined to be, I need to take steps now before I've implanted myself too deeply in the mud. That is why I feel it is now important for me to start living like a 20 something year old woman and not the president of The Future Crazy Cat Ladies of America Association.

So here I am, newly graduated from college, no job, no friends, no life. Pathetic really. Friday nights I'm at home with my 50 something year old parents (whom I currently live with). I spend a good deal of my time either on the internet or reading romance novels. I don't know anyone in my town, I'm single (of course) because my one and only boyfriend turned out to be a nice enough guy, but not a good guy for me. And I happen to wonder if my thoughts of finding true love and friendship via dating websites was really all that good an idea to begin with. (I think the 2 guys who actually contacted me - and wanted citizenship no less - was a good indicator of the people I'd continue to find.) So do I have plan? I think so. I think what I need to do is actually get out there.

So now it's 1 am, and thinking that change in my life is possible. That I may one day actually become the woman I dream of being. But of what my socially awkward tendencies...believe me, I have a few....well, that's what this blog for, a documentation of the confessions of a socially awkward twenty-something. Stay tuned readers, the show has just begun.