From Trauma Shears to Bandage Scissors

I am about to start the second week of my new job. I have renamed the yellow handled shears that have “PMMC ER” engraved on the side. I am officially no longer a trauma nurse. I do nothing but pass out drugs (mostly crushed in applesauce) and change dressings on month-old wounds that will never heal.

 Six months ago, I would never have considered a job which is only that. Not a career-building, educational occupation. A job. I hate that the cliché “Having a baby changes everything” holds true, even for me. I only have to work eight-hour shifts, and can disappear to my car or the bathroom to pump milk without having to answer to anyone. By taking an Emergency Department job fresh out of school, I sort of skipped over the basic entry-level job that every nurse needs on their resume. The only good thing about this new position is that it fills this requirement.

 I may not be learning something new daily, but I do get to have mindless conversations with the residents while I’m working, which actually keeps me quite entertained. I can often be found crushing an MS Contin, calcium pill, and dose of Neurontin together and stirring the powder into a protein shake with thickener. I spend 80% of my time at work standing in front of the med cart. The residents, no matter how confused, have discovered that the nurses are a captive audience, so they roll right up to the cart, park, and stay until a CNA rolls them to their room.

 

Typical conversation:

 

Demented Resident: I need to go upstairs and go to bed right now.

RN (me): If we went upstairs, we’d be on the roof. There’s only one story.

DR: That’s fine. I could look for my car from the roof. It’s been missing for a long time.

RN: What kind of car do you have? I could help you look.

DR: It’s a ’69 Plymouth.

RN: Okay, I’ll keep an eye out. (Begins crushing an Ativan into applesauce)

 

CNA: (heard in background, talking to a visitor) Head down this hall and make a left at the fish tank.

DR: I’d like to go fishing. Can you take me to the ship?

RN: It hasn’t docked yet.

DR: Okay. Will you put my books in my stateroom when it does?

RN: Sure. I have a bite of applesauce for you.

 I really can’t complain. I’m making an obscene amount of money for less than half of the responsibility I had in the ER. As long as I keep my sanity, maybe some day I’ll go back to being a contributing member of society.

Hope for the Hopeless

I have always struggled to balance my social anxiety with the guilt that comes after spending too many weeks in a row locked up away from people, watching Six Feet Under. I am, to put it nicely, an introvert. Truth be told, I dislike people. I have a few friends, and a husband, who are always able to slip in under the radar and spend time with me, but they don’t count. I don’t want to make small talk with my neighbors. I dread parties, avoid social gatherings, and try not to get to know my coworkers too well. I want to live near my closest friends because they are better than any I could meet anywhere else, and let’s face it, I don’t want to go through the inconvenience of weeding out ten boring people to find one potential friend to go to a movie with. I’m picky.

But, because we thought that we would be back in central Illinois by now, I am taking acute notice of what living in Oregon has to offer. Last week, we went to the Redwood National Forest, and the northern California coast. I was enthralled by each fern frond and the salty fragrance of the ocean. I walked among the ancient trees and imagined dinosaurs hiding behind the mammoth trunks.

I stood in a circle of trees, looked above, and was able to hear the whispers of everyone I have trouble hearing on the side of the living. I remembered why we came here in the first place, our own Oregon trail.

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We were joined by one of the friends from our old home; it was like I had seen him every weekend since we moved, although it had been over a year. I dared him to crawl in what seemed to be a burrow underneath a great tree stump. He obliged, and realized it lead to the inside of the dead tree. Inside, it was a hollow, private shelter. 

Each of us taking our turns crawling in drew the attention of passers by. A twenty-something with an indiscernible accent, a retired couple who said they were great grandparents, among others. I joked with them, asked them questions, took their pictures for them. I enjoyed it. Strange realization.

 

We walked a bit further, finding a bench so that Ava could nurse al fresco. Carved on it’s back was this: “One touch of nature makes the whole World kin.” --Shakespeare

Back to the Whiteboard

We have a habit of writing everything on a giant whiteboard that has hung in a prominent place in every home we've had. (Or sits on the living room floor, like it did when I was broken on a couch and couldn't walk, so I could still reach it.) Anytime we mention something that's worth remembering, we jot it down with multicolored ink. This is what it looks like today:

For now, I think we're going to have to erase the whole thing. It seems that for as many things that were falling into place for the move, there was at least one thing holding us back. So, instead of being covered in plans for moving two adults, a baby, a bunny, and a dog, our whiteboard will again be a blank slate.

Hopefully, Mike will be able to quit his stupid, stupid job at The RRRink. (Maybe he'll blog about this; if you can't tell from the ridiculous name of the business, Longitude will be able to provide more evidence of their ineptitude.) Then, we have almost as many details to work out about staying here as we did for our moving plans. By the end of the week, it will probably be covered with new priorities.

I am just as ambivalent as I was a few months ago. I am so glad to have some more time to enjoy this place with Ava. We're taking her to see the coast for the first time in a few days. But then, I go through her clothes to pick out the ones that fit now (which were too big when I went through them mere weeks ago) and see the Christmas ones and her Halloween costume. I think for a second, "she'll wear these when we are back with our friends". But, no.

Her aliases include:

The Dinosaur, Quacky or Quackaroo, Maggie, Little, Hungry Hippo, Wiggle Worm...

Boo Sack:

and Boob Sucker:

"Homer, you took a BAPTIZING for me!"

Remember the episode of The Simpsons where the Flanders try to baptize the Simpson kids? Marge and Homer are seriously concerned about the damage it could do to their children and eventually rescue them from the horror, but Homer's two hairs get singed from the drops of holy water.

There are many benefits to living away from family, and I just realized how great it has been to be able to get away. We have a built in excuse to not have to spend hours with the extended family when all we really want to do on our Saturday afternoon is have sex and then eat ice cream before dinner. (Not that we've had an actual Saturday off together since Ava was conceived, anyway, but you get the point.) Spending the dreaded holidays out of town was wonderful last year. Even though I was in the hospital for Christmas and puking most of the time, I can't say how nice it was to be able to sleep as much as I wanted. Tell me again why we are thinking of moving back?

I can't think of the answer right now, but I can think of one of the reasons we left. Neither Longitude or I respond well to pressure. Usually pressure from family members is not enough to convince us to change our behavior, but it is enough to annoy us. Lately we have been getting hints, suggestions, and in some cases demands related to Ava's baptism. The possibility (probability?) of moving back ruins our ability to shrug it off and say we'll get to it sooner or later.

Neither of us feel that the pouring of water over her head will damage or repair any part of her. I don't believe there is a god who will send her to a fiery hell or children's limbo if she's not baptized. On the other hand, if there are members of our families who do genuinely worry about her well being should she not go through with it, fine. It would be a great excuse to have cake. My biggest concern for her is that she learns that she was born the way she is already meant to be, and doesn't need to do anything to become acceptable.

Little Dinosaur, I wish i could pack you up into a tiny egg and put you back inside me for safe keeping, and let you out, exactly as you are today, when it will be enough to just be you. For us, your parents, it is enough.

It's nice to dream...

I would love to sit down and spend an hour or more writing a long and involved post to help empty my brain, but The Dinosaur is next to me kicking her spiders. Probably not for long. So, the sole purpose of this post is to help me decide what this blog's purpose is going to be. 

(I think it's fun that the word "blog" is not in the dictionary for blogspot's spell checker thingy.)

The last thing I want to do is make it into a what I had for lunch today blog. Unless what I had for lunch was incredibly profound and had a major impact on my life. I would love to say that every post will be unbelievably well thought out and will contain lots of helpful and enjoyable links instead of just pictures of Ava. But this post alone has thrown this plan by the wayside.

I'm hoping to write enough about my current life events to have a frame of reference for the future, but I mostly just want to sort out my thoughts on virtual paper and maybe someday have one or two readers who can leave wise comments.

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It's looking more and more like we're leaving Oregon soon. Yesterday I ran some errands sans baby, and kept looking forlornly at the mountains. For a while I couldn't imagine leaving them and I wanted to call the whole thing off. 

Then I got trapped in several of our town's notoriously horribly designed parking lots and came home livid. The picture perfect mountains disappeared and I came home saying, "I hate this town!".

Spirituality, or lack thereof?

So I came to my computer while Ava (aka. The Dinosaur) naps with the intention of finally typing out her birthstory. I've been meaning to do it for a long time (well, since about 9 weeks ago, to be exact) but of course I checked my gmail first and changed my mind completely. 

Hang in there, I swear the connections from one thing to another will make sense. Right? I make sense. Yeah.

The email I received was one of those stupid forwards from a family member (actually from one of Longitude's family members...HA!) that I usually just delete. Which is a big deal, because having gmail, I archive EVERYTHING except stupid forwards. Anyway, the email was basically saying that the majority of people in America like that "In God We Trust" is on our currency and that our nation is "Under God" every morning in classrooms across the country. The email failed to mention the source of this information, but asked: why cater to the small minority who wants the god crap removed? (Okay, not a direct quote, but I think well summarized.) I was then instructed to forward the email if I agreed with it or delete it if I don't. Well, I was going to anyway, stupid Forward!!

I obviously don't agree with this, and think that this subject has nothing to do with what the majority of people are thinking, but it's unconstiutionality. That's the way America works, right? If we did what the majority of people wanted this would be a completely different (and probably much better) place. But this is all beside the point.

I am constantly being subjected to Christian culture in my daily life. God is everywhere. He even appeared talking in my ear as I was pushing my daughter out in the hospital, in the form of an obnoxious nurse's aid. At this point of the process, I was extremely focused and confident and just wanted everyone to shut up and let me concentrate. Happily, my nurse and husband figured this out just by being in the same room with me. I was almost unable to speak or really communicate anything, so they must have figured it out by body language or ESP. Unfortunately, my nurse had a back problem so she asked the nurse's aid to come hold my leg up. (No easy task, I'll give her that; I pushed for two and a half hours.) She was good at it, and this was the only reason I did not scream at her and kick her out of the room.

Her "encouragement" went something like this:

(contraction starts)

Her: You can do this because god will help you do you want me to pray for you I've gotten people who didn't believe in him to go church just by praying for him I could tell you lots of stories when this is all over...

(contraction ends)

Me: (barely audible) I don't think that's going to help right now. 

Her: (sad sigh) Don't worry, prayer will help you, I promise! 

Me: I just need someone to tell me when the contraction starts because I hurt so much I can't always feel the beginning and I don't want to miss out on any pushing time. (This might have come out completely unintelligible or only in my own head.)

(contraction starts)

Husband: Can you get out of the way of the monitor so I can see when the contraction is?

Me: Is it starting? Can I push now? I'm going to anyway.

Her: Believe in the power! Me, in head: (Of Philo) Believe in him! (my dog Philo) He knows you can do this! (Philo the dog)

(contraction ends)

Me: I really just need someone to tell me when the contraction is starting. I'm fine.

Her: (completely oblivious to my actual needs, but fulfilling her own quite well) I bet the doctor is praying for you right now, he prays for all his patients.

and so on.

I couldn't believe that I was being bombarded with this. It was the first time in my life when I felt completely unable to get away from religious crap. Even after 8 years of Catholic school with forced Mass every week, at least then I knew that I could run out the door if I had to. (Although I never would have done this because I probably would have been in big trouble.) I was practically tied down, unable to walk or control anything that was happening to me and this woman was trying to convert me! I actually felt more violated by this than by all the vagina prodding and such.

So what I say to you, supposed majority of people who want god to be on our money: you can get your own trinket of any size or shape that says "In God We Trust", even with your favorite bible verse, your name on it, what have you, and keep it in your pocket, purse, or wallet. I don't want to be forced to do so.

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This is another area where I feel that I just don't fit in. I actually feel quite at home in a Catholic church. Comfortable, even. But, I don't actually believe what I would have to believe to be an acceptable member, and I never will. Sometimes I think that maybe we could find some sort of church that actually values what we do, but most of the time I'm just glad to find spirituality in other things. 

The only problem is that church is where many people find their closest friends, do most of their socializing, and even networking. Crap. We don't fit anywhere.