Lucy, You Got Some Splainin' to Do!

I kind of got myself in between a rock and a hard place. No real surprise - it has happened before.

Like the time I was the go-between on a business deal Brian had set up . . . A friend of Brian's at work bought Indy 500 tickets from a friend of ours at church. Or was it the other way around? I don't really remember now. The point is . . .

I was the one to transfer the money: $350 in cold cash.

Trouble is, there was a span of about three days between the day I got the money and the day the money was to be delivered.

You can probably guess what happened . . . straight from an I Love Lucy episode. The day of delivery came and I was a little short on cash - $350 short!

Fortunately, my situation this time does not involve cash . . . well, not directly.

I volunteered to host a table at a fund-raiser. Not just any fund-raiser mind you. The charity hosting the fund-raiser is a big time donor to the oncology center where I work.

Translation: job is on the line.

It shouldn't be that big of a deal, right? How hard could hosting a table be?

I just have to decorate the table . . . eight place settings . . . fine china . . . and silver.

I don't own any china.

My plan when I agreed to host the table (in addition to helping a worthy, charitable cause) was to expand my current jadite collection and decorate the table with that.

My current collection, however, consists of the following:

• one jadite restaurant ware D-handle coffee cup;
• one 1/4 cup measuring cup; and
• one Jane Ray salad plate.

Not a real big collection. Definitely not service for eight.

But because I have a wonderful husband who is used to me getting in tight places, we are now winning the bid on a -

93 PIECE COLLECTION OF JANE RAY DISHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please don't go bid against me - remember my purchase is going toward a charitable cause and will be used for this purpose for many years to come!

Keeping my fingers crossed.

I will worry about the silver later.

Relay for Life

Saturday 9 am - Sunday 9 am
24 hours because cancer never sleeps.

Day 2

I exercised this morning BEFORE work even though I still feel like
. . . well let's just say I still feel REALLY bad.

It was MUCH harder today. But I am determined to keep with it.

Just a note - I have not lost one pound yet. Ten pounds in six days was the claim. I may have to consult my attorney!

I did finally go to the doctor where I got an antibiotic and a lecture on diabetes because I am a little (well maybe more than a little) past due for my A1C blood test. And the doctor wants to know why I wait so long to come see them. Ha!

I am formulating a post on what is wrong with health care today - from a nurse and patient perspective.

Believe me - a lot is wrong.

New Look - Inside and Out

I have been thinking a lot lately about a lot of things. The big 4-0 is approaching and I have started getting all reflective - but in a good way.

I am changing a lot of things - this blog included. When I have more time, I will elaborate more. But right now the technical aspect of changing "Thoughts of a Preacher's Wife" are taking most of my available free time.

So for now here are a few of the things I have been pondering - in bullet form:

• Work - new job? I actually sent out two resumes! Why did I do this - I hate change!
• Home - rearranging/getting ready for winter. Sounds primitive I know, but last winter was hard in so many ways. I am taking my cues from Proverbs 31.
  
• Kids - lots of thoughts about the kids growing up and the new challenges they face. Exciting yet scary! These are the thoughts that keep me awake at night.
  
• Me - entering a new decade! Redefining myself. I am determined to be a new, better me!
  
• Church - new convictions about my leadership with the kids. Doctrine - it's all about doctrine. Building our house on the rock.
  
• Health - eating and cooking healthier more consistently. I truly believe we are killing ourselves with our diet. That is going to stop!

I am thankful for the transformation God has brought me through. I don't know if it hurts a caterpillar to turn into a butterfly, but I am thankful for my recent growth and change despite the pain.

God is good and His love is perfect.

Super Hero

Me as a Super Hero.
This is pretty much what I look like when I go to work.
Only I don't wear my underpants on the outside. Well, not usually.

Free Time

Who would think that the down turn in the economy would effect nursing!

I showed up to work this morning only to find out that the doctor moved today's clinic patients to Thursday because there were only five patients scheduled for today. I guess he had better things to do than come in for five patients.

Being a PRN (as needed) nurse - I was the expendable employee today.

I have never worked full-time as a nurse. When I first graduated from nursing school I took a part-time evening shift job in a great hospital on their Cardiac Step Down Unit. After four years I changed hospitals and took another part-time evening shift job in a not as great hospital this time on a med-surg unit. Working part-time (actually I called it part-part-time/usually 32 hours in a two-week pay period) allowed me to still technically qualify as a stay-at-home mom and yet feel like I was contributing to the household. Working part-time also gave me paid vacation but it required that I work every other weekend.

After a year of missing every once a month Patch Club performance at church, I decided to take a leap of faith and go from part-time to PRN. I stayed at this PRN status during the five years I worked in OB, and I remain PRN now that I am in oncology. During this time, I have come to expect peaks and flows in staffing, and I realize that full-time and part-time employees get first dibs when the hours get short. My hours although usually very dependable are not guaranteed.

Thus, I am unexpectedly home today.

Considering the fact that I am awake, dressed, and presentable I decided to weigh my options of what to do with my day.

I could . . .

- forget the fact that I am awake, dressed, and presentable and climb back into bed and sleep until the kids get home from school;
- send lurid texts to Brian and seduce him into coming home and joining me for the above;
- opt to spend a few hours on the couch under a blanket with Scooby watching worthless daytime TV;
- start a cleaning project;
- go shopping at Old Time Pottery for nesting bowls and Mexican restaurant style dishes for Joel's birthday dinner (the bowls are merely a new addiction of mine - hey, better than Little Debbies);
- spend the day blogging and emptying my head of all of the random thoughts circulating around.

Although spending the day in bed does sound tempting I am quite certain Brian would not heed to my texts. I didn't say he wouldn't enjoy them - but in the end he would say something about the mortgage, electric bill, and Levi's Jeep's ever empty gas tank being what keeps him on the straight and narrow and ultimately a good boy who can't come home in the middle of the day.

I would start a new cleaning project - like tackle the mound of clothes in Joel's room. But how can Joel learn responsibility if I am always cleaning his room? Whew! I am glad I thought of that.

I would love to go shopping for nesting bowls and Mexican dishes, but feel the shopper's remorse I would suffer after spending money while missing a day's pay would just be too great to bear. Who am I kidding? I just don't feel like driving to town by myself.

While I am sure I will spend some time today on the couch with Scooby, it looks like my day is going to be spent emptying my head of random thoughts.

I feel lighter already!

Beam of Light

What is happening to moms these days? This morning while I was getting ready for work I heard a TV report of yet another mom leaving her baby in the car in the blistering heat. This mom left her baby in the car for eight hours while she was at work claiming that she "was distracted and forgot that her baby was in the car."

Come on - I mean really, can you possibly forget your kids in the car. Did these moms not get the "beam of light?"

After Megan was born, Brian left the delivery room to go tell everyone that "it's a Megan." While he was gone it happened. A beam of light from the heavens shown down on me and gave me my mom powers. I now had eyes in the back of my head and the ability to see through doors. I was given the ability to know when my kids are hungry, cold, or constipated even if they don't yet realize these things. Most importantly, I was given a cord that attached my heart to theirs.

I thought this was standard for all moms - obviously I was mistaken.

I can understand being distracted and forgetting things but not kids!! I was running late to work one day - distracted by the things I needed to get done, and I left a candy bar in the car. You know - it didn't take me eight hours to remember that I had left it in there! Distracted and in a hurry, I have left the curling iron on only to have it dawn on me half way to church that I had left it on.

There's usually a nagging feeling you get when something has been left undone. I thought this was just part of being a responsible person.

As a nurse I do a lot of repetitive things - important things that I routinely do. I start IVs, I give medicine, I draw blood . . . every time I work. Being distracted can have devastating results. For that very reason, I purposely make mental notes to myself as I am doing these things so that later if I get that "nagging feeling" wondering if I did or didn't do something I will have a memory of doing it.

There's a reason why I do this. A few years ago when I was working in OB we had an expectant mom die - she did not die at our hospital, but she died within hours of her being transferred to a larger hospital's high risk OB unit. She had been my patient - I admitted her, treated her, and transferred her. The news of her death was devastating to me.

I immediately replayed every moment I had spent with her - I mentally retraced every action I had done. I needed confirmation in my mind that everything I had done was done correctly.

I remember standing in the shower (for some reason running water comforts me) praying - no beseeching - the Lord for Him to let me have vivid memory of every thing I had done. I needed to be able to remember doing all of the little steps - priming her IV tubing, checking the medication before I gave it. . .

As I stood in the shower, the Lord answered my prayer and I was able to vividly remember every aspect of the care I had given her as her nurse. I remembered the IV fluid dripping from the end of the tubing into the trash can, I remembered standing in the nurses station getting her medicine out and reading the label and comparing it to the order. . . Remembering all of these little things was vital to my sanity.

I always make mental notes of things - at work and at home. On Sundays I will often announce, "I'm unplugging my curling iron." Or I walk out the door and announce, "I locked the door." I don't want to sit through church wondering if my curling iron is going to ignite my hairspray bottle and start a fire or worry if the door was left unlocked therefore making it susceptible to blowing open allowing Scooby to make his escape.

Brian and I often end up at places with two vehicles. When we are on our way home we always announce who is in our car, "I've got the boys - or I've got Megan." It's a habit we formed when the kids were small and something we do to this day.

God graciously gave Brian and me three kids - our hearts are knitted to theirs. We want to care for them to the best of our ability. I don't want to be a distracted mom caught up in my own interests - because the result of that can be devastating.

Life today

Brian and I both worked today, and today was one of those rare days that Megan and Levi worked back to back shifts at the pool. All of this combined meant Joel "worked" today too.

Work was crazy. We had both medical oncologists, the radiation oncologist, and the psychiatrist (I probably should have made an appt. - lol) seeing patients today. To top all of that off, our cancer center was being reviewed by the American Board of Oncology. I am not sure what it all means, but I guess we "passed" their inspection and will be receiving their "gold stamp" of approval. Sounds exciting, but I was really too busy today to appreciate the honor. lol

The kids spent 8 hours at the pool today. Because it was so hot, Megan and Levi took turns guarding and swimming - every hour they would switch. By the look of Joel's pruny fingers, I think he was in the water all 8 hours - and by the look of his nose, I think he missed it with the sunscreen.

The kids have spent a lot of time together this summer - I am glad they get along so well. Yesterday I had a doctor's appt. close to the mall, so I dropped the kids off at the mall to shop for school clothes. We had already braved the blaring music at Plato's Closet and were able to get Joel several shirts and one pair of pants, but he still needed at least two more pair of khakis and a couple polo shirts. I thought I had $40 to give Joel, but ended up only having $20.

I found out later when I joined the kids at Old Navy that Megan and Levi had each given Joel $20 of their own hard earned money for him to use for school clothes. Megan had also bought his lunch at Dairy Queen! They had a productive couple hours of shopping and it sounds like they had a pretty good time doing it too. The boys even helped Megan pick out clothes at Charlotte Russe!

Brian and I both ended up getting home from work today around the same time. He helped me put together "walking tacos" and we headed for the pool to meet the kids. The last two swimmers left as we were eating supper so we ended up having the pool to ourselves the last hour. I even swam! I think it was the first time I have been in the pool all year - my white skin shows it too!

Dishes, laundry, and dirty floors are on our list to tackle tomorrow. Tonight we're eating ice cream sandwich cake, watching tv, and enjoying being together - all of us.

Camp Nurse

This next week at camp I will be the camp nurse. Seems logical considering I am a nurse - but I am starting to have a few worries.

After working in OB for 5 years, I still find that my first reaction in an emergency situation is to instruct the "patient" in pursed-lip breathing and proper pushing techniques. This is not always the most helpful advice.

Now, since working in oncology for for the past 2 years, I tend to over diagnose. Stomachache - pancreatic tumor. Headache - brain mets. Cough - you guessed it, lung cancer or maybe lymphoma. (Not every oncology nurse is like this - just us neurotic ones.) This "skill," unfortunately, will not be helpful at camp either.

Essentially it will probably be a week of being more mom than nurse. Here's hoping I can handle bug bites, sprained ankles, sunburn, poison ivy, and home sickness.

Guilt

I have spent way too many years of my life fighting feeling guilty.

Guilt - I have discovered that this is what comes from trying to live life with my plate too full. Too many times I find myself trying to do it all. I have finally come to realize that I can't do it all.

When I was homeschooling the kids and working while trying to be a wife, mom, and homemaker I was always riddled with guilt. When I was at home, I felt guilty that I wasn't at work. When I was at work, I felt guilty that I wasn't at home. When the kids and I were just messing around at home, I felt guilty I wasn't teaching them. When I was teaching the kids, I felt guilty I wasn't just being their mom.

Basically, I was good at doing a lot, but not good at doing a lot well.

Hand in hand with the guilt, I often felt overstressed and overwhelmed. Little things would send me into a tizzy. I felt like I held the world, at least my corner of the world, on my shoulders - I felt responsible for everything.

I found myself overreacting to everything: Megan had a cough - I was sure it was TB, lymphoma, or something else deadly; Levi broke his arm - I was sure the x-ray would show bone cancer; Joel was slow to come out of the bathroom at a restaurant - I was sure he had been abducted; Brian was late coming home from work - I was sure he was dead in a ditch.

I was slowly unraveling at the seams.

Last summer after taking a step of faith and deciding to leave OB thereby drastically cutting back my work hours I noticed something dramatic. The guilt was gone. I had finally found for me a balance.

Last week, however, the guilt came back. Because of my occasional inability to say no, I found myself working three days in a row. Three days of the kids at home fending for themselves. I know they are old enough to, but still that's my job and for that I felt guilty.

It didn't take long for all those feelings to creep back.

The difference this time is instead of working harder to keep doing what I was doing thinking that would ease my guilt, I recognized the Holy Spirit working in my life prompting me to make changes.

I am thankful for this feeling of guilt - this conviction of the soul. I am glad that it is there prompting me to change the direction of my life and prompting me to clean off my plate a little.

This time I won't fight it; I will listen to it.

Never again

I was the only nurse at work today. Everyone else was at the ICCC meeting and since I am just a clinic nurse and I don't give chemo - I didn't have to go.

It was a boring day. Only 4 patients, 3 lab draws, and 2 injections. Since there was only the front office receptionist and me, I had to enter all my own orders and answers phones too. Still it ended up being uneventful.

I decided to wear the white flare legged uniform pants I bought about a year ago. I never wear them because I hate the way they look from behind. I wore my new white top with them and even white socks.

I was taking some blood to the lab and caught a glimpse of myself in the glass door of the admitting area as I passed by - I looked like a marshmallow or a snowman maybe. It was pathetic. What was I thinking? Did I not look in the mirror before I left the house?

White hides nothing and accentuates everything - every curve, roll, dimple, flaw, and imperfection. This is precisely why I have adopted black as my new favorite color.

To top matters off every time I would come out of the bathroom I would notice that my left thumb was blue. Strange - some weird circulation problem?

Come to find out the entire left side of what used to be my white underwear was blue from what must have been the broken ink pen I found in the laundry. Upon closer inspection I noticed that the blue was visible through my pants, in fact, it was now on my pants too. At least I can rest assured that my thumb is not going to fall off from lack of circulation.

I am glad nurses are not required to wear white anymore because I would surely have to change professions. I will never, never again wear white.

Peer Pressure

Everyone, literally everyone, is dieting at work. I was unmoved by their SmartOnes meals, SlimFast drinks, Weight Watcher yogurt, and NutriSystem packaged lunches. Unmoved that is until I realized I was the only one partaking from the box of Ghirardelli chocolates in the nurses' station in honor of Nurses Week.

I decided then not to diet but to "modify my lifestyle." I would try to start eating low carb. So far here is how it has gone.

Lifestyle Modification Day One:

Breakfast - Hard boiled egg
2 pieces of bacon (leftover from catered tumor board meeting - which I didn't attend)

Lunch - Salad with grilled chicken/Honey mustard dressing (provided by drug rep promoting new "easier to dose" low molecular weight heparin - sure to bankrupt your patient with the first dose) I should have been stronger and boycotted lunch, but I was hungry.

Supper - Turkey sandwhich on whole wheat flatbread wrap (which Megan said had the texture of a paper towel - what do you expect with 8 grams of fiber), cheeseball on whole wheat crackers, and baked beans.

Lifestyle Modification Day Two:

Breakfast: Raspberry filled jelly donut and chocolate milk

To quote Snowbelle from Cats and Dogs, "I feel bloated.
Maybe more food will help."