The end of the driveway.

I am a Kansas girl. Who lives on a farm.  Want to know what Kansas girls who live on farms see lots of this time of year?

There is a reason we are called the Sunflower state.  There is huge pile of these growing at the end of our cattle road, and I drove down there after work on Tuesday to take some pictures.  The morning light was awesome.  My  photography class officially moved me into the realms of Manual, off of program where I have been quite comfortable for the last year, so there weren’t quite as many expecting good ones as I was expecting.  I blew out a lot of color, (so I guess I needed a faster shutter speed for less light? that is what I did with the picture above, but then turned it right back down…) but I love them just the same.

I love the contrast of the bright pretty flowers with the rusty barbed wire.

I haven’t played around with textures for a while, so I added some here.  I like it…

What I really want to do is go to the field a couple miles up from our place and sneak around in their pasture, it has all sorts of fall colors going, but I am leery of doing that.  Kansas girls who live on farms also see lots of steers, and I am not overly fond of being chased, so these will have to do.

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Part of You Capture

My Choice…

Favorite pictures of the week:

She loved the dress, the giant diamond ring, and all the attention every single one of her 31 older family members present gave her.(it was the first time we had all been together since before her time) She rocked the flower-girl job :)

My favorite picture from the photography class I started yesterday:

I have no clue what this is.  My teacher said it reminded him of a brain, and it does.  It was fuzzy, as well.  Weird.  Pretty, but weird.

My first week in review.

Lets talk day 1, shall we?

I am, obviously, new. I know where nothing is.  I am just getting to know my preceptor, just learning where clean holding IS, and haven’t even had time to browse it.

(I was at my last job for 2 years. for 300 nights I went to the same clean holding, grabbed the same things, and still couldn’t find everything on the first try. and then you have a new clean holding with supplies that look different. It is challenging)

They are getting ready to intubate a guy. He just came in with Resp distress, and bipap wasn’t cutting it.  I went in to watch, which is what you do on day 1, watch.  The med student starts to put in the tube, they give him a boatload of sedation, and starts to put down the tube.  He tries once, misses, pulls back and just as he puts it down his perfectly visualized cords, the guy starts... throwing up stool.

Have you ever seen someone throwing up stool? it smells, it is a weird consistency, and he was putting out A LOT! we had 2 suctions going, the dr stepped in to try to get the tube in and the guy goes into PEA and we start the nastiest code I have ever seen.  Every.Single.Chest.Compression (at a rate of 100/minute, mind you) was splattering this stuff out of his mouth while we tried to get a tube down him.  Once the tube went down him the stool started bubbling out of it (that is bad.)

I am standing there… holding up his gut so we can try to find a pulse with the doppler, and people keep asking me to get things, find things.  I know where nothing is, and fortunately other people were around to get it, but it made me want it to be 6 months in when I actually know how to find things.

We eventually got him back, and they started putting in central lines and arterial lines and dialysis ports (his magnesium was… like 9.  higher than I have ever seen it. normal is 2.5)  Eventually the doctor went in, told the wife what was going on and she said to stop.  pull the lines, pull the tube, let him go.  It took him less than 60 seconds after the vent was turned off to die.

They asked me if I had ever been in a code, to which I just laughed.  Yes, I think I have.   Leave it to me (known at pcu as the Code Queen) to have a code on day one.

Once I got home I took off my scrubs and found little splatters on my clothes, which is a perfect example of why work clothes only get worn at work.  nastiness.

Day 2 I had a patient with a bowel evisceration (she had parts of her small bowel sticking out of her incision).  I  thought it was kind of cool, my preceptor was freaked out, and the doctor didn’t much care, but still. Day 2.

Day 3 was boring.  Which was good after days 1 and 2.

I start nights next week.  I am kind of scared what is going to happen to my patients.

the words I am not writing

I have these words I want to write.  About my first day and my second day and how I have this weird love/hate relationship with days.  It is amazing how much you can get done when your body thinks 9 am is sleeping in.  It is amazing how much getting up at 5am every morning sucks.  I would write about how frustrated I am with my preceptor and how I am so ready to be my style of nurse again, not hers.  about the nasty code and the cute residents who are all married and how I really really miss the people I used to work with.  How I want a house but I like living at home because there is sometimes food when I get off. 

But I am tired.   my brain is fried because I just worked my first day after 18 off and 5 was extra early today and 12 hours was extra long and then I had to drop off my car so that someone can turn off of the check engine light, hopefully by checking the engine, and I don’t feel good so I am going find a book I have read a million times and fill the tub with hot water and probably fall asleep and drown.

the end.

Loving life, morning edition.

So… I didn’t do the last 2 You Capture challenges, but for a good reason. I spent the last 12 days on vacation in Costa Rica.  I was outside playing pretty much every day. I took walks on the beach, I rode a zip line through the rain forest, I walked on hanging bridges 300 feet in the air, and I stayed at a hotel at the bottom of an active volcano: (Arenal first thing in the morning… that is steam coming off.  We didn’t get to see any lava, which was a bummer)

I took early morning walks, which I never do, and was amazed at what I saw:

( Hummingbirds all over the place)

( Beautiful flowers glistening after the morning rain)

( Iguana’s loving the morning sun)

We stayed 2 night at the JW Marriott resort on the pacific and the beach in the morning was gorgeous…. As it also was at night.

(I know, not the challenge, but still…)

This is beautiful lake formed by a crater from another (non-active) volcano, Poas, we walked up one morning. 

The mysterious reflecting rivers of the Tortuguerro reserve on our morning boat rides.

And a beautiful Butterfly park

I could keep going, literally all day.  I took over 1500 pictures, and have spent the last 2 days going through and deleting the bad ones and duplicates.  Someday I might edit some of these, but I have enjoyed just going back and looking at the beauty.  I needed a week away to relax and unwind, and I got it.

Life is good.