Quiet.

This past weekend I did one of my favorite things to do… I went to my grandparents.  They live in a tiny town near the Kansas/Nebraska border called Axtell.  I always feel better after being there… refreshed, happy.  It is quiet.  No big city noises, no constant beeps at work.  When I am there I don’t dream of IVs going off in the background and patients yelling my name.  Some of my favorite memories growing up are the weeks in the summer I would stay with Grandma and Grandpa, usually with a cousin or two.  The quiet house I love now was not so quiet back then.

This house has everything I love about old houses.  It has history~it used to be the town hospital.  It has character~there is still a window from a bedroom into the hall in what used to be the  nursery.  It has a huge porch… many times I drive up and see them sitting on the porch swing waiting for me.

This is my grandma.  She is the quiet one of the household, but full of strength.  She raised 6 kids, moving them around the country and holding down the fort while grandpa traveled to various places with the Air Force.  She wrote a column for years, and has written 4 books. Every time I go she talks about some other award she has gotten for various articles she writes.

We went on a walk Saturday, Grandma and I.  I don’t think it gets much quieter than main street.

There wasn’t much work going on at the grain  (silo?  elevator? my small town vocabulary is failing here…)

Come fall and it will be less quiet I am sure.

Grandpa is rarely quiet.  (maybe that is where I get it from, along with my red hair and Gin Rummy skills (at one point in time I was 6 cents ahead!  That is a record!) and love of telling people what to do.)

I go there, and I rest.  I curl on the couch and read some of grandma’s old columns.  I play cards.  I eat food I don’t have to cook, and I help do dishes afterwards without even thinking about it.  I smile… take long walks… talk about the never-ending supply of great aunts and uncles and cousins twice removed and the daughter of the sister of the uncle by marriage who moved in across town… go to pancake breakfasts to support the local fire department… take naps in the sun… and in the end, I get a hug and a “Love you, babe” from grandpa, and life is good.

(part of you capture)

Hope.

Hope is wearing your sunglasses for the first time in 2 months

Being Hopeful that spring is coming

Hoping that March turns into the wonderful month I have been choosing to believe it will be for the last 2  months.

Hope, like the gleaming tapers light,

Adorns and cheers our way;

And still, as darker grows the night,

Emits a brighter Ray

~Oliver Goldsmith

(part of you capture at I should be folding laundry.)  

(Taken while driving to Topeka the other day.  I hope I learned my lesson… don’t tell your mom that you take pictures while driving down the highway.  It makes life less stressful for everyone…)

The day

There is an obituary on the bulletin board in the galley.  For a man who spent over half of the last several years of his life in our hospital.  He was my first rapid response, my first blood sugar of 17.  I took care of him many a time, and even though he was grouchy and noncompliant and tended to make things harder than they needed to be, even though he was a 57yo man living with his mother, I found myself saddened by his death in a way I wasn’t expecting.  And saddened that he died at a different hospital.  Is that weird? After spending so much time with us, he went somewhere else to die.  And as much as I would gripe about getting him again if he were my patient tonight, it is sad. 

Rest in peace, Mr. N.

It has been a hard month at my work, for a million reasons that I will not get into.  Moral is down, and there is this negative energy flowing.

It has been hard to go to work.  Hard to get the motivation.  There is the feeling that as hard as we try, it is never good enough.

A patient of my had a seizure this morning.  Completely unresponsive… three of us did sternal rubs before she finally came out of it… slowly.  Scared me a little bit, I thought we would have to rapid response her.  But she was okay.  Then, as I sat there waiting fro the dr to call me back, my admit showed up.  At 530.  Crazy times… crashing patients and new patients and I was stressed.  And you know what?  I made it out of the hospital at 720.  And that happened for one reason only.

I work with an amazing group of nurses.  Nurses who checked in my admit.   Who did the ekg on my seizure lady and who called monitor techs and who put up my charts and walked my pt to the bathroom.  Who asked what needed to be done and then did it.  Who did some things before I even asked.  We are a  team, which makes my job doable.  I have worked on other floors that have less of the team like atmosphere, and I don’t know how they do it. 

Today I was reminded why I like my job.  Why I am not sure I want to leave it.  Why I will never regret where I chose to get my first few years of experience in this crazy career of mine.

It was a reminder I needed.