Today I am packing.
Which means I slept in until 10, had a shower, ate a peanut butter and jam sandwich, watched an episode of America's Next Top Model, and am now blogging while debating if I should make some soup or not.
Blah. I hate moving.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Not Sure What's Going to Come Out Now
I hate it when a patient is made palliative.
The Dr's write the order, and I don't know how they feel, but I know how I feel when I go into the room and I disconnect the IV, I stop checking their vital signs, I stop giving them medication. All that nourished, sustained, or tried to fix and maintain some semblence of "making them better" is gone. I can't imagine being the Dr who has to convince the family that this is what is best. I can't imagine writing the order to discontinue everything except for the things that will keep the patient comfortable until they die. I only know what it's like to carry the order out.
It's very sobering. Taking someone's IV fluids that were their only source of nourishment. I take it down and I know that my action will lead to this person's death. I know that the death would only have been delayed otherwise, but in that moment I feel, very poignantly yet subtly that I have failed.
If I was a better nurse I could have turned this patient around.
Why do I think this? I have no idea. Clearly I am not God, and in no way shape or form have the ability to cure someone. But, it's the health care worker way. Our initial goal is to diagnose, treat, discharge home, and when we discover that no matter what we do this patient will most likely die, we must change our goal to help them die in a dignified and comfortable manner and that often feels like we've failed.
And I'm not going to say that we shouldn't feel this way. Because I do feel this way. As irrational as it is, when I take down that IV fluid, I feel like I have let this person down. Like somehow, I should have had some sort of crazy amazing thought that would have been able to stop the brain from bleeding, the cancer from spreading, made the infection vanish, or fixed that damaged-beyond-repair liver. Because that was why I went to school for 4 years. Because that is less painful than reality.
Reality where people die, and I let them. Where they die, and I give them morphine to make them comfortable, scopalomine to help them breathe easier. Where they die and I softly ask family members if there is anything I can do for them.
In other news, over the weekend like 2 patients died. 1 kind of traumatically despite his families fierce denial that he was terminal. The other alone. So alone that we had no one to notify of his death, and his body was still in the morgue on Monday. Which was incredibly sad because I really liked this patient. He was a frequent flyer, and was incredibly way sicker than he realized. And he just died. Just like that. The end of his story. Then, Monday morning at the start of my shift, before I was even out of report 1 of my patients died. It was kind of expected, but he deteriorated really really quickly. My cat, back home, is sick too. She has tumours. At least 1, that was originally on a toe that was amputated, and now it's even bigger on her foot. Our choices are to completely amputate her leg at the shoulder and hope that there are no more tumors waiting to grow all over her body and hope that she will live out the rest of her life and forgive us for taking her leg (she's 13 years old) or put her down.
I should get back to packing and doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen. Instead of dwelling on all this death.
You should probably go do something fun now too. Something that will make you smile. :)
The Dr's write the order, and I don't know how they feel, but I know how I feel when I go into the room and I disconnect the IV, I stop checking their vital signs, I stop giving them medication. All that nourished, sustained, or tried to fix and maintain some semblence of "making them better" is gone. I can't imagine being the Dr who has to convince the family that this is what is best. I can't imagine writing the order to discontinue everything except for the things that will keep the patient comfortable until they die. I only know what it's like to carry the order out.
It's very sobering. Taking someone's IV fluids that were their only source of nourishment. I take it down and I know that my action will lead to this person's death. I know that the death would only have been delayed otherwise, but in that moment I feel, very poignantly yet subtly that I have failed.
If I was a better nurse I could have turned this patient around.
Why do I think this? I have no idea. Clearly I am not God, and in no way shape or form have the ability to cure someone. But, it's the health care worker way. Our initial goal is to diagnose, treat, discharge home, and when we discover that no matter what we do this patient will most likely die, we must change our goal to help them die in a dignified and comfortable manner and that often feels like we've failed.
And I'm not going to say that we shouldn't feel this way. Because I do feel this way. As irrational as it is, when I take down that IV fluid, I feel like I have let this person down. Like somehow, I should have had some sort of crazy amazing thought that would have been able to stop the brain from bleeding, the cancer from spreading, made the infection vanish, or fixed that damaged-beyond-repair liver. Because that was why I went to school for 4 years. Because that is less painful than reality.
Reality where people die, and I let them. Where they die, and I give them morphine to make them comfortable, scopalomine to help them breathe easier. Where they die and I softly ask family members if there is anything I can do for them.
In other news, over the weekend like 2 patients died. 1 kind of traumatically despite his families fierce denial that he was terminal. The other alone. So alone that we had no one to notify of his death, and his body was still in the morgue on Monday. Which was incredibly sad because I really liked this patient. He was a frequent flyer, and was incredibly way sicker than he realized. And he just died. Just like that. The end of his story. Then, Monday morning at the start of my shift, before I was even out of report 1 of my patients died. It was kind of expected, but he deteriorated really really quickly. My cat, back home, is sick too. She has tumours. At least 1, that was originally on a toe that was amputated, and now it's even bigger on her foot. Our choices are to completely amputate her leg at the shoulder and hope that there are no more tumors waiting to grow all over her body and hope that she will live out the rest of her life and forgive us for taking her leg (she's 13 years old) or put her down.
I should get back to packing and doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen. Instead of dwelling on all this death.
You should probably go do something fun now too. Something that will make you smile. :)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
September Summer Days
Now that it is September, the sun has come out to shine and bring us some crazy intense heat. It seems a little strange to be walking down the street with the leaves crunching under your feet and the heat beating down on you...well...I suppose with the humidity it just beats all around.
Not much has been going on. Since I last actually wrote a blog that was not about juice, I've been home. To Alberta. I wish, sometimes, that I had never left, and yet I know that it is me and not the place I am at that is in need of change. I need to freshen up my perspective. See the sunshine. It's hard to do though, when everything is up in the air. I still need a place to live. People, apparently, love me, and would love to live with me. But none of them can stand my dog. Which is very unfortunate indeed. She's not really that bad of a dog...I think. It's become a challenge to not kind of resent the fact that I have a dog. I absolutely love my dog, and while she was away I missed her something fierce. Plus, I also feel like it I bail on this, then I'm going to bail on any other committment I make in the near or far future. And that would just make me a lame lame person. So, I shall continue to stalk kijiji. I shall continue to talk to strangers. And *hope* that maybe, one of them will give us a place to live.
Speaking of bailing out on things...I have just now bailed out on 2 things! Yay for me. The first was a self-challange to buy this book of 100 Ray Bradbury short stories and read them and reflect and become a little more cultured. Yeah. Like I can read Ray Bradbury. I remember 2 stories of his that I read in highschool. One was about a little girl who had been born on earth, ad remembered the sun, and her family moved to Venus. There it always rained, and they saw the sun like 1 day every *a lot of years...don't remember how many*. For all the children she went to school with this would be the first time they would see the sun, and she was looking forward to seeing the sun again, because she missed the light. The other children resented her for remembering the sun, and she was a kind of outcast because of it. While the children were in the classroom waiting, the teacher was out of the room, and the kids locked the little girl in the closet as a joke, threatening to leave her in there while the sun was shining. Then the sun came out, the teacher came to take the class out, and they ran out. Forgetting, until the end of the sunshine that they had left the little girl locked in the closet. And she missed the sun. That story still makes me want to cry. Such a sad story. The other Ray Bradbury story I remember had something to do the entire human population being dead, and the automated house stuff continued to perform its duties. So, as you can see, the pursuit of 100 Ray Bradbury stories may make me very depressed/dark/sad/start-wearing-black-scrubs-and-scaring-all-my-patients.
The other thing I may have bailed on is doing a triathalon with Dre. I was all for it, then I sat on the floor in Chapters and read about the training. And that was where my training ended. I have not got enough time for all that. Ha ha. So we'll see. Perhaps, I will be able to justify, and what-not and then do a triathalon...or drown in the 1st lap.
It turns out that Anything is possible...so we'll see.
Til next time, enjoy the sun. Or whatever weather you happen to be having.
Not much has been going on. Since I last actually wrote a blog that was not about juice, I've been home. To Alberta. I wish, sometimes, that I had never left, and yet I know that it is me and not the place I am at that is in need of change. I need to freshen up my perspective. See the sunshine. It's hard to do though, when everything is up in the air. I still need a place to live. People, apparently, love me, and would love to live with me. But none of them can stand my dog. Which is very unfortunate indeed. She's not really that bad of a dog...I think. It's become a challenge to not kind of resent the fact that I have a dog. I absolutely love my dog, and while she was away I missed her something fierce. Plus, I also feel like it I bail on this, then I'm going to bail on any other committment I make in the near or far future. And that would just make me a lame lame person. So, I shall continue to stalk kijiji. I shall continue to talk to strangers. And *hope* that maybe, one of them will give us a place to live.
Speaking of bailing out on things...I have just now bailed out on 2 things! Yay for me. The first was a self-challange to buy this book of 100 Ray Bradbury short stories and read them and reflect and become a little more cultured. Yeah. Like I can read Ray Bradbury. I remember 2 stories of his that I read in highschool. One was about a little girl who had been born on earth, ad remembered the sun, and her family moved to Venus. There it always rained, and they saw the sun like 1 day every *a lot of years...don't remember how many*. For all the children she went to school with this would be the first time they would see the sun, and she was looking forward to seeing the sun again, because she missed the light. The other children resented her for remembering the sun, and she was a kind of outcast because of it. While the children were in the classroom waiting, the teacher was out of the room, and the kids locked the little girl in the closet as a joke, threatening to leave her in there while the sun was shining. Then the sun came out, the teacher came to take the class out, and they ran out. Forgetting, until the end of the sunshine that they had left the little girl locked in the closet. And she missed the sun. That story still makes me want to cry. Such a sad story. The other Ray Bradbury story I remember had something to do the entire human population being dead, and the automated house stuff continued to perform its duties. So, as you can see, the pursuit of 100 Ray Bradbury stories may make me very depressed/dark/sad/start-wearing-black-scrubs-and-scaring-all-my-patients.
The other thing I may have bailed on is doing a triathalon with Dre. I was all for it, then I sat on the floor in Chapters and read about the training. And that was where my training ended. I have not got enough time for all that. Ha ha. So we'll see. Perhaps, I will be able to justify, and what-not and then do a triathalon...or drown in the 1st lap.
It turns out that Anything is possible...so we'll see.
Til next time, enjoy the sun. Or whatever weather you happen to be having.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
A Wish List
I wish that we lived in a world where fruit juice did not cost more than orange pop.
But it does.
And so bad things happen...to people...who can't always fight back.
Especially, when no one bothered to tell them that water is the best choice.
But it does.
And so bad things happen...to people...who can't always fight back.
Especially, when no one bothered to tell them that water is the best choice.
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