When I first met her, I thought, "I hope I look like her at that age".
She was in her eighties, sitting up in her bed, peering at me with bright grey eyes.
She wore a barette in her stylishly cut chin length hair.
She smiled gently, her unlined hands folded neatly in her lap.
She'd come in with a "change in mental status". When I received report that night, I laughed out loud as the story unfolded about her trying to hit her husband with a cane at their assisted living facility. As I looked at the pleasant, pretty older lady sitting before me, I wondered to myself whether perhaps he deserved it.
Upon examination, I found her to be confused as to where she was, but largely appropriate in her answers to my questions. She was pleasant, with an easy laugh and a sharp wit. She was startled by my cold hands as I felt for her pulse and kindly rubbed my hands in hers to "warm them up". An hour later, she was asleep, and I saw the faintest of smiles play on her lips as she dreamt.
Six hours later, a disheveled, half-dressed woman emerged from her room, blood dripping from her arm, carrying her bed alarm, crying out for her husband. I rushed over to her, donning gloves as I ran, and pulled her gown around her shoulders as I clamped a hand over the bloody mess where she had torn through her IV tubing. She looked at my like I'd killed her cat. "Get me a telephone, I will not be held prisoner here!" she spat at me. After 15 minutes of back-and-forth, I managed to calm her down enough to pull out her mutilated IV and tape some gauze over the site.
I placed a call to her husband as she demanded she speak with him. She made him tell her his mother's name, as she didn't believe it was actually him on the phone. Then, she stood at the nurse's station, staring at the elevators down the hall, refusing to return to her room until her husband arrived. I waited with her, all other tasks delegated to coworkers, as she would let no one else near her. She spoke with me, about the weather, and about the upcoming holiday picnic planned at their retirement community... but she was guarded, and eyed me with suspicion as I asked questions as innocent as, "what dish are you planning to prepare?"
When her husband arrived, he walked her back into her room, and I sat with them for a good while. She sat on the bed, with her arms crossed, bright grey eyes shooting daggers at her husband of sixty-odd years whenever he divulged a bit of information to me. He explained to me that over the past year she'd only had minor forgetfulness, such as putting water on the stove for coffee, then forgetting to make the coffee at all. "Nothing like this, not in all the years we've been married," he said, the concern and love he felt for her obvious in his voice.
Over the next week, we both watched this bright, beautiful woman die.
In a matter of a day, she was moaning like an injured animal. Her eyes were dull, and looked inward... seeing nothing of the world around her. She was edematous, the extra fluid leaking from her skin and soaking the bedding. Her hair was tangled, the barrette long gone now. A nurse's aide had to sit with her 24 hours/day to keep her from pulling at her IV, her heart monitor, her gown. No amount of morphine, Ativan, Haldol, or hydromorphone assuaged the pain, anxiety, and fear. When the drugs failed, I put the business of the night out of my mind and went back to basics. I combed her hair. I turned off the television and placed my hands on her back, focusing all of the soothing, healing energy I could find within myself, letting it flow into her.
Her breathing relaxed. Her moaning ceased. She slept, perhaps for 10 minutes. Then, a noise. Somewhere on the unit, someone dropped something. And so the moaning and writhing resumed. I sighed, looked at the clock, and knew that I had a time critical cardiac drug to give to another person who needed me.
I left the room, and when I left the hospital that day, I thought about her. I thought about her husband, who'd known and loved her for over 60 years, and who woke up a week ago to find that his lover and best friend was a different person. I thought about the mystery of it... all of her tests were normal, no signs of a stroke or heart attack... but her mind had deteriorated over a matter of days, her body simply giving out as her kidneys, liver and heart failed suddenly and quickly.
This woman was elegant. She was tall, and self-posessed. She'd lived a life that I'm sure was full of stories, full of humor and adventure. I had the honor of seeing a glimpse of that, the very first night we'd met. I learned the next week that ultimately, her family decided to make her a hospice patient, and she was sent to another unit of the hospital. I silently prayed, to no one in particular, that she would die soon, that the cruel indignity of her descent would end quickly. I prayed that the nurses on that floor would keep her hair tidy, and wash her neatly manicured hands.
She haunts me still, and my eyes sting each time I think of her calling out for her husband on her last lucid night of life.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Summertime thunder
It's storming outside right now, which makes me very happy for several reasons. Thunderstorms are exciting, invigorating, and give me an excuse to sit still for a few moments to watch the show. They mean that I don't have to be eaten alive by mosquitos this evening while watering the tomatoes and peppers. Plus, the rain makes the chickens look soggy, pathetic and comical (although they don't seem to mind too much).
While camping out in North Carolina last weekend, it was like living in the rainforest. Every day the weather shifted multiple times between brilliant hot sunshine and violent torrential rainstorms with thunder that echoed and bounced off of the mountains in a deafening roar. It was gorgeous, despite the car getting stuck in the mud and the tent taking three days to dry out once we got home. It was during one of those storms that Honeybunch asked me to marry him and I (of course) said yes.
We're both so excited. Everyone in our lives is thrilled. And we're determined to throw an awesome party while keeping it simple and down to earth. There will be circus arts at our wedding, but the wedding itself will NOT be a circus! This is going to be easy, and fun... much the way our blessed relationship has been all along. I am really enjoying calling him my "fiancé", especially with a soupy French accent. And, because everyone asks, no, there is no ring, and that's the way we like it. My humble opinion is that diamonds are largely unethical and overrated, and I am a simple, practical girl. My honeybunch knows me. We're planning on exchanging simple white gold bands at the ceremony, and getting tattooed wedding bands as well (I do NOT wear rings to work).
On the homefront, tomatoes are out in full force. The Black Sea Man tomatoes have been amazing... tasty, prolific, and good keepers for a few days off the vine. The Nebraska Weddings have been less prolific and suffering more from the multiple heat waves, though we plucked a couple of them this week. The yellow pear tomatoes are putting out little golden jewels that fill my apron on a nearly daily basis, and we're having to get creative about how we use them... in omelettes, pasta salads, dressed with oil, vinegar, basil and mozzarella... We're canning today, mostly tomatoes from the farm down the road from us. Our own tomatoes get eaten up fresh pretty darn quickly. I've never canned tomatoes before, so it's a bit of a learning process... but I have to say that I enjoy the satisfaction of slipping the skin off of the blanched tomato in one smooth motion.
The sweet and hot peppers are growing, we're harvested a few hot but can't remember which types we planted where. The Salad Blue potato plants are dying off, so digging em up and seeing what kind of harvest we've gotten is on the To-Do list once the rain passes. I'm not entirely convinced that we'll have many spuds under those layers of straw... it was an experiment with perhaps too many variables... but we'll see.
We've discovered that one of the Rhode Island Red "hens" is actually a rooster. I'd suspected this for weeks, as they've matured and this particular bird got very, very big and developed a large, upright comb and shiny green tail feathers. Then, "she" began trying to mount "her" sisters. That was a red flag. And this morning, Good Neighbor heard "her" distinctly attempt to crow twice. Oi vey. We are not permitted to have roosters in our area. Technically, this one belongs to Good Neighbor... so (though I forget it sometimes) it's not up to me what fate he meets. I'm hoping Good Neighbor will let us find him another home... he's beautiful, and not aggressive towards us at all... but there's a possibility that there may need to be a lesson on kind and humane chicken slaughtering. Again, we'll see.
We've also adopted (yet another) kitten. His name is Samosa, he's orange and white, and sweet as pie. This kitten wants to do nothing but cuddle. As I type he's pulling at my hands with his paws, begging him to pet him. I'm in love with him. He came to the farmer's market with us yesterday, and everyone there fell in love with him too. He's a real charmer.
At work, everything is chaos. Our new computerized charting system just went live, and it's all a mess. We're still understaffed. Such is life.
It's a rainy Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to spend some time reading before we heat up the kitchen for canning.
While camping out in North Carolina last weekend, it was like living in the rainforest. Every day the weather shifted multiple times between brilliant hot sunshine and violent torrential rainstorms with thunder that echoed and bounced off of the mountains in a deafening roar. It was gorgeous, despite the car getting stuck in the mud and the tent taking three days to dry out once we got home. It was during one of those storms that Honeybunch asked me to marry him and I (of course) said yes.
We're both so excited. Everyone in our lives is thrilled. And we're determined to throw an awesome party while keeping it simple and down to earth. There will be circus arts at our wedding, but the wedding itself will NOT be a circus! This is going to be easy, and fun... much the way our blessed relationship has been all along. I am really enjoying calling him my "fiancé", especially with a soupy French accent. And, because everyone asks, no, there is no ring, and that's the way we like it. My humble opinion is that diamonds are largely unethical and overrated, and I am a simple, practical girl. My honeybunch knows me. We're planning on exchanging simple white gold bands at the ceremony, and getting tattooed wedding bands as well (I do NOT wear rings to work).
On the homefront, tomatoes are out in full force. The Black Sea Man tomatoes have been amazing... tasty, prolific, and good keepers for a few days off the vine. The Nebraska Weddings have been less prolific and suffering more from the multiple heat waves, though we plucked a couple of them this week. The yellow pear tomatoes are putting out little golden jewels that fill my apron on a nearly daily basis, and we're having to get creative about how we use them... in omelettes, pasta salads, dressed with oil, vinegar, basil and mozzarella... We're canning today, mostly tomatoes from the farm down the road from us. Our own tomatoes get eaten up fresh pretty darn quickly. I've never canned tomatoes before, so it's a bit of a learning process... but I have to say that I enjoy the satisfaction of slipping the skin off of the blanched tomato in one smooth motion.
The sweet and hot peppers are growing, we're harvested a few hot but can't remember which types we planted where. The Salad Blue potato plants are dying off, so digging em up and seeing what kind of harvest we've gotten is on the To-Do list once the rain passes. I'm not entirely convinced that we'll have many spuds under those layers of straw... it was an experiment with perhaps too many variables... but we'll see.
We've discovered that one of the Rhode Island Red "hens" is actually a rooster. I'd suspected this for weeks, as they've matured and this particular bird got very, very big and developed a large, upright comb and shiny green tail feathers. Then, "she" began trying to mount "her" sisters. That was a red flag. And this morning, Good Neighbor heard "her" distinctly attempt to crow twice. Oi vey. We are not permitted to have roosters in our area. Technically, this one belongs to Good Neighbor... so (though I forget it sometimes) it's not up to me what fate he meets. I'm hoping Good Neighbor will let us find him another home... he's beautiful, and not aggressive towards us at all... but there's a possibility that there may need to be a lesson on kind and humane chicken slaughtering. Again, we'll see.
We've also adopted (yet another) kitten. His name is Samosa, he's orange and white, and sweet as pie. This kitten wants to do nothing but cuddle. As I type he's pulling at my hands with his paws, begging him to pet him. I'm in love with him. He came to the farmer's market with us yesterday, and everyone there fell in love with him too. He's a real charmer.
At work, everything is chaos. Our new computerized charting system just went live, and it's all a mess. We're still understaffed. Such is life.
It's a rainy Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to spend some time reading before we heat up the kitchen for canning.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Fruit panic.
It was with a sense of panic that I suddenly realized this past week that the cherries and raspberries will soon be gone from the fields. We hadn't put anything by with these fruits, and the idea of going through all of fall, winter and spring without the taste of cherries or raspberries was too terrible to bear. Thus it was that this past Saturday morning, we ventured out to a local orchard. In the pouring rain. Yes, we finally got some rain. And we were wet, and cold, and the waxed cardboard tray we were given to put the berries in melted in the rain, and because I was with my Honeybunch it was fun, and we giggled and picked and wondered how crazy the kids working in the market thought we were.
It was slim picking in the raspberry brambles, but we picked about 2.5 quarts, which have since either been frozen or turned into sauce for our french toast breakfast this morning. We bought cherries from them as well. Picking our own wasn't an option, but they still had some for sale in the market. I have frozen half of the sweet and dehydrated the other half. The sour cherries are cooking down into preserves on the stove as we speak. I decided to go for the Martha Stewart pectin-free preserves recipe found here http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/sour-cherry-preserves , which was silly of me given that it's 90-something degrees outside and I'm in here cooking cherries and sugar at 220 degrees for 40 minutes. However, it used less sugar than the other jam recipes I found online, and I did not feel like making a special trip to the grocery store just to pick up a box of pectin. The preserves are deep, deep red and, as I'm finding when I taste the foam I'm skimming off the top, delicious.
This weekend, I dehydrated/canned/froze a full bushel of corn, 2.5 quarts of raspberries, 12 quarts of sweet cherries and 6 quarts of sour cherries. It feels good to be able to say that. Make hay while the sun shines, right?
It was slim picking in the raspberry brambles, but we picked about 2.5 quarts, which have since either been frozen or turned into sauce for our french toast breakfast this morning. We bought cherries from them as well. Picking our own wasn't an option, but they still had some for sale in the market. I have frozen half of the sweet and dehydrated the other half. The sour cherries are cooking down into preserves on the stove as we speak. I decided to go for the Martha Stewart pectin-free preserves recipe found here http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/sour-cherry-preserves , which was silly of me given that it's 90-something degrees outside and I'm in here cooking cherries and sugar at 220 degrees for 40 minutes. However, it used less sugar than the other jam recipes I found online, and I did not feel like making a special trip to the grocery store just to pick up a box of pectin. The preserves are deep, deep red and, as I'm finding when I taste the foam I'm skimming off the top, delicious.
This weekend, I dehydrated/canned/froze a full bushel of corn, 2.5 quarts of raspberries, 12 quarts of sweet cherries and 6 quarts of sour cherries. It feels good to be able to say that. Make hay while the sun shines, right?
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Lately at work, we've had a major increase in the number of patients coming to our floor with psych, drug and alcohol issues. I assume this has something to do with the fact that many other local hospitals who previously had units devoted to "dual diagnosis" patients (those with both acute psychiatric and medical issues to attend to) have shut down said units.
This is very, very unfortunate.
Our community hospital does not have the resources to provide the kind of care these patients need... most notably, we do not have the staff. Many nights in the past several weeks we nurses have had to work the floor without the assistance of our nursing aides (who are precious and wonderful and necessary for our sanity) because they've been pulled to sit in on "1:1"s. When a patient is out of control, suicidal, or demented and trying to climb out of bed/pull out tubes/pee on their roommate we initiate 1:1 observation. This means that a nursing aide, or sometimes a nurse, should no aides be available, stays within arms reach of that patient 24 hours/day, and records what they are acting like every fifteen minutes. On Monday night, we had SIX 1:1s. We don't have six nurses aides in the whole hospital on night shift under normal circumstances. A nursing aide from evenings worked a 16 hour shift overnight to help manage this. It's absurd.
As a result, I'm learning to manage 7+ acutely ill patients without the assistance of an aide. Usually at least one or two of them has some psych issues going on. I've had several patients in that past month or so going through alcohol withdrawal, more than one pain medication addict, a woman in her 70s whose drunk daughter beat the hell out of her and attempted to drown her in the bathtub, and just about the saddest case of rapidly advancing dementia I've ever seen.
In light of this, when a nearby drug and alcohol/psych rehab hospital called me up and requested an interview, I obliged and have since accepted a position. I'll be working 4 shifts/month, and start next week. It's a nice place, 100% voluntary (which makes a big difference... everyone there is detoxing because they want to be, not because of a court order). I figure that the experience will interesting and will help diversify my young nursing resume. If I hate it, it's not a job I have to keep to survive. If I love it, all the better for my nursing career. I'm hoping to develop finer skills dealing with patients in pscyhiatric crises, and to become more familiar with the methods and drugs used to help with the detox process.
Part of me feels like I am absolutely insane for taking on a new challenge at this point in my life... but another, louder part of me thinks, if not now, then when? There's never going to be a point in my life where I'm not busy, not overwhelmed, not sleep deprived and behind on my to-do list. I may as well accept that and embrace the opportunities for growth presented to me.
Speaking of growth, do a raindance for me. This heat and dryness has to break soon.
This is very, very unfortunate.
Our community hospital does not have the resources to provide the kind of care these patients need... most notably, we do not have the staff. Many nights in the past several weeks we nurses have had to work the floor without the assistance of our nursing aides (who are precious and wonderful and necessary for our sanity) because they've been pulled to sit in on "1:1"s. When a patient is out of control, suicidal, or demented and trying to climb out of bed/pull out tubes/pee on their roommate we initiate 1:1 observation. This means that a nursing aide, or sometimes a nurse, should no aides be available, stays within arms reach of that patient 24 hours/day, and records what they are acting like every fifteen minutes. On Monday night, we had SIX 1:1s. We don't have six nurses aides in the whole hospital on night shift under normal circumstances. A nursing aide from evenings worked a 16 hour shift overnight to help manage this. It's absurd.
As a result, I'm learning to manage 7+ acutely ill patients without the assistance of an aide. Usually at least one or two of them has some psych issues going on. I've had several patients in that past month or so going through alcohol withdrawal, more than one pain medication addict, a woman in her 70s whose drunk daughter beat the hell out of her and attempted to drown her in the bathtub, and just about the saddest case of rapidly advancing dementia I've ever seen.
In light of this, when a nearby drug and alcohol/psych rehab hospital called me up and requested an interview, I obliged and have since accepted a position. I'll be working 4 shifts/month, and start next week. It's a nice place, 100% voluntary (which makes a big difference... everyone there is detoxing because they want to be, not because of a court order). I figure that the experience will interesting and will help diversify my young nursing resume. If I hate it, it's not a job I have to keep to survive. If I love it, all the better for my nursing career. I'm hoping to develop finer skills dealing with patients in pscyhiatric crises, and to become more familiar with the methods and drugs used to help with the detox process.
Part of me feels like I am absolutely insane for taking on a new challenge at this point in my life... but another, louder part of me thinks, if not now, then when? There's never going to be a point in my life where I'm not busy, not overwhelmed, not sleep deprived and behind on my to-do list. I may as well accept that and embrace the opportunities for growth presented to me.
Speaking of growth, do a raindance for me. This heat and dryness has to break soon.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Happy Independence Day
This year I celebrated my independence in the same way I have for the past five years. I camped out on beautiful, unspoiled land... danced to pulsing drums in the mountains... played with fire... walked a labyrinth and gazed upon the Milky Way... and of course, there were fireworks.
We made new friends.
Well, to be quite honest, this fellar wasn't too happy to meet us. Not even after we tried to buy his love with cherries.
This moth, however, was quite friendly!
He wiggled his fuzzy little bonkers at us for several minutes before flitting off into the golden sunlit leaves of the forest.
Once we returned home, rejuvenated from our trip, we attended to the animals and the garden. They seemed glad for us to be home, and the chickens greeted us warming by pecking at our toes. The cats pretended they'd been starving over the weekend. The skunk tried to hide the fact that there was still nuts and dried fruit in her food bowl, and pretended to also be dying of hunger. We were not fooled, but gave them treats and cuddles all the same.
It seems that we arrived home just in time... a heat wave has hit our area, and my poor blossom-end-rot suffering tomatoes require watering twice/day to keep them from shriveling up!! The Black Sea Man tomatoes are producing very well and seem to be quite hardy to the dry weather... no black spots on the bottoms of these beauties...
However, the Nebraska Wedding Tomatoes can't seem to get beyond the size of a golf ball without developing a nasty leathery welt on their blossom ends. It's frustrating to no end... I've worked powdered milk into the soil, I'm watering deeply, I mulched with leaf compost... what else can I do?
It's wild raspberry season, and as you can see above we took about ten minutes last night to grab some in the dark on our walk in the woods. We really need a few hours and broad daylight to bring in a big haul like last year, but the 100 degree weather has deterred us from attempting that this week. Hopefully the bushes will still be producing after this heat passes and we can once again journey outside while the big bright yellow thing hangs in the sky.
Work has been horrible lately, which makes me not even want to write about it. All y'all need to know is that we had only one bed vacant on our floor Monday night. Not fun.
Lastly, a recipe. This one has been a family favorite for generations. My grandmother said that it came from the Depression era, when families may have had weeks in which there was only one or two food items available, and you had to make a meal of it. I think it is one of the most delicious foods on the planet, even though it looks more like slop than anything else.
Creamed Tomatoes
Tomatoes
Flour
Butter (traditionally, bacon fat is used, but not for us pescatarians)
Milk
Salt and pepper
Slice fresh tomatoes and dredge them in flour. Fry in butter until browned on both sides. Mash 'em up and set aside. Add some flour to the excess oil in the pan and cook to make a rue. Return the tomatoes to pan, add milk until creamy and smooth but not soupy. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with slices of hearty bread, using the bread to scoop up the sloppy delicious tomatoey mess. This meal is the absolute taste of summer when served with fresh corn on the cob.
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