Happy Anniversary

Happy 36th Anniversary to my mom and dad!

I Suck

I hate, hate, hate my new job!

After yesterday, where I did a post-op knee in recovery ALONE (even though I didn't know where the recovery room was or what their protocol was!! I like to jump in and try not to drown) and a port-a-cath placement in surgery ALONE(with 2 students, but that totally counts as alone). -longest sentence ever!

Anyway after yesterday, I thought I was pretty hot stuff! Rockin' the new job no sweat.
I hit a wall today. Crawling over this wall, called Mammograms, took all day!

I used to be really, really good at Mammos. No pain, pts would thank me and request me to do their Mamm the next year. All that is over....

The machine at the new job is really, really old. More than 13 years. I'm used to a new machine that does everything for you except comfort the pt. This ugly, stupid piece of junk that I will have to use every single week, is a real wham, bam, thank you ma'am piece of crap. I like to do the compression slowly - it's not so painful that way.
Sucky machine has 2 speeds - off and super fast.

I was apologizing to pts all day long!
A mammo is NOT suppose to be painful.
At times I almost wanted to give them the number of my old job, just because they have a better machine and I felt so bad for the pts getting squished.

This is how my day went: I love this job....oh, mammos no problem....holy crap what is this thing!?! that's your mammo machine?!?! No Way! No way!..... Ok well, that didn't look too bad let me try one....ok I suck....no I really suck....I hate this job.....I really hate this job....now I want to kill myself....will this day never end?....oh, that wasn't too bad....wow! maybe I've beaten this!....No, I suck....stupid machine...Wow! good mammos! finally!....Sorry lady, I'll wrap your breasts up and you can tuck them under your arm.....She needs new boobs, but I got good mammos....Ha, Ha!....I'm outta here!

First Day

Today was my first day at my new job.
Here are somethings that I learned-

1. I can x-ray circles around most techs.
2. But....I get lost trying to find pts rooms.
3. And I can't open a door. Any door. Without the right code.

It was an interesting day. There sure are a lot of young (good-looking) guys in the dept. I didn't think there were that many guy x-ray techs in the whole state!

Hmmmmm...... the next few months could be interesting.

X-ray Cartoon

Here's a cute cartoon about x-rays!

Last Day

Tomorrow is my last day of work.

I start at my new job on Monday.

My co-workers are having a going away party for me tomorrow.

Veggie pizza, brownies and Pepsi.

My favorite things.

Dr. Happy

As I exit the elevator, the stench of fresh diarrhea and diesel fumes hits me like a wall. There is an ambulance, pumping out thick, oily fumes, idling in the ER garage.

I park my portable machine in a corner and watch the paramedics unload a stretcher, from the back of the yellow striped ambulance. There is a paramedic, on each end of the stretcher, and an EMT, seven months pregnant, perched on a little rail above the wheels.

The EMT continues chest compressions on the half naked man strapped to the stretcher. The two paramedics, in navy blue jumpsuits, wheel them, as a unit, into the emergency room. Four or five nurses flock around the stretcher and start calling out orders to each other.
A nurse yells at the patient, “Frank? Frank you’re in the emergency room. Frank? Can you open your eyes for me?”
I catch a glimpse of the patient over her pink scrub covered shoulders.

The patient is a middle aged man with thin balding hair, his bare chest covered with monitoring leads. He has a jiggling belly that wriggles, like a laughing baby, with each chest compression that the, now sweating, EMT presses into his chest.
Sweat runs down the EMT’s face and her ponytail starts to fall apart. Faded dirty blue jeans cover the patient's lower half and a worn brown leather billfold peeks out from behind his hip. One dirt clogged boot is abandoned in the middle of the floor. The other boot leaks black soil onto a bedside table's sterile silver surface.
I pick the boot up from the floor and put it next to its mate.

A compassionate nurse takes over chest compressions from the EMT.
They have an AMBU in place and another nurse takes charge of the man’s breathing.

Dr. Happy, the on-call doctor, arrives in the ER.
Dr. Happy isn't his real name.
It's an alias for a real doctor's nickname.
Patients find Dr. Happy's given last name unpronounceable.
He is from Africa by way of Russia.
When he speaks, patients look confused and then turn to the nurse, who translates Dr. Happy babble into Mid-western English.

Dr. Happy rushes into the trauma room and starts gesturing wildly and yelling out undecipherable orders and questions.
He is never calm during an emergency. He is never calm, period.
One nurse, Martha, who can usually understand his accent, starts translating the orders and answering his questions.
The patient had IV’s in both arms and Dr. Happy ordered the nurses to administer some drugs.
While they were busy with that he gestured at my corner of the trauma room and yelling, “S-ay! S-ay!”
I took that to mean x-ray and punched my machine into the fray.
The enormous elephant body of the portable x-ray machine made the over crowded room claustrophobic.
Gently edging toward the patient, to avoid any spare feet in my path, I lined up my positioning for the x-ray.
Before I can shoot it, Dr. Happy changes his mind.
“No! No! Ab irst! Ab irst!” he shouts.

The lab tech, Steve, moves forward and steps in front of me.
Dr. Happy starts running around the body grabbing the man’s arms and pinching them.
He shouts something and then runs down to the man’s legs and starts pulling on the patient’s jeans.
Steve and I looked at each other and shrug. Now what?
The nurses ignore Dr. Happy’s antics and continued compressing the patient’s chest and squeezing air into the patient’s lungs.

Martha translates.
She turns to Steve and motions toward the supine man, “He doesn’t have a pulse, so I don’t think you can use the arms. Your welcome to try, but Dr. Happy’s going to look for a femoral vein for you.”
Dr. Happy shouts a question and Martha asks, “Do you have a really big syringe?”
Steve digs around in the basket of needles and tubes he carrys, pulling the biggest one out and handing it to Martha.

Dr. Happy has, by this time, given up trying to pull the blue jeans off the patients flaccid limbs.
He jabs frantically at the fabric with a pair of blunt nosed scissors.
Finally, tearing the fabric away and sniping off the man’s white underwear.
Except for his socks, the patient was now entirely naked.
“Col ip! Col ip!” Dr. Happy shouts at Martha.

She dashes to a cupboard and returns with a small one inch by one inch alcohol wipe.
Dr. Happy swabs at the man’s groin and then shouts again, “Un or!”.
Martha hands him another wipe, followed by an extremely long thin needle.
Dr. Happy feels around in the man’s crotch and starts mumbling.
Martha translates, “He can’t find the femoral vein either. Oh, now he thinks he found it, but it might be the femoral artery. He’s not sure. No, that’s definitely the artery. No, it’s the vein. He’s sure it’s the vein. OK get ready, he’s going to try it.”

Steve steps forward, with his vials ready to collect blood.
Dr. Happy stops for a moment, poised above the patient’s crotch, and then he jabs the needle into the skin.
A long thin fountain of blood arcs from the white tube attached to the needle.
The blood arcs through the air, hits Steve’s chest and paints a thin red strip down to his knees.
Martha said, “That was the artery.”
Everyone, except Steve, who needs new scrubs, laughs.
Dr. Happy shrugs and smiles, “Oh, el. Is til bud.”
He gives Steve a large sample of blood and then removes the needle.
Every time the nurse compresses the patient’s chest a thin squirt of blood shoots out.
Dr. Happy motions to a nurse standing near the patient’s feet.
She compresses, with a white square of cotton, the offending artery.

Now it's my turn.
I push the portable machine closer to the body and unfold its giraffe neck. I point the small box, its head, at the patient and move up to the patient’s chest.
He is still on a yellow plastic backboard.
The nurses lift the backboard up. I estimate the location of the man’s lungs and shove my white plastic portable grid and cassette underneath the backboard.
The man’s cold, clammy, sweat covered arm brushes against my arm.
Disgusting.

The extra nurses and Dr. Happy leave the room.
The nurse performing compressions pauses and the nurse with the AMBU fills the patient’s lungs.
I spread out my lead apron to cover us both, take my x-ray and pull the grid from beneath the man’s body.
I push my machine rapidly out of the room and back to my department where I develop the film.
Everything is digital.
Shove the cassette into its dock in the processor.

I return to the ER to show Dr. Happy the x-ray image.
He is running around trying to find the man's name.
A policeman stands, in the middle of the ER, dumbfounded at Dr. Happy’s antics.
The lieutenant watches Dr. Happy with his eyes, while quietly explaining to Martha that the man’s family knew he was in the Emergency Room.

The police notified the family twenty minutes ago, when the man hit the ER door.
The lieutenant called them again, five minutes ago, they told him they would come to the hospital when they were good and ready.
And his name isn’t Frank it’s William.
I step into the trauma room.

Dr. Happy bounces into the room.
Anyone object to him ‘calling it’?
They could understand this, with or without Martha.
Everyone shakes their sweaty heads.
Nobody objections.

“OK” he announces. “Time o det sex fiftin.”
Time of death six fifteen.
The nurses sigh with relief and step away from the body, rolling the stress out of their tired shoulders.
On her way out of the room, one of the nurses pats the body on the shoulder, “Sorry, Frank”, she says “We tried.”

Ha! Gotcha!

Look who I caught in the act! Bad Catty!

The seat will be left down from now on. Ick.

I can't be mad at such a cute face!

Knock Knock

I had some visitors to my backdoor today, looking for raisin donations.
Aren't they cute?

This is the flock of five minus Lavender.

She's STILL broody!

Gardening Square

I love, love, love square foot gardening! It's so simple and it makes perfect sense. I'm turning my entire backyard into a square foot garden. So far I have 6 beds with 5 more in progress (I'm not that great at carpentry).

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I have 4 3x3 beds, 2 3x2 potato bed/bins and 1 8x2 trellis bed.

The trellis bed is for tomatos. I have indeterminate varieties. They like to grow crazy all over the place, but with the trellis I (hopefully) can keep them under control.

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I bought my tomato plants from Territorial Seeds. They let you buy single plants at a time (as opposed to other catalogs that make you buy at least three), so you can try a bunch of different varieties without an out of control garden.

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Next year I'll ask to have my plants delivered in early May, instead of late April, because one of the plants arrived frosted and wilted.

As you can see in the picture to the right. The tomato on the far left looks a little dead.

They also had aphids!!! I'm NOT happy about that, because they spread to all my other seedlings. But a quick spray of neem and they're dead green pin heads.

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The picture to the right is a pepper plant post neem spray. The little white dots are the dead aphids. Take that plant suckers!

I hope to build another 2 trellis boxes for my melons. I'm trying a bunch of crazy Asian melons and one from Iraq. I bought the seeds from Bakers Creek Heirloom Seeds.
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The lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower seedlings that I planted out last week did not appreciate the 5 inches of snow that fell on Saturday. They are dead. Dead. Dead. It's OK, I have about a hundred more. I'm growing the broccoli, lettuce, ect. for my pet chickens. Broccoli is $2.00 a bunch at the grocery store and they can eat a bunch in about....um....60 seconds.
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The chickies are loving the grass and weeds, that I'm pulling up from my garden. I weed for a few minutes every day and feed them the weeds. Then they lay me some delicious, nutritious eggs!
I'm starting to love weeding.
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I'll try to take some pics of my garden soon.

New Boy

I hope my first day at work isn't like this.



Still it's really funny!

Leo Letter

Leonardo DiCaprio sent me a letter!

Like many girls, who were 13 when Titanic came out, I had a crush on Leo. Sigh. I think my friends and I saw the movie, like, totally 20 times.
I know- not a record.
Wasn't there some girl who saw it 75 times?

Anyway, back to my letter from Leo.
Just like me, Leo includes a photo of himself in his personal correspondence. He also, just like me, asks for money to save the polar bears.
I like to end my letters like this (maybe Leo should take notes), "Thanks again for the cookies, Grandma, they are so tasty. Please remember to send some money to the polar bears and remember them in your prayers. They recently lost their home to global warming. Much love!"

Wal Marty

This is about one of my mother's handicapped clients.
She would die of mortification if she knew I was writing this.

My mother(Katsmom) took 2 of her handicapped clients to Wal-mart. It was their reward for behaving (not swearing, taking their meds, and not punching anyone). J. is mostly nonverbal (except for swear words) and very violent. Sam is quiet and pretty nice most of the time. Sam and J pick out cough drops and white socks for their reward. They get up to the check out. Like most Wal-marts, there are 2 check outs open and 50 people waiting in line.
After 10 min. they are 1 person away from checking out. Sam puts his cough drops on the belt and then turns to my mother(who is trying to apologize to the nice check out lady--when J. called you a f-ing titty-ho--he meant to say 'Hello, how are you today?')

Sam: Katsmom?
Katsmom: Yes, Sam. What is it? No J. do not punch that little boy!
Sam: If I tell you something will you get mad?
Katsmom: What Sam? I won't get mad.
Sam: I'm afraid you'll get mad.
Katsmom: No, I won't get mad.
Sam: Are you sure?
Katsmom: Yes! What is it!
Sam: I had to go to the bathroom.
Katsmom: Well, can you wait a second? We're almost checked out. No! J. come back here!
Sam: No, Katsmom, I had to go. I had to. You're not mad are you?
Katsmom: What? What do you mean?
She looks down, checks his crotch for a wet stain. Her eyes travel down to the floor, to a small pile of poop that is spilling out of Sam's pant leg. Sam moves his leg and the pile of poop grows, spills over his shoe and then continues piling out of his pant leg. There is now a softball sized pile of poop on the floor and 20 people watching from the line behind my mother. The clerk gives her a handful of paper towels and my mother picks up the poop and deposits it in a handy wastepaper basket.
Then she takes her clients and runs out of the store.
She refuses to shop there ever again.

My question after this story was, "How could he do that? Wouldn't the poop get stuck in his underwear?"
I guess he wears loose boxers.

Oriann Tation

I had orientation today for my new job. From 8am to 4pm. Now I'm at work(old job) until 11pm.
Man, I'd forgotten about how boring and repetitive all that orientation junk is!
The exciting highlights of the day:

• To find the elevators look for a picture of red poppies.
• If you don't find said poppy picture you will be lost forever!
• If you want police and security to come running dial 666 for assistance.
• Sugarcane skewered shrimp with couscous for lunch (fancy pantsy!)
• Prescription vending machine by the ER .

I know I will get lost all the time for the first 6 months. New job(NJ) hospital is soooo big. Everything is brand new and every hallway looks exactly the same. It's scary and super shiny at the same time. At old job(OJ) I know everyone by their first name. There are over 1,000 employees at NJ! Yikes!

I'm scared, but........I can't wait to start!