the blogger lives

When my 3-year-old friend Brody (yep, thing 2) first learned that Mom had gone to Heaven, he had a hard time understanding that I was still here on earth. After all, he knew that Tricia and Callie went everywhere together. We'd just spent almost a month in Louisville together and he hadn't seen either of us since we'd been home. So it made sense to him that I would be with Trish.

You guys might've been thinking that, too . . . since I haven't blogged one word in over a month and all. But I'm alive. Just too busy to blog on most days. Too tired to blog on some. Too sad to blog on a few. But mostly just too busy.

In the midst of trying to figure out how to exist without my mom/best friend/roommate, I'm also trying to figure out how to do things like take care of teenagers, keep our garden alive, repair broken appliances (yes, that was her job), cook, etc, all while doing my normal things like working full-time and leading an orphan ministry.

So I'm busy . . . currently busy trying to get this family ready for the beach. :)

Most days we have no idea what we're doing or why we're doing it, but we're trying to do it with love. Keep praying for us.


p.s. I tweet/facebook/instagram a lot because it's fast and easy . . . feel free to keep up with all of our shenanigans on one of those sites!

about that time I had the flu

Good news. I haven't died. I've just had the flu. And worked a lot. And not blogged.

 

This is me with our friend Tamara's sweet baby Katelyn ("Katie" for short). We met Tamara and her awesome kids through Agape and she has recently become Tekia's own personal hairstylist. Here are Tamara's other awesome kids:   

             

I love those kids. And it's a good thing, too. Because while Tamara was working on Kia's hair and Trish and I were loving on the baby and playing lots of games of Guess Who with the boys, sweet, innocent (looking) baby Katie was quietly giving me the flu.

When I found out the next day that Katie had the flu, I wasn't too worried, because I'd had my flu shot. Plus, in my almost-28 years of life, I'd never once had the flu, so I thought maybe I had some built-in immunity against it or something.

Not so. Four days later, I was running a temperature of 102 and everything hurt. Including my eyeballs. And my right hip. And my skin. And my toenails. You get the idea. However, when the nurse practitioner told me I had the flu, I actually thought to myself, "Well, this stinks, but at least I'll have a few days off and have some time to catch up on blogging/errand-running/house-cleaning/etc."

Ha. Ha. Ha. I was in bed for four days and the only thing I caught up on was Days of Our Lives (which actually did give me a little satisfaction - I hate seeing that ever-growing "new episode" list on my DVR).

When my dad started to show some symptoms, he immediately started taking Tamiflu and has subsequently had a very mild case of what some would consider to be flu-like symptoms. Fortunately, everyone else in the family has managed to stay pretty healthy (with the exception of Trish and her two cancers, of course). 

Other than an occasional coughing spell, I'm much better now. So I guess I really have no reason to still be in my pajamas at 1pm on my day off. Oops.

And that is the story of my first - and hopefully last - experience with the flu. Carry on.  

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

So. I love tea. No, I mean I really love tea. Here's my current tea collection.

Trish says there should be a support group for people like me who are addicted to hot tea and buying baby blankets (when you know you could get a call to pick up a baby on any given day, why would you not use that excuse to buy really great blankets every chance you get??).

Anyway, back to my tea confessions. Being raised in the south, I didn't even know that people drank tea without ice (or sugar, for that matter) until I was eight years old. My parents took my older brother Jared and me on our first mission trip to Kingston, Jamaica, and our hotel served hot tea with breakfast every morning. At first it just confused me but I quickly came to love it! They served their tea with warm milk and fresh cane sugar. It was heavenly and I was hooked.

Fast foward a few years. I spent the first semester of my junior year of college in Scandicci, Italy (suburb of Florence). Every night at 10:00 was "tea time" at the villa. My friends and I drank peach tea out of cups with little faces on them and ate these awesome cookies and lived in Italy. Again...heavenly.

Perhaps my obsession with tea became a real problem when Trish was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I knew conventional treatments offered us very little hope, so I began researching all different kinds of alternative treatments just in case we should we ever need them. And guess what I found out? Tea is the answer! (Well, maybe not the only answer, though some might disagree...) That's when I started drinking tea for the health benefits and not just because it's totally awesome. I bought several teas that I thought might help Mom manage her post-Whipple/chemo side effects (notice the "eater's digest" and "sleepytime" teas) and several that are thought to be "anti-cancer." Trish, however, is not very compliant with my efforts to make her healthier (at least not since she's started feeling better...I'm glad she's better but it was much easier to make her drink my teas when she couldn't get out of the recliner!). She says my "healthy" tea tastes like dirt and calls it "dirt tea." Sometimes I can get her to drink green tea, though. Sometimes.

So there you have it. I'm a little addicted to tea. I'm pretty sure it's the answer to all of life's problems. Black tea is my favorite (with milk and sugar or some type of sweetener...currently trying out agave nectar). Matcha green tea is my least favorite. If anyone has any secrets about how to make matcha taste awesome, let me hear them. It's so good for you and I'm trying really hard to like it! No luck so far, though.

Okay, I'm going to stop talking about tea now. I promise. One more picture, though...

The bad thing about having a blog is that you're always coming up with these great blog posts in your head (at least I think this one's great...because it's about tea). And then you have the desire to make those blog posts happen. And the next thing you know you're building a tower of tea on your dining room table and photographing it and blogging about it at 2am.

On second thought, maybe this tea thing isn't my only problem...

my prayer for 2012

Bring your love to life inside of me.
Why don't you break my heart til it moves my hands and feet?
For the hopeless and the broken,
For the ones that don't know that you love them,

Bring your love to life inside of me.

 

 

(Song by Big Daddy Weave. The rest of it can be heard here.) 

IRL

People have read this blog and told me many nice things about how I am reacting to this news. All I can say is a) Jesus gives me hope, b) any faith I have is a reflection of the faith I've seen (and am seeing!) my parents display in times like this, c) I've taken "no-cry pills" on more than one occasion over the last week (ha!), and d) it's easy to be brave on the internet. And maybe if I keep telling myself (and anyone else who chooses to read this blog) what I know God wants me to hear, eventually the internet me will start to rub off on the IRL (in-real-life) me. But, for the moment, the IRL me has taken over, and these are the things I wish.   

I wish someone had hacked into my blog and that everything you've read here over the last week was all false. 

I wish my mom and I were spending the day getting ready to go pick up some lucky family's bundle of joy from the hospital, instead of her hurting and trying to sleep and me trying to be quiet and not wake her.

I wish we were spending the day doing just about anything at all other than what we're doing right now. 

I wish Mom had IV access and I had some morphine!

I wish we would all wake up from this nightmare.

I wish all my family and friends lived in one place (not necessarily one house, but, you know what I mean). 

I wish I understood this better at 26 than I did at 17 and 20.

I wish there were no such thing as cancer.

I wish we would hear the trumpets TODAY! 

And, finally, I wish I had taken a Xanax about 2 hours before I started this post. Oh well. Live and learn, right?

 

24, 25, 26

On the 24th and 25th, my first friend Brooks and I turned 26.

As usual, we celebrated at Shogun with our friends and family* and two random Asian chefs.

Brooks, me, and Cari-Beth (CB, I edited the food out of your shirt. You're welcome.)

The cooks threw rice at James. In a nice way.

My mom made me some cute new camera strap covers for my birthday.

Apparently Jonathan and I didn't get the girls/guys memo.

Then Tekia got her hands on the camera.

And it all went downhill from there.

Yes, this guy is about to become a father.

The end.

*Note to the aforementioned "friends & family": I just realized you guys never sang to us. You just dove right into your cake and went on about your business. That's it. Next year you're doing it twice. With hats. And those blower things that make noise.

be still my clicking camera

Ohhh, blog friends. I have a new toy. I'm kind of in love with it.

Oh yes. After much research and much procrastination (I'm talking months of both - I hate making decisions!), I bought myself a new camera. I took the SLR plunge, which I've wanted to do for years. I just couldn't decide which system to choose, which camera to choose, what lenses to buy, etc. I ended up going with Canon, this Canon to be exact. And then, a week after I'd decided this, Canon came out with a new version. Thanks a lot, Canon. But I did not waver in my decision - my mind could not take any more details of features, settings, pixels, and sensors. Okay, maybe I did waver a tiny bit, but not for long. After all, the camera I'd chosen was officially announced on my birthday last year, which has to mean it was meant to be mine, right?

(I had no idea, however, that choosing a camera case was just as difficult as choosing a camera! I can't take all these decisions at one time. And that is why my current camera case is actually a diaper bag. Hey, it was here, and it works.)

Anyway, I've had this camera for a couple of weeks now, and I'm confident I made the right choice. I love it. I love that I can now easily take non-flash photos (I'm a little bit anti-flash. Or maybe a lot.) in low lighting and with shallow depths of field (i.e., blurry backgrounds). I love that it actually does make a clicking sound when I take a picture. I thought I'd share a few photos from the night I got it. First photos on a camera are always interesting, because you usually just click away at whatever random things you might come across . . .

. . . like Days of Our Lives on your TV (Because I know you're wondering - that's Melanie marrying Phillip. But she doesn't really love him. She loves Nathan. She sent him a letter to tell him that, but he never got it because his girlfriend got to it first. So now Melanie's stuck in a loveless marriage. And she also got shot on her wedding day. Poor Melanie.)

. . . or an old pink bag from Italy

. . . or the remote control (how cool is it that I can make half of the remote in focus and the other half out of focus?? See . . . shallow depth of field!)
. . . or the fat squirrel that lives your living room
. . . or your sister (yes, she is sitting on the toilet - that's what she gets for deciding to use my bathroom while I'm playing with my camera - and, yes, she is wearing a hijab, given to her by our Muslim friends down the street)
. . . or yourself in the bathroom mirror (I only had a lamp on and still no flash!).
I love my new camera.

P.S. Just wanted to add that I did get Kia's permission before posting the potty photo of her. :-)

moving to a new crib

One post in the whole month of February. That's embarrassing, even if it is a short month. And it's gotten me in trouble with my mom. So here I am.

We've had some major changes at my workplace lately. On Valentine's Day, our unit (neonatal intensive care), along with all the other women's and children's departments, moved into our brand new Women's & Children's Pavilion.



Moving day was crazy! And fun, actually. All of our doctors, nurse practitioners, and many of our nurses (most of us "volunteering") were there to help. Every department moved at different times, with the NICU going first. Here's a pic of everyone waiting for the clock to strike 9 so we could start moving!

My friend Candice and me in the old unit. We graduated at the same time and started in the NICU together.

How cute were the babies' onesies? (Sorry, no pics of the babies actually wearing the onesies!)

And they're off! Two of our 18 babies leaving the old unit. We moved two babies every ten minutes.

At least two nurses and/or nurse practitioners, as well as a security officer, accompanied each baby out of the old hospital, through an underground tunnel, and into the new hospital, stopping at several security check points along the way. Thankfully, we didn't lose anyone. ;-)

our poor, deserted NICU :-(


one of the hallways in the new, huge NICU

my friend Carolyn and me in the new unit

We went from one big room with babies lining the walls to a huge unit with six "pods" that each contain four individual rooms for the babies and a nurses' station in the center. BIG change!

Home sweet home.

on my mind today

On my mind today are the last three January 7th's that I've experienced.

Two years ago today was my very first day of work in the NICU - my first day as a nurse (technically a graduate nurse, but whatever). I was scared to death and could not believe that I actually had the job I did. I hoped I wouldn't screw it up. I hoped my preceptor (i.e., the nurse who I'd work with during my orientation) and I would like each other (we did!). I hoped I would see great things. I hoped God would use me to love people. Because I hadn't taken my boards yet, I couldn't do anything "invasive" and thus took care of "feeder-growers" (preemies who are relatively well - they just need to grow and learn to bottle-feed in order to go home). I pretty much loved every second of my first day. At the end of my very long two years in nursing school, I wasn't even sure if I liked nursing anymore, and I was pretty much convinced that I wouldn't be good at it. But, once I was working, it didn't take me long to remember that I actually did love nursing, and I really could be good at it. I remember, on my third day of work, crying - happy tears - on my way home, overwhelmed by the fact I finally, finally felt about nursing the way I'd hoped to feel when I first decided to become a nurse.

Last year on this day, I was at work again. This time I was on my own (out of orientation, with no preceptor to guide me) - just me and my patients. Shortly after arriving at work, I met a baby girl who would not be my patient that day, but would in the days and weeks to come. Obviously she made a big enough impact on my life that I still think about her a year later. She was my first patient who had a terminal diagnosis. "Incompatible with life" is what we call her condition. I spent many hours caring for this girl, helping her mother learn to care for her, and helping to prepare her family to take her home. I was so proud when I was finally able to send her home with her parents - proud of her for making it home and proud of them for having the courage to take her home. A few days later she was gone. When I met this baby girl, I never would've guessed that just a few weeks later I would be attending her funeral. You attend funerals of people you've known for years - not three weeks. But of all the people who attended her funeral, I was one of the handful who actually knew her, and for that I am so thankful. It was a sweet three weeks and I feel so blessed to have been a part of it.

And then there was today. Nothing major happened to me at work today. I spent it doing things that are normal to me now. I did assessments, gave a blood transfusion, helped with a barium swallow study, attended a c-section, gave breathing treatments, drew blood for labwork, started IVs, and gave medications. And then I did things that have been normal to me for years. I fed babies their bottles (well, I guess giving a bottle full of barium is a relatively new one for me), changed their diapers, rocked them, and talked "baby talk" to them. Still, two years later, I can't believe this is my job! I can't believe how blessed I am to get to do this every day (or, actually, just three days a week . . . even more of a blessing, ha!). I only hope the babies and families I serve will be as blessed by my time with them as I am.


I mean, seriously, did I really just get paid to play with babies for twelve hours? Let's not tell my boss. I don't want to get caught.

about that time I went to the emergency room

Alternately titled: A very long post with no pictures (sorry!)

If you're not interested in medical details and don't want to read the rest of this post, I don't blame you. Just know that I got really sick at work a couple weeks ago, went to the ER, survived, and now I'm fine. If you want to know the whole story, keep reading.

So a couple weeks ago, my alarm clock woke me up for work at about 5:30am. As I was getting ready I had some, ahem, "intestinal issues" and assumed it was probably because I hadn't gotten enough sleep (I never get enough sleep the nights before I work - don't tell my patients' parents). Just in case, though, I took some medicine and headed to work. On my way to work I ate breakfast as usual (a Poptart and orange juice, if you must know). I spent most of my day taking care of twin girls and a sweet little boy and feeling quite normal . . . except for these occasional, pretty horrible stomach cramps. I'd be feeling totally fine and suddenly have this sharp pain in my stomach. It would last for 10 - 20 seconds and then go away. In between those little episodes I felt fine. I even had a pretty normal lunch with Sprite to drink (because Sprite makes me feel better if I'm even thinking of having a stomach bug). Since I was having no more "intestinal issues" and felt pretty normal, I thought maybe I'd gotten food poisoning or something. I'd never had those cramps with any virus I'd had before.

Finally, around 4:45 that afternoon, I was standing up, helping admit yet another set of twins (Doesn't anyone ever have just one baby anymore? And does anyone wait until after 37 weeks of pregnancy to give birth?), and I started to feel a little lightheaded. I went to our break room to take a breather. I thought I might throw up, but instead I just became even more lightheaded and started sweating profusely. I was suddenly incredibly weak and couldn't even lift my head off the table. It was kind of like that feeling you get right before/after you throw up, except ten times worse. After several minutes (maybe just a couple, but it felt like a long time), I called my friend Cati in there to help me. I really don't know what I thought she was going to do, but I felt like I should at least get someone to go feed my poor, starving babies. Cati came to the door, looked at me, and said, "I'm going to go get a blood pressure cuff." I took that as a bad sign.

The next thing I knew, my co-workers rushed in, along with a couple of labor & delivery nurses (Cati had to get the blood pressure cuff from them - obviously our tiny cuffs are a bit too small for my arms), and started taking my vital signs and checking my blood sugar. I heard things like "She's dusky", "You're diaphoretic" (aka sweating), and "Your sats are low". They moved me to the floor and put my feet up in a chair (to let more blood get to brain - wasn't that thoughtful of them? :-). They had trouble finding a radial pulse, which scared me a little, but I thought, "I know I've got to have one, because I'm thinking this right now." It was just very weak. For you medically-minded folks, my heart rate was around 110, my blood pressure was 80/50, and my oxygen saturation was around 85%. For you non-medically-minded folks, my heart rate was too high, my blood pressure was way too low, and my oxygen saturation was way too low. Everyone assumed that I hadn't been eating or was doing some crazy diet or something that caused my blood sugar to plummet. But my blood sugar was normal, as it should've been since I'd eaten two decent meals that day! They decided I needed to go the ER, strapped an oxygen mask to my face, and put me on a stretcher (head still lower than my feet, which is an interesting way to travel through the hospital). As I was riding through the hallways with Cati, our boss, and a labor & delivery nurse at my side, I reached down and felt two paper towels on my stomach. Nurses tend to grab paper towels and use them as makeshift "charts" when they're in a hurry. Sure enough, on the first paper towel was my name and all my vitals, and on the second were the words "I'm a NICU nurse" - guess they wanted to make sure I was taken care of. How nice.

By the time I arrived in the ER, things has calmed down a little bit. I was feeling a little better, was looking more pink than blue, and was able to come off oxygen. The ER staff took great care of me and quickly got blood drawn and an IV started (by the way, I now have much more sympathy for my little patients when I take tape off of their arms and electrodes off their chests!). My boss sat with me until my mom came. Of course she was a bit delayed because Tekia was at home with similar symptoms, minus the almost passing out part. Over the next four hours, I received two liters of fluid (and thus made several trips to the bathroom), got a chest xray, and had some lab work done. Everything was normal, with the exception of slightly low potassium, for which I received a giant potassium pill. Finally around 9:30pm I was discharged with the diagnosis of gastroenteritis (has the stomach flu ever done that to you before??). I slept for what seemed like forever and laid around the house for the next day, and then I was back to normal.

It was a very strange experience. And I still really have no idea why it happened. But at least I learned a valuable lesson from it - if I ever get bored at work or want to leave early, all I have to do is go to the breakroom and turn blue. Apparently that gets people's attention.

firenze

This is a topic that makes me happy and sad, and one which I can't help but think about this time of year. Five years ago today (this makes me feel really old), I was scavenger-hunting my way around this big city for the first time.

I fed pigeons,

walked like The Beatles,

and looked confused in group pictures.

Good times.

Also, 42 years ago today, Faith Hill was born. Just in case you wondering. And I know you were.

neonatal nurses' day

Yesterday was National Neonatal Nurses' Day. Don't worry - I'll be accepting your gifts/cards/money for a few more days, since I was a day late in getting the word out and all. I really like Ann Taylor. And Target. I'm just saying.


I actually had no clue there even was such a day until our boss showed up with a cake for us yesterday. (She also bought us lunch, but that was just because we were slammed and she felt really sorry for us. We finally got around to eating said lunch around 3pm.) Anyway, here is a picture of me at work.


Just kidding. That's actually a picture from 1950 that I found in the LIFE photo archive on Google Images. I love that place.

So here's a real picture of me at work.


Kidding again. But I think that picture is hilarious. Maybe I'll try it sometime. Last week I had the same two patients all week and their combined weight was 3lb, 3oz - I could probably have fit them both in one pocket! I also think that nurse was smart to blur out her face. Hopefully she didn't post this on facebook.

I do love my job. And I would like to show you a picture of me taking care of my sweet babies because they are oh-so-adorable. But I might get fired if I took pictures of my babies and put them on the internet. And then I would get no gifts on Neonatal Nurses' Day next year. And that would be really sad.

How does your my garden grow?

Well, technically it's not mine, but ours. Every summer, my Paw Paw grows a garden in our backyard. My mom and I are his trusty assistants, and we take great pride in "our" garden. I've learned lots of gardening lessons over the last couple of summers. These lessons learned (along with the many seeds I've found in the dollar aisle at Target - how can I resist when they're only $1?!) have lead me to believe that I can actually grow things; thus, Mom and I have also been growing some other random plants (herbs, mostly), but those aren't as exciting as the big garden. Mom, Paw Paw, and I (as well as Tekia & friends, for a short time) planted the garden back in April. You'll notice it's planted under black plastic to keep the weeds out - it works! We planted yellow squash, zucchini, spaghetti squash, peas, red and green okra, zinnias, cucumbers, eggplant, and a few different kinds of tomatoes. Come see us for all your vegetable needs. Most of them anyway.

Mom and Paw Paw planting

Tekia, Rumi, and me planting

little baby plants

This is what our garden looked like back then. The freshly-tilled dirt at the end is where the peas are planted. Apparently weeds aren't as much of a concern with them?

Oh, and Halle was there, too. She looked cute. Like this.

This is what our garden looked like a month later.

And this is what our garden looks like now! If you're thinking that those humongous zuchinni plants on left look like a jungle that might have wild animals roaming around in it, you are not alone. And you might be right.

And here is some of the produce from our own personal farmer's market. Yummy. If you think "Larry-Boy" when you look at this picture, you've watched too many Veggie Tales movies.

These are what I'm most excited about!

So excited, in fact, that I couldn't wait to pick them. I had to fry a couple for dinner tonight.

And that is the story of how my our garden grows. Just call me MaryMaryQuiteContrary.