Anybody Out There?

Place: Wheat Ridge, CO
Weather: Not sure... it's pretty dark out, but not raining
Music: Blind Pilot
Mood: Trying to stay awake

So... it's been a while, huh? I'm on night shift at work now, so I'm currently trying to stay up as late as I can in order to switch back to a "night" schedule. A few updates to bring people up to speed (I'd bet people know some of these already, but here it goes):

1. My dad had open heart surgery to replace his aortic valve and double leg surgery to get rid of a nasty clot that had lodged there. He's well on the road to recovery and doing much much better. However, he now has a new friend named coumadin to deal with.

2. Jamie got a job! She just started, last week, in a unit at the same hospital as me! She's on the "Intermediate Neurological Care Area" that specializes in patients strokes and other neurological conditions (like meningitis). She really likes it so far!

3. We moved! Jamie and I were living with Jamie's Aunt and Uncle in Arvada, CO. Now we've moved in with a couple friends of ours (Sonja and Mike, married, both nurses) in an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO that is only 2.5 miles from work! So Jamie and I have been biking to and from the hospital... which is awesome.

4. It is Sonja and Mike's goal to move onto a sailboat someday, and they've recently taken sailing lessons. Now they get to take some small 22 foot boats out on their own on a few local reservoirs... and Jamie and I get to go along and learn too! So we've gotten the sailing bug a little too and we're slowly getting to learn the terminology and technique. It's really really fun, and it'd be awesome to get out on Lake Superior sometime (or maybe the Bahamas...).

5. Not a lot of progress on wedding planning... more to come later in that department.

That's all for now, more to come soon now that things have settled down a bit!

-Reed

Relaxing in beautiful Crested Butte, CO

Having an interesting afternoon on Lake Dillon up in the mountains. (From left to right is our friend Lindsey, roommate Mike, and Jamie)

Jamie taking it easy when the winds were light.

The not-so-nice-looking-vortex-of-death that began forming over our boat as we tried to push ourselves off of a sandbar (oops). Got back just before things got ugly.

Home

Place: Golden, CO
Weather: Storm’s a-brewin
Music: Radiohead- In Rainbows
Mood: Contemplative

The concept of “home” is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Growing up, I had a very different idea of what “home” was compared to many of my friends. Lauren and I were constantly moving between the homes of our mother, father, and grandparents. Such an arrangement was necessary in light of our family circumstances, and I felt “at home” in each of those places. The moving got easier as Lauren and I adjusted to packing our things, but the routine also grew tiresome and I became envious of my friends who, generally, had lived in the same place their entire lives and could truly call that one place their home.

Looking back, I feel like I’ve always kind of been on the move, particularly in the past few years. In Ripon, I lived in 4 different rooms/apartments on campus. In the summers I lived out of a suitcase in the basement of city hall, and house-sat on and off for no less than five different people. Not to mention packing up for Alaska, Switzerland, the Raspberry Island Lighthouse, and then moving out to Colorado. In many ways, my transient qualities have been my own doing and I’ve been very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had. But part of me does miss the feeling that I’m rooted down somewhere, to a place that I know and can call (in some way) my own. I’ve talked to people that have lived in the same small town their entire lives, and have not even ventured out of their home state. I’ve also talked to people that are constantly travelling and never stay in one place for more than a year or two. I think that both are missing out, and I hope I can find a good balance between the two someday.

My twin sister got married this month and is starting a new chapter in her life in a new home with a new husband and I am so excited for her. It is a huge step and I look forward to hearing from her what married life is like. In some ways it is strange to know that she has her own place now, her own life. During our childhood we spent so much time together, and it was really only after college that we have really been apart. Even though we have been living in different places for a couple years, I feel like our paths diverged long before. Lauren and I will always be family, and our twin connection will always be a very special thing, but our connection has definitely changed as a result of being in different places and choosing very different lives. We still talk, still support each other, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Maybe part of this is just the “growing up” process that everyone goes through. I guess time will tell, but I hope our paths can converge again before too long.

Not only was my sister married, but my dad (hopefully this won’t come as a surprise to anyone) got admitted to the Mayo Clinic a few days before the wedding and had to miss it. I can’t imagine many more heartbreaking things than to find out your health is failing and, in addition, you have to miss walking your daughter down the aisle as a result. I was honored to take his place, but it should have been him. His final diagnoses include a bicuspid aortic heart valve (most people have a tri-cuspid valve), endocarditis, bacteremia, and anemia and kidney failure as a result of the infections. I’ll be going in for my own diagnostics sometime this summer (I hope) to see of my aortic valve is missing a flap too. It’s pretty scary to know that my dad had such a, relatively, serious issue happen at such a young age, but it’s good they discovered it when they did. His time in the hospital was not easy, and when you strip away all of the comforts of home, a person’s morale takes and even bigger hit. The stay was necessary, no doubt, but I’m glad he’s able to continue the rest of his treatments at home now. I think that because I work in a hospital, it is easy to forget that just setting foot in one is a traumatic experience for many people. I’ve never really had the experience to actually be a patient, but I bet it would make me a better nurse if I had that first-hand experience.

Finally, the most recent musing about “home” came this week at work. It was about 9:00pm when a woman walked up to our front desk holding some towels. Wrapped in those towels was a baby, less than a week old. I’ve heard conflicting reports about what happened next. I’ve heard she found the baby on the curb outside the hospital and, crying, brought the baby in after nobody would claim it as their own. I’ve heard that she came in crying, set the baby down on the counter, said she “couldn’t do it anymore” and was enacting Colorado’s safe-haven law. Whatever the situation, I walked up to the front to find a cute little baby with a full head of hair and part of the umbilical cord still attached being passed around to all the nurses. The baby eventually went upstairs to the nursery, and I wondered that night what events had led up to the mother handing him/her over. I wondered about the baby’s future and the different directions their life could take. How long would they stay in the hospital? Would they end up in a foster home? Would the mother regret her decision and decide to take the baby back? A couple days later, I learned that the baby had already been adopted by a family that had been waiting years for a child. I hope that home will be better, and everything turns out for the best for that little one.

-Reed

Spring

Place: Golden, CO
Weather: Windy
Music: Gabe Dixon Band
Mood: Content

Hey Everyone! Just a quick update tonight. Jamie and I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science this past Monday and saw Body Worlds. It was my first time going, Jamie’s second, and it was pretty amazing… and weird. I don’t think that is what I want for my body after I die, but it was pretty impressive and eye-opening to see some of that stuff. The dissections were extremely well done and, besides participating in a cadaver lab, there aren’t many better ways to get a close-up look of the internal human anatomy. We’ll be going back there to see some Imax shows, I’m sure!

Work has been going well… lots of ups and downs. I’m definitely having good days and bad days, which is certainly to be expected. On the bad days, I’ve been overwhelmed with sick patients and stretching my current knowledge and time-management capabilities. I’ve made mistakes and kicked myself because I knew better, and I’ve made mistakes because I’m just plain new at a lot of this. No harm done to patients though, thank God. On the good days, I feel in control and I stay on top of everything. I feel fairly efficient and able to handle most patients that come through. It is when the patients start heading south that I am still scrambling and not sure exactly what to do. As an EMT, you had your one patient and, even if they were critical, you focused completely on that patient. Now as a nurse, I have 3-5 patients and if one or more of them are critical, the other ones tend to get shoved to the backburner for a while. The 12-hour shifts are long, but I’m thankful for the 11a-11p shifts that I’m doing now… they match my schedule much better than a 7a-7p or, of course, night shift.

This weekend was pretty fun! Spring has arrived here, but it hasn’t been quite as warm as in the Midwest! Lots of wind here recently, like, shake-the-house-and-keep-you-up-at-night-wind. Things are greening up a little though and we should have our first thunderstorm next week! On Saturday Jamie and I went on a short hike with some friends of ours, Sonja and Mike. They just got married a couple weeks ago so, after the hike, we celebrated with them by taking them out to the restaurant where they met in Boulder. After some food, drink, and merriment, we went back to Jamie’s aunt and uncle’s to play some Settlers of Catan (can’t wait to play with all of the island folks again!). We tried our hand at Thai food tonight and it turned out pretty good… Coconut Chicken soup (Tom Kha Gai) and Thai Chicken Pasta. Hope everyone had a good Easter!

-Reed

Plunge

Place: Golden, CO
Weather: Springish
Music: Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons
Mood: Elated

There have been lots of big changes and events going on around here lately… graduating school, new jobs, starting careers, etc… but this is a big one, folks. Jamie and I are officially engaged to be married! Here’s how it all went down:

Last week, I was fortunate enough to have four days in a row off from work (I could get used to this nursing schedule). It just happened to be that Jamie’s family was in town last week on a ski vacation, and Jamie and I headed up to the mountains to hang out with them on Tuesday, March 23rd. When we arrived, everybody was out skiing so we went for a walk in the woods by Steve and Jill’s (Jamie’s aunt and uncle) condo. It was a snowy hike to Lily Pad Lake, at about 9,900 feet. When we got there, we decided to take some pictures. First, I took a picture of Jamie, then one of both of us. Then I handed her the camera to take a picture of me, and she turned to walk away, getting in position to take the picture. While her back was turned, I got the ring out and took a knee. So, when she turned around, she saw me on my knee holding the ring. I say a few words, ask the big question, she says yes, put the ring on, big hug, kiss, and then we stand there and slowly come to the realization that now, officially, we are to be married.

After a while, we walked back to dry off and meet the rest of Jamie’s family for dinner. The first person we told was Jamie’s nephew, Jaiden. Since he is only 3 months old, we weren’t too worried that he would spill the beans. When we got to the condo where Jamie’s parents were staying, everybody was relaxing after a long day of skiing, and Jamie’s dad was in the shower so we couldn’t tell everyone right away. So, we sat down on the couch, Jamie with her hands concealed in her sweatshirt pocket, and waited. Finally, after 20 minutes, Jamie’s parents were finally in the same room and she pulled her hand out to show everyone. Screams. Hugs. Smiles. We hadn’t realized that Jamie’s sister had hopped in the shower and missed the whole thing (sorry, Julie!) and we had some explaining to do. After that, it was lots of phone calls and emails, repeated stories and congratulations.

Already there have been discussions about dates and locations and guest lists and all of those other things that come along with such an announcement. I knew we would be bombarded with questions, but we definitely don’t have any answers yet! With so many things in transition and up in the air right now, we need to get some other stuff figured out before we start making decisions on the wedding.

The rest of the week was great. Powder day at Vail on Wednesday with Andrew and Steve, day off in Frisco and Breckenridge on Thursday, impromptu meeting and engagement toast with John, Julie, Josh, and Johanna Mathews, and a nice dinner back at Steve and Jill’s on Friday.

For now it is back to work for me, and back to the job search for Jamie. She has an interview coming up this week… here’s hoping for the best! Thanks for all of the kind words and encouragement, everyone!

-Reed

Bacons

Place: Golden, CO
Weather: Clear, 10” new snow!
Music: Nickel Creek
Mood: Cozy

I got my first paycheck in over a year on Friday and, as my friend Min would say, I’m finally bringing home the bacons. It feels good to have some income, no doubt, but it is hardly my only motivation for getting up in the morning. As with my previous EMT work, I can again say that I am passionate enough about what I do to say that I would do it for free (if I didn’t have so many bills to pay). I wish more people could say that about their jobs, and I feel very lucky to enjoy my work so much. In the last post, I promised I would write a little about nursing… so count this post as the first of many.
I just got a new book, “Emergency Nursing: Principles and Practice,” which defines emergency nursing as “the care of individuals of all ages with perceived or actual physical or emotional alterations of health that are undiagnosed or require further interventions.” During my nursing education, I was fortunate to be placed in many different clinical settings… I worked with sick newborns, kids, adults, and the elderly. I worked in medical, surgical, mental health, OB/GYN, community, and intensive care settings. To me, emergency nursing combines all of these areas into one. You see patients for (usually) very short amounts of time (30 minutes – 5 hours) when they are often very acutely ill or injured. Just to give you an example of the patients I might see coming through the ED in a shift: A 56 year old having a heart attack, a 43 year old schizophrenic patient hearing voices telling him to hurt himself and others, a 23 year old female having severe abdominal pain, a 12 year old who was hit by a car, a 69 year old having a stroke, a 6-week old who stopped breathing, a 36 year old having an anxiety attack, a 85 year old in septic shock, and a 27 year old going through alcohol withdrawal. Then, there are also the sore throats, coughs, and urinary tract infections that should really be getting their healthcare outside of the ED, but that is another story. As a nurse, it is my job to assess, collaborate with physicians and other professionals, plan, intervene to correct whatever ailments our patients arrive with, and evaluate what we have done and how it has affected the patient.
The hospital I’m working at now is a Level III Trauma Center in suburban Denver. Level III (three) means that we are don’t have the specialists in the hospital to treat patients with severe (and I mean SEVERE) traumatic injuries, but we can easily handle minor/stable trauma patient. In contrast, a Level I Trauma Center is ready, 24/7 to immediately handle even the most severe trauma patients, often with very very rapid surgical intervention. Since we are only a Level III, we get the basic stuff… trip and falls, broken hips, broken arms, lacerations, etc. Occasionally a car will drive up and drop a really severely injured person at our door, but all of the ambulances in the city will divert their critical trauma patients to the Level I centers in Denver. With that said, the ED I work in is still the very large (we have 52 beds, compared to 7 in Ripon!) and second-busiest in the state, as far as number of patients seen. And even though we don’t get a lot of trauma, we do see a lot of critically ill people coming in with heart attacks, strokes, and sepsis… along with a lot of people with mental health and substance abuse issues and a fair number of really sick kids.
It has been a huge change of pace and very challenging for me so far, but I’m learning a ton. I have a 5-month long orientation where I will be working directly with another nurse, slowly gaining more and more autonomy. I’ll be working 12-hour shifts with him, usually 11am-11pm (which means I get there at 10:30am and get home by midnight or 12:30am). On top of that, I’ll be getting certified in trauma nursing, advanced cardiac life support, pediatric advanced life support, and another pediatric cert. It’s going to be a rough year, with a lot of growing, some bad days, and some really good ones. I can’t wait to be really comfortable in my new role and not feel like I’m drowning anymore, but I already know that it is not just about the bacons that keep me coming back, I truly love what I do.

-Reed

HIPAA (rules my life)

Place: Golden, CO
Weather: Clear, Starry
Music: Jack Johnson, All at Once
Mood: Spacing out

I say “spacing out” because I’ve been, somewhat numbly, looking at a computer screen… or power point presentation, or TV, or iPhone, or some other variety of glowing rectangle for unusually long durations during the past couple of weeks. Actually, now that I think about it, I spend way way way too much of my time looking at glowing rectangles of various shapes and sizes, and I have been for years. Now I’m home and, after watching House and 24, I’m sitting here typing on my laptop… the word “enslaved” comes to mind. But I guess it sort of comes with the territory. It is pretty much unavoidable at work, with computer charting and all of the education requirements. However, I know I could definitely cut a little TV out of my life. My freshman year of college, I watched a total of, maybe, 10 hours of TV… and it was great. That is a whole other project though (maybe someday).

That was a bit of a tangent, but it also ties in to my next topic (a little about current technology in the medical field and out society). Pretty soon, I will begin posting about nursing. About my experience in school, hospitals, with patients, families, and overall perceptions to give people a little better idea about what nurses do and what, in particular, I will be doing. For now, though, I need to explain some legal stuff that heavily influence the way this information is delivered to you.

In 1996, congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA, and it now dictates my behavior each and every day. This law not only regulates insurance policy, but heavily influences “personal health information”… who can see it, who they can reveal it to, and where they can store it. So, if you come into a hospital, get picked up by an ambulance, or visit a clinic, they take proactive steps to keep your private medical information private. So, in the interest of keeping patient privacy in mind, medical professionals have to be extremely careful about what information is communicated to others… and a blog is a unique challenge. When I talk about my experiences to others, it is pretty easy to hide identities and not expose anything I shouldn’t. The internet is a whole different story and, because I never really know who COULD be reading this, I have to be particularly careful.

For example, I could write, “Today I saw something terrible. A 23 year old female presented to our department after falling down the stairs. She had cuts and bruises to her arms and complained of abdominal pain. After some tests we determined that she was 18 weeks pregnant, and after some talking she admitted that her boyfriend had actually punched and kicked her before throwing her to the ground”. Now, I didn’t reveal any names, locations, or any other specific details that you could use to identify the patient… but I have severely violated this (fictional, but not unrealistic) patient’s right to privacy. If my manager were to come on here and see a story like that, there is no doubt she would know who I am talking about. Lastly, I’ll say this… this profession gives us the curse and the privilege to be with people at their absolute worst moments. If I had to endure something so terrible, I would not want every caregiver I encountered to go write about it on the internet. With that in mind, I’m going to be very cautious about what I put here. There is no doubt I’ll be posting stories, but very vague versions of them and probably some time after they actually occurred. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about, no worries there.

Ok, this post is beginning to bore me… just had to put it out there though.

-Reed

Resuscitation

Place: Golden, CO
Weather: Cloudy, Foggy
Music: Corelli: Adagio, From Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 8 in G Minor
Mood: Sleepy

I sit here now in my dark little room, resuming an endeavor I abandoned over one year ago. My decision to resurrect this little journal is two-fold. First, I feel like I’m starting a new chapter in my life and I feel some deep, almost visceral, need to document it. If for no other reason than to allow myself to vent, reflect, and someday revisit what it has meant for me to do the things I have done and the profession I have chosen. Second, recent decisions have left me a thousand miles away from most of the people I care about most in this world. I do not take the implications of this lightly, and I hope this will prove a conscious, if somewhat passive, effort to keep in touch. I hope to use this as a tool to communicate, and I hope that it can be a two-way conversation… whatever form that may take in this medium. So, as the days drift along, I will sit down and write my activities, ponderings, frustrations, questions, stories, and whatever else seems to fit the bill. I whole-heartedly invite you to come along with me, participate, converse, and communicate in whatever way you feel moved to do.

For now, I’ll just give a brief update to bring everyone up to speed. Hopefully I’ll be able to fill in some of the details as we go. I’m currently sitting is my bedroom… but the house is not my own. On December 27th, 2008, I arrived in Colorado with my girlfriend, Jamie. Since that day, we have stayed with her Aunt and Uncle here in Golden. Over the past year, Jamie and I have attended (and now graduated from) nursing school here in Denver. After passing my national boards in January 2010, I have recently been hired by a local hospital to work in their Emergency Department (ED) as an RN. My first day was March first, and my first official day in the ED was March 7th. There is a lot to talk about there, and I’ll come back to that in the next post to explain in much more detail. Jamie’s still job hunting, and the market in Denver right now is quite poor… even for nurses, believe it or not. Hospitals are reluctant to hire new-graduate nurses because they require additional resources to train and orient to their new profession. Long story short, it is much cheaper for them to utilize part-time staff, float nurses, and nurses coming out of retirement than put in all of that effort (read money) to properly train the next generation of nurses. So, a significant portion of my classmates are currently highly qualified and unemployed, which is a shame when, truly, hospitals could use a few extra extremely capable hands.

I think this will be it for tonight… more to come soon. I’m excited to be at this again, and I hope you’ll hold me accountable to keep this updated regularly. That accountability is best in the form of encouragement and participation, and I hope to hear from you all soon.

-Reed