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