Head colds

I hate head colds.  You know what I'm talking about.  Your nose runs like a faucet with a slow leak.  Your head feels like someone is blowing a balloon up inside your face.  None of your thoughts seem to be clear and you have that nagging, tingling itch in the back of your sinuses that is driving you insane.

That is not an excuse to go to the ER.  Unless of course, you work in the ER.  Then it is not an excuse NOT to go to the ER.  Staffing for a shift is usually pretty tight anyway.  If one person calls in it usually means everyone else has to take an extra patient or two and when patient to nurse numbers go up, outcomes are pretty well correlated to go down.  We all know this.  So just try calling in to work with anything that doesn't involve needing to go to the ER, some other ER because you wouldn't willingly show up at your own (I fear they might create new and inventive ways to use catheters).  Sinusitis?  Bronchitis?  Ha.  We train to not get sick from contacting sick people.  The reverse is true as well.  Besides, as a traveler, I don't get PTO.  Don't work, don't eat. 

Usually you just slog around the nursing station like the zombie you are until you need to go into a patient room and then marshal all your energy so you can appear like a normal human while you work with the patient.  Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.  Then, as soon as you leave the room, you re-zombie and trudge about your business. 

Then they bring me a code stroke.

This is a patient that has developed symptoms of a stroke recently.  Like, within the last hour.  You see, if you have signs of a stroke, it is a race.  There is a medicine we can give you if you are having a certain type of stroke, but we can only give it to you if we can start it within around 4 hours of the onset of symptoms.  Later than that and the risk outweighs the reward.  The drug tPA essentially dissolves all blood clots and prevents new ones from forming for a period of time.  This can be detrimental to you, so the decision to use it is not taken lightly.

By the time the patient is in the room, they have been in the ED for 40 minutes or so, getting triaged and then taken to CT to rule out a bleeding stroke.  They want the medicine administered within 60 minutes of arrival.  The guy at triage has tried three times to get a line on the patient and failed, they are a hard stick.

So, there are 20 minutes to get two IV's started, administer a stroke scale, get the medication from pharmacy  and about a hundred other things.  Do you think anyone cares about that head cold?  Nope.

I got two lines in two sticks, we beat our target times and got the medicine in...with help from the stellar crew here.  Then I had to stay in the room with the patient for the next hour to make sure nothing more drastic than bleeding from those three missed IV's earlier happened.

So, I'm happy to have a couple of days off.  Head colds suck.

Houston

We lived in Houston for ten years. We have a house here.  This is where we started traveling...it's the place we left.

That should give you an idea of how we feel about the place.  We left for a reason. And every day, we are reminded in a hundred little ways of why we don't live here anymore. 

Miles outside of the city we started to dread everything.  The traffic built up.  The trees and ponds were replaced by strip malls and storage yards.  Flowers were replaced by plastic bags.  Even the prettier places, and there are a few, are all landscaped and designed.  They are the golf courses and wealthier neighborhoods.  I don't really like those personally, I prefer a wilder beauty. 

So I decided to do a little cathartic photo essay of why I don't like Houston.  I keep forgetting my camera when I go out though.  Seems like my motivation is to capture beautiful scenery and not the ugly stuff.  I think it would make an interesting project and still want to do it.  Since I keep forgetting my camera, I used my cell phone.  Not the best, but it will have to do for now.

Houston hates trees.  Houston kills trees all the time.

See, more dead trees with a tank of flammable liquids to finish them off.  Probably so they can put in another strip mall or dollar store.

Because we take such great pride in the beautiful strip malls and dollar stores we already have. 

Why is there a path in the middle median and not the side?  This is the panhandler path.  Back and forth.

Still, we come back.

Why? 

Papa helping Michael with math homework.

Because this stuff can be priceless.

Real life ER

Multiple pediatric codes make for a bad weekend. 

Even when they go well, it isn't any fun.  When they go poorly...let's just say ER charge nurses are some of the most hard bitten, jaded, tough people on the planet.  Watching them cry is like watching your Dad cry when you are a little kid. 

5 Codes in three days, two of which were pediatric in nature and only one of which went well.  Luckily I was only involved in 2 of them.   This weekend also featured a personal record for blood glucose that I have seen at a shade over 1300. 

I forgot how crazy it is working ER in Houston. 

I could go on and on about this weekend, but I won't.  I will just say that it will be nice when I again start dedicating this space to talking about hikes and waterfalls and such.  More pictures, less pain. 

Oh, and don't worry about me, I'm fine.  This is far from the worst weekend at work.  I just felt like peeling back the curtain a little bit.  Nursing is so integral to what we do as a family with all of this travel and adventure so I thought I would write a smidge about it.  I may yet again, if anyone has a tolerance for it. 

It will be good to have a couple of days off.  It's been a long weekend. 

He looked like someone I care about.

Not exactly alike, but enough.

His heart wasn't working very well tonight, not at all.  Not enough for consciousness when I met him...at least I hope.

He wasn't my patient.  They needed some help and I gave it.  I was the first to notice the heart rhythm change into something not compatible with life.  After the shock I jumped on for CPR.  I give excellent CPR.  No bragging, just a fact.  I take pride in that.  If you go down and I am around you will have a chance.  I was this man's heart, off and on, for two hours.  CPR is tiring.  But, when I did compressions, his heart would come back and gave us time to keep fighting, keep searching for a cause and a cure.  My new team mates commented on my 'life saving hands.'

All for naught.  We made sure he didn't die on Valentine's Day.

I hate the sounds people make when they realize their loved one is gone.  Screams, wails and choked sobs, they all suck.

But you have to shrug it off.  You have to move on.  Your other patients need warm blankets or pain meds or something.  So, you press on.  You let it go.  It's amazing, but you really do.

So forgive your nurse if they aren't always cheery.  If we seem like we don't care, it isn't because we don't want to.  Sometimes we just can't.

Houston

I have been struggling with the blog a little lately.  There doesn't seem like much of general interest that I want to put up.  This space has been built for adventure.  It's right there in the name. 

Not much adventurous here in Houston.  At least not the kind I want to report.  There are always idiot drivers, angry homeless people and the like, but that isn't up to the Adventure Nickel level of quality. 

I was told by someone I trust about these things that I should write more about nursing here, and I think that is a good idea.  It is relevant the the whole spirit of the blog. I have thought about writing some political thought because it interests me, but I don't know if this is a great forum for that.  It's my blog though, so I am not decided on that yet. 

I want to gripe about this RV park, perhaps my least favorite ever, and I probably will.  Seems in poor taste to not post in nearly a month though and come back with a great big old rant about something.  Besides, there will be plenty of time for that later.  It's not like they are going to stop sucking any time soon. 

There is a photo project that I am thinking about, but it is Houston, so it probably won't be flattering. 

If it makes anyone feel better out there, I have been writing, just not on the blog.  I did a write up of our stay in Santa Fe which I sold to Escapees magazine.  They said they are waiting until late summer or early fall to run it to coincide with the Albuquerque Balloon festival HOP.  So, that's cool.  I am in progress on a long thought of novel idea and I am awaiting the feedback from my two early readers of the Adventure Nickel book so I can get to a big rewrite before sending it off to my next wave of early readers.  So, it's not that I am not busy.  Just not much here on the blog or website lately. 

Sorry. 

Don't worry though.  Soon enough I will unleash a flood of posts so great that you will again be sick of hearing from me. 

Hello Houston.

We arrived in Houston on schedule and not too much worse for the wear.  The RV park where we landed posed some problems.  It is really close to the hospital, but it is even closer to the train tracks.  Like, the train tracks are 100 yards off our back window with a  railroad crossing intersection 1/4 mile down the road necessitating several blares of the horn.  Our first night was restless to say the least.  Our miraculous minds though, have learned to filter out that sound and we are now sleeping through it.  The park has a no refund policy or we wouldn't have stayed long enough to adjust. 

We have been spending a lot of time over at Grandma and Papa's place.  Partly to visit and partly to avail myself of his tool collection and amassed wisdom of tinkering and working on things.  Much needs repair and I am still learning about all that DIY stuff.  I pulled the condenser fan from the main ac in IRV because it has a bad bearing.  The bearing is $1.67.  The motor is $200 and the labor at a shop would be $140 or so.  We initially took it so an electric motor repair shop which quoted 5-8 days and $100.  So we pulled it apart and ordered the bearing.  Also, we had to fix the power steering leak on Flo.  This means pulling the hydroboost unit on the truck and replacing an internal seal.  Hopefully that fixed it.  And no, I didn't take off the AC in the truck.

I have spent a large part of the week jumping through hoops getting ready for work.  One of the hassles of travel nursing is getting paperwork for a new job done every three months.  They needed new immunization records, papers filed and so on.  I also had to renew my license.  Where I took this picture of an empty, parked car. 

Today I finish (hopefully) jumping through hoops for work and then go try to repay Papa for his help by helping him hang a new set of attic stairs.  Keeping busy. 

Heading to Houston

Weird.

Sarah and I flipped the mattress around and we haven't been sleeping as well.  That's not weird though. 

Last night we both woke up around 0230 in the morning and the house was filled with the smell of cooking bacon.  We were at an RV park in Mobile AL, if that makes a difference.  Just a quick overnight.  It was below freezing outside and the furnace was working.  For some reason I got the image in my head of a homeless guy cooking bacon over the furnace outlet just outside the front door.  We never did get up and try to find the source.  Made it hard to get back to sleep.  But that isn't what this post is really about. 

It was a good thing that today was a short drive, what with the heavily interrupted sleep.  We didn't have to wake up as early as usual, we did though.  Which was actually an hour earlier due to crossing back into the Central time zone.  We woke up an hour earlier than usual, or really our normal time, and got things ready to go.  After I went and took an emergency urine drug screen for work, we got out and went sight-seeing. 

We went to see the USS Alabama.  The kids loved it. 

Poor old ship doesn't know what's coming.

They had a smashed penny machine.  We had to.

Our collection is the envy of all who see it.

Then we went aboard and I tried to answer what questions I could about what life was like aboard a Navy ship.  I have some experience so I answered what I could and made up entertaining stuff about what I didn't. 

All Navy Seals are cooks.  They just stand there silently until you try to take two cereal boxes...then...

Back in my day, we slept three to a mat and we liked it!

Nothing I could make up was as cool as being in the gun turret of a battle ship.

Just kidding, I told them I didn't know about lots of things on the ship.  My ship was made decades after this one.  It was interesting to contrast the two.  We had fun looking around and the place fired up the boy's imaginations. 

The kids pretending to aim and fire the 16 inch main guns from inside the turret.

Murderous little bugger.

He looks far too happy with mayhem.

Michael taking aim on downtown Mobile. 

Parade REST!

It may have fired up an adult imagination too.

Good advice.  If you only wing them they crash into you. 

The main guns fired that projectile 21 miles.  I wonder how far they could launch a kid?

Then, in the building you can see behind the boys up there, they had a hangar filled with aircraft displays.

They had some cool stuff in there.  The kids loved it.

Tuskeegee airmen plane.

F-16

The kids got caught up watching a video on dogfighting.

Daddy got caught up in the A-12, a precursor to the SR-71

Oh yeah, and then, behind this building, there was yet something else to see.  They had a WWII submarine! Sow we climbed aboard the USS Drum and I got to make up stories about what it was like on a submarine.  OK, so I just read signs and then we listened to a crew member talking to a small tour group.  Pretty cool stuff though.

Michael taking aim on Mobile again, I don't know what he has against that city

Shiny torpedo tubes

Hard to get lost on a submarine.

Oh man, we are working this thing!

Gotta check out the periscope.

Max was trying hard to launch this thing.

They had a great time and we all learned a lot, but that isn't really what this post is about. 

This is what this post is all about.

In the gift shop, on the way out, this man was sitting there and autographing his book.  He is Col. Glenn D. Frazier (Ret).  His book is titled, Hell's GUEST.  He fought in WWII and was captured by the Japanese.  He was in the Bataan Death March. 

You're damn right I bought the book.  I can't wait to read it. 

If you want it, you can get it on Amazon or through his website:  http://colonelfrazier.com/

He was also featured in Ken Burns documentary about WWII. 

Of all the things we saw today, he was the most impressive.  It was an honor to shake his hand.