Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Gravity.

Hello boys and girls. I hope you all are doing well and if you’re not - go see a doctor. Speaking of doctors I’ve been working about 36 hours a week (not sure if I included that in the last post but if so then you just read it again, punk) and I’ve been learning a lot as usual (most importantly not just about medicine/nursing, but spiritually). About a week or two ago I all of a sudden had reached a new level in setting up IV’s. I was just a straight beast and as much as I hate arrogance/cockiness ESPECIALLY from myself it had gotten to my head.

Now for the past week I have established one IV linev. That’s just a little something to learn from but there’s more. Earlier today we had a code come in and we were able to save her. This happened to be the first code in the ER that I was there to watch live. Indeed a very nice experience.

A couple hours after that we had a patient who exhibited signs of a stroke upon arrival to the ER. At the Bon, we don’t have the facilities to treat stroke victims. This patient was brought to us in error and really shouldn’t have been there – possible stroke victims are taken to UM. In any case the patient was decently responsive when he first came and throughout the course of the next few hours I watched him slowly decline. For those of you all interested – it was a hemorrhagic stroke in his brain stem. We were trying to get him transferred as throughout the entire time. Long story much shorter, there was a lot of red tape to cross and it really slowed down the entire process which shouldn’t have even had to take place because the EMS should have taken the patient to UM. I think the experience I had today with this case was one of the saddest cases I watched unfold before my eyes. I eventually had to remove my self from the situation because I was so upset. This normally never happens because I’m able to control my self but watching the patient’s health decline right before me was maddening… even more so was knowing that I couldn’t do anything about it. As change of shift came around there were no developments – I will just have to wait till I work next to figure out what happened.
On my way back home I was still very upset and it looked like there was a huge storm coming. I don’t recall seeing such dark skies in a very long time. As I continued to think of what had just happened I saw the sun break right through the clouds in magnificent showing. It really made me think of the entire situation from a different, worldlier perspective. Something in my heart told me that there Gravity effects everyone.

So simple, yet so profound. Often times the lesson is put right in front of us and we choose to ignore it and so it’s spat right back in our face until we truly learn from it.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Pop pop's day.

So it’s 2 am the day after Father’s day and I’m sitting at my kitchen table in my PJ’s with milk, cookies, and my laptop. Since my last blog 6 years ago, I’ve started picking up about 3 shifts a week at work, (12 hours each) today was one of my workdays. Work has been going very well, learning something new everyday (as usual) and it doesn’t hurt that making people laugh and healing never gets old.

Throughout the day people were asking me if I was a father… apparently I look 34. Anyway, the ER was rather slow and the weather was exceptional so I decided to go eat lunch in the courtyard with 75-degree weather and a nice calm breeze (the courtyard is a completely enclosed area with several benches and a nice little grass area that only employees have access to). After eating my lunch I started thinking more about my father and his impact on my life. I realized that I probably wouldn’t have cared anywhere as much for people in general like I do now had it not been for him. This means that I probably wouldn’t have gone into health care. And for those of you mistakenly call me your friends, probably wouldn’t.

After realizing how much I had gained and continue to gain from having had my father for a [huge] part of my life, I realized the sad fate that so many children share- not having their fathers in their lives. This is a sad reality and really makes me wonder how these children miss out on so much. However, inevitably they have or will become stronger from it.

Appreciating my father(and all those around the world that choose to be a part of their children’s lives) today has helped me realize that we should all try to help out those without a father figure in their lives so that they may grow up to become the father that they never had.