Three Rules of Life the Hospital has Taught Me

I've been thinking a lot of the things the hospital has taught me about life. Cliche as they may be they ring true to me (and these are merely my thoughts and opinions).

1) Don't Smoke
I don't care that your Great Aunt Edna smoked everyday and she's 89.I don't care if you only smoke socially or infrequently. Smoking leads to death plain and simple. I don't preach to my friends that smoke I know they know it's bad and I know they want to quit. People tend to say things like I'm going to quit once work is less stressful, once the kids are older etc.. There will never be a perfect time and it will always be hard, so get help talk to your Dr.; get your friends and family to support you. And for those of us who don't smoke; support people who are quitting when they get grumpy, don't guilt them if they slip up and be there for them, it is not easy. I don't want to see people I care for at a COPD or cancer clinic years down the road.

2) Everything In Moderation
Too much of anything is bad. Too much food, too much booze, too many drugs. If you choose to drink be responsible drink water, get a ride home. If you do drugs, don't mix them. More so than not people OD when there is more than one drug in their system. And for the love of god, do not mix MDMA and coke. It is a toxic mix that lead to heart attacks. One makes your heart stiff, the other makes your heart beat fast and essentially it explodes. No joke. Young or old bad shit happens when you do too many drugs.  Too much food leads to a multitude of problems down the road, try to eat healthy for the most part. Indulge but not everyday.  Everything in moderation applies to pretty much everything.

3) Live Life and Love

On a great adventure with awesome girls  xox

Tell people you love them every chance you can. Shit happens so make life count. Return anger and hate with love and understanding. Follow your passion. I've found a job that I look forward to going to. It's exciting, challenges and makes me think. Be happy at your job you spend a huge part of your life working. Try new things, and make fun goals. I'm going to learn how to surf this year. A day is never lost if you laugh at least once.

Celebrating life!

Allow people to have different opinions than yourself. This can be hard for me, and I can be dismissive when people have different opinions than myself, but I need to realize that different opinions/beliefs are what makes the world exciting. Take chances (not dangerous ones); how can we ever know if we don't try. Failure is not a negative word it just means try again or try something else. Do what makes you happy (so long as it doesn't hurt others). We only have one life, I am reminded of that everyday so lets all make the most of it.

Love

No I really can't smell..... Anosmia : The lack of perceiving odors

People always ask the same questions after I tell someone I can’t smell. The questions usually go as follows: “Like you always can’t smell?”, “Can you taste?”, “You must be able to smell really strong things?” The funny thing is people usually don’t ask why I can’t smell. I can’t smell because I have nasal polyps. The technical definition is an abnormal growth from a mucus membrane; they are pretty much like little peeled grape looking things that block my olfaction (smelling) passageway so I can’t smell. They are associated with my good friends; asthma and allergies. Fun facts about myself like this are how I seduce men; “Hey baby, I have abnormal sinuses! Wink” 

I have an abnormal fear of skunks

“You must be able to smell really strong things?” My favorite question… A few years ago, I came home early from work felling a bit under the weather. I let the dogs out for pee; they ran around the yard barking for a bit and came in. I went to my room for a nap with the dogs. They snuggled up next to me and I fell asleep. Four hours later I woke up to my brother screaming bloody murder. “WHAT THE FUCK!!! THE FUCKING HOUSE FUCKKK!” Followed by him dry heaving in the front yard. I thought the house was on fire but no… I had just had a four hour nap with freshly skunked dogs. So no I really can’t smell.

Yup had a nap with they two mutts when they were skunked

I lost my sense of smell when I was 20 it’s not really a bad sense to loose. I work in the hospital. You have to find the silver lining in everything. I mean fuck, not being able to smell is almost a superpower in the hospital, and I really should get a cape. I have been in small rooms where everyone is gagging from something putrid and I don’t have the slightest care. When someone smells like Melena or Pseudomonas (look them up if you don’t know what they are, cuz they are gross and Im not about to explain) people have gone so far to say I’m lucky I cant smell what’s going on in the room.

Taste… My taste buds still work, the best I can describe it is that food is less full but I look for different things in food; texture being one and sensation being the other. Garlic, hot sauce, etc have sensations associated with it them. I still love to eat and bake; it’s just a different experience. I had surgery a few years ago to see if they could fix the problem, but ends up the polyps are very close to brain matter and look a lot like brain matter and since my surgeon decided he didn’t feel like giving me a frontal lobotomy (his words not mine) he didn’t take out the ones that are blocking my olfaction passage. To be honest it doesn’t bother me much, it’s just one more thing on the long list of quirks that makes me who I am.

One way

Without a word of lie, the best choice I ever made, was to become an RT. It was like the job was personally designed for me. I love the rush of a code, the machines, the hospital, shit I find studying for hours on end an enjoyable activity. I would recommend looking at becoming an RT to anyone interested in going into a heath related field. I also feel people need to go into this job with their eyes wide open. It is not an easy path. We spent a total of 2h talking about death; first semester of first year. I was lucky an amazing palliative care nurse came in to talk to us. She told us something that has stuck with me "It is just as big of an honor to be at someone's death as it is to be at someone's birth". As an RT the job of "one way" or "terminal extubation" falls to us. When it is decided to remove life support, the final act of  turning off the ventilator and taking out the tube falls to us. It's not something that should be taken lightly. Sometimes are easier than others, but I always feel bad for the family and friends that are loosing a loved one. I don't think there will ever be a time I don't feel a sort of "twang" of sadness, when I see a friend or family member trying to cope with the imminent death of some they love and care for. I just try to remember; It is just as big of an honor to be at someone's death as it is to be at someone's birth.

How to mess with the brain of a Dyslexic Girl…

I have been crazy busy with life recently. Between full time school, I also work part-time, hence the lack of posts recently. But here is a quick story. My father is an amazing man; I love him so much and am very lucky to have him as my father. That being said he is still my papa and has always enjoyed getting the last laugh.  Here would be such a story.

A while ago my father and I were taking a stroll in the park and came across a woman with a fairly ugly little white dog. The dogs face was smooched in, his eyes were crossed, he had what looked like skid marks on his white fur and look the result of some serious inbreeding. We chatted with the lady and like with an ugly baby told her how cute the dog was.
She told us her dog was a “Lhasa Apso and they were the best most prettiest dogs ever!”

As we walked away my father said to me “Lhasa Apso… that dog look more like a Lapsed Asshole!”  

This followed by a good laugh.

One week later, my mother and I were taking a walk and we came across, a much cuter version of the dog from the pervious week. With the confidence a girl who is not only dyslexic but lacks any form of a verbal filter I stated loudly…

“What a cute Ruptured Anus!”

My mother reaction was equally as spectacular as my statement. It took me an entire 2 second to figure out what I had just said. Somewhere deep in my Dyslexic mind I had gotten Ruptured Anus from Lhasa Apso and I had my father to thank for crossing those wires.

Returning from our walk I explained to my mother about the ugly Lhasa Apso from the week before which my father had called an Lapsed Asshole and how really anyone could have gotten confused and thought the dogs breed was that of a Ruptured Anus.

My father thought the entire things was hilarious and to this date is one of his proud moments as a parent.

So here are some deep parting words from a Dyslexic Girl!

“If life gives you Melons you may be Dyslexic!”

The beeps, doops, and chirps of the ICU!

Beep, beep, doop, bobidio, biboop…. Ok so phonetically writing sounds is not my thing but let me tell you there are more things beeping, ringing and flashing in an ICU than in a trashy Vegas Casino. I am quickly learning which sounds and lights I need to pay attention to…. Sorta. There other day my preceptor and I were checking out a ventilator we don’t use often and it started this terrible beeping, I kept hitting the silence alarm button to no avail. I looked over in desperation at my preceptor, who had a smirk on his face and was holding his pager in his hand… the source of irritating deep. Well at least I knew it was an important sound. It’s also a bit sad when we (my other fellow students), start mimicking ventilator noises without knowing. I’m sure there are times when we are walking down the hall making ventilator noise to each other (for no real good reason), people look at us like we escaped from the psych wing. To be honest this program often makes me feel like an escaped psych patient.

Obstacle Course (Hospital Style!)

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I'm now in critical care. It's one of those funny things; all at once I'm surprised about  how much I know and how little I know all at the same time. The learning curve is a steep one but I've always liked rollercosters.

People, poles, machines, tubes, and lines oh my!

Let me begin by saying I am going to try and amend the Resp Therapy curriculum by requesting a new course be added: Hospital Obstacle Course Training. As most of you know, I am not very aware of my body in relations to my surroundings. (Ok ok I'm klutz). I just seem to move faster than my own thought process, and my grasp on the ever important concept of "inanimate object don't move" is lacking. Trying to navigate my body around a bedside in critical care is no easy feat. There are people, machines, lines, pole, tubes, bags, medication and cords; coming off the wall, hanging form the ceiling, suspended from poles, coming off the patient, emerging from the wall; everywhere. Connecting a tube to the wall usually involves squeezing one's self between a bed, the wall, some machines, being entangled in lines, all while trying to not rip out, knock over, pull, or move anything. I swear just having to be that aware of my body is exhausting.

Could you please plug in the O2 flow meter for me?

The worst part of it all is I get what I have named the "rebound affect". After 12h of being hyper aware of my body in relation to my environment,  I'm banjaxed. My klutziness goes off the charts, it's like the part of my brain that deals with proprioception decides it's done for the rest of the day. I take corners to sharp, walk into doors, fall down steps, it's a bit ridiculous and I have the bruises to prove it. So I've decided we need add a PE course to the resp curriculum, to prepare future klutzy RT students of the perils of having to navigate around a critical care bedside: Hospital Obstacle Course. You could set up a mock bed side and have to navigate various set ups, in a certain amount of time without moving, pulling out or getting tangled in lines and tubes. It's ingenious just think about it! :)

I tell people to blow fast and hard.

Ok breath normal...back and forth....on the next breath take a big breath all the way in and BLAST it out hard and fast, keep blowing out all the way, I know you feel empty keeeeeeeppp going, almost there and BIG breath in all the way in, in, all the way to the top...  good job you can come off the mouth piece now.

Ok BLAST!! hard fast keep going!!

So that is pulmonary function testing in a nutshell. I thought I would hate this rotation. I hated PF in school. It's so boring. You look at lots of numbers, funny graphs and (in my opinion) random stupid rules. But I actually had a lot of fun this week. You get to be really social with the staff and patients. It's no easy feat for someone who can barely breath to do these tests, so it can be a challenge to get an adequate test.

That goes where again?

I was also in the bronchoscope suite. It was soooo cool. They put a fiberoptic flexible snake into a patients and take a look into their lungs. The RT is really involved and it was soo cool to see inside someone's lungs and take little samples of things here and there.

Allison is coming next weekend!!! yeah

So week two in the hospital a surprising success. I now need to go hit the books hard. One of the first lessons I've learnt is that I have so much to learn. And Allison will be down next weekend and I have a feeling the two of us are going to get into so shenanigans, so I need to get ahead on the school work, so I can take it easy next week.