My Quilts

I just got a new quilt while I was home for Memorial Day weekend. I took some pictures of it, as requested by the ladies at work. While I was getting ready to post the pictures I realized that I have never taken pictures of our wedding quilt.

Here is the first quilt. At Brian and I’s wedding we had the guests sign red fabric hearts. In the following months my grandma made a quilt using the hearts.

This is the signature from my mom and dad’s heart. If you look close you can see the hand stitching by my grandma.

If you look REALLY closely you can see the hand quilted heart design by my grandma.

This is the quilt that I got over the weekend.

This was started by my paternal great grandma.

Then was worked on by my paternal grandma.

Then lately my maternal grandma has started to finish the quilts that had been started long ago. She is currently working on another that is a double wedding ring for my sister. After that there are two more that need finished.

My sister did the tying.

Now I want to hand quilt it. Of course I have never hand quilted and don’t really know what I’m doing or have the needed equipment. I’ve been reading about quilting. Now I just need to pick a design and buy some equipment. Any tips from seasoned quilters out there? I would also like to add a patch to the back with our names, maybe in a family tree type of design.

Oh, does anyone know the name of this quilt design?

My first photography shoot

I just wanted to let you know that I have posted pictures from my first photography shoot on my photography blog and Flickr account.  Head over and check them out.  I will be posting more over the next few days as I finish editing them.  Let me know what you think!

Also, as you can see over at my other blog, I am offering free photography sessions right now.  Let me know if you’re interested!

Family Film Friday

I’ve taken on a huge project this week.  I’m moving all of my pictures from my laptop over to the desk top’s external drive.  The bad part is that some of these pictures are already on the external drive, so I’m having to sort through everything, get them into folders and delete duplicates.  In the long run I’m hoping that this will help my annoyingly slow laptop speed up a little bit.

Looking through all of the old family pictures that I have scanned over the past few years I can’t help but notice all of the pictures of my grandad being abbused by us four granddaughters.

This is a picture of Grandad and I at my first birthday party.  I had just stuck my hand in the cake, that’s him grabbing it out of the cake and keeping me from smearing icing everywhere.  When I was younger and we would look at this picture together I would tell him that he had put my hand in the cake.

This is my cousin Kristen and I sitting on his lap.  This man’s poor legs sure took a beating from all of us, but he never complained once.

This is my sister Angie playing dress up with Granddad.  We have so many pictures of poor Granddad dressed up in women’s dresses and wigs.  This poor man that farmed the same land he was born on and hunted spent his days playing dress up with four crazy girls.

He loved the Lord and his family.  He was a good man.  As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing better than a man that would do anything for his family and kids.  I just wish God hadn’t taken him so soon so we could have all learned from him in our adult lives.

Oy Vey!

I originally started a blog in order to record memories about my nursing career.  I couldn’t let one of my patients get away with out blogging about her.  In the morning when I got report from the night shift nurse she told me this little old lady was so cute and sweet and that I would love her.

Yeah, thanks for the warning.  I walked into this patients room unprepared for the psychotic out lash that I would get all day.  I walked in to find her laying on her side away from the door with her bum hanging out for the world to see.  I explained that I was her nurse for the day and that I needed to take her vital sings.  She rolled over and sat up on the side of the bed.  I put the blood pressure cuff on her arm.  She had come in with arm pit pain that she thought may be a heart attack, so I had asked which arm she wanted it taken on to make sure I wouldn’t hurt the arm that was already bothering her.  Now, I know the cuffs get tight, but not as tight as a machine compared to manual cuff.  And her pressure was sky high, so I had to pump that puppy up to about 275.  With in seconds of pumping she was flailing around and screaming.  The nurse in the room across the hall came in because she thought the patient was going to punch me.  I couldn’t even take her blood pressure because I couldn’t hear anything above her blood curdling screams.  I let the cuff deflate, then squatted down in front of her and explained that I understood that it gets really tight, but that I’m not hurting her on purpose and I had to take her blood pressure.  Then I asked if she wanted me to try using the other arm.  She then gave me a lecture about how medical science sucks and that the scientists and hospitals won’t find a different way to take someone’s blood pressure until patients start refusing to let us use a the blood pressure cuffs that cause excruciating pain.  I guess I could have started an arterial line to monitor her pressure with, that would be less painful right?  I finally got her blood pressure, which she never let me take again the rest of the day.

It wasn’t even 8 AM yet and she was also complaining that she didn’t know why she bothered coming to the hospital because we couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her.  She had been there since 3AM, the hospitals don’t do non emergency tests between 3 and 7AM.  She was scheduled for a stress test that would start around lunch time.  I already knew the stress test wasn’t going to happen since it requires taking her blood pressure multiple times through out the test.

A few hours later she called out saying she needed help to the bathroom and I was standing outside of the room next to hers, so I helped her walk to her bathroom with her walker.  On the way out of the bathroom she started screaming about the plate thing in the threshold.  You know that gold or silver or wooden thing on the floor between rooms.  She said that if her walker got caught on it and caused her to break a hip she would be suing St. Luke for millions of dollars.  I could understand being upset if the thing was hazardous, but there was nothing wrong with it and her walker slid right over the top.  We called the maintenance man anyway and when he got there he walked back out of her room and asked what he was supposed to do about a non broken floor plate.  He ended up putting a piece of bright duct tape over it to remind her it was there.

When the aid from the stress test department came to help her fill out paper work and make sure she was a candidate for a test I knew this thing was never going to happen.  They ask questions to make sure the patient hasn’t eaten since breakfast and hasn’t had any caffeine since the night before, both things that could alter the results of the test.  They also try to find out if you can run on a treadmill to decide what kind of stress test to perform.  When the clerk asked the patient if she could ask her a few questions she responded “Yes, but if they are stupid questions I won’t answer.”  Good gravy, what makes people so hateful?  Especially to people that are trying to help.

About an hour later we got a call from the stress test lab saying that the patient had refused to complete the test.  When she got back we called the Dr who told us to have her sign out AMA (against medical advice) if she was not going to cooperate with her care.  I did the paperwork and went in to have her sign the paper and to send her home.  She refused to sign the the paper or to leave.  The only thing she had wanted to do all day was to go home and now that she could she wouldn’t leave.

She said that she didn’t refuse to take the test but that she couldn’t lay flat on the table any longer during the test.  My charge nurse went and talked to her and determined that each test that we could perform involved something that she said she couldn’t do.  We called the Dr back, who is a Dr who usually screams any time she gets a phone call.  And she didn’t let us down, she screamed at us (like Dr like patient I guess).  She said to just discharge her and to make sure that we charted about her refusing the tests we offered.

Of course it would be hours before her son would come.  Actually at first she had no number for her son and the number in her chart was her daughter’s work number.  But, the daughter was out of town for the next week and we only got her voice mail saying so.  Thankfully her daughter called her room while I was in there and she was able to call patient’s son and told him he could pick her up.  Several hours later he showed.

Usually with this kind of patient their family is apauled by their behavior and appologises profusely to us.  I was expecting the same with her son.  Unfortunatly he was just as nasty as her.  When he got there I was in the middle of taking care of a new patient that was having chest pain.  The patient and her son where standing out side of her room ticked off that I wasn’t in her room the second he showed up to take her home.  He had only been there about two minutes when I went and told them that I was in the middle of an emergency with another patient and that I would be there as soon as I could.  About 10 minutes later I went in to discharge her.  As soon as I walked in her son said “Well, it’s about time.”  Whatever, I gave her the discharge forms, took out her IV, took her heart monitor off and told her to go ahead and finish getting dressed.  I told her I would call for a wheel chair to take her down stairs.  The sons comment????? I’m sure you can guess.  “Well, that will probably take another hour or two like it took you to get in here.”  This man hadn’t even been in the hospital for more than 15 minutes.  I grabbed the aid and asked her to get a wheel chair and get them off of the floor as fast as humanly possible.

This woman needed a psych consult.  No joke.  She would go from bawling her eyes out, to turning into satin woman woman with glowing red eyes, to bawling again in less than 1 minute.

I’m sure she’ll be back.  Lord help me to be a patient understanding nurse!!

So, who’s watching Idle with me??

Come on!  Admit it!  You know you watch it too!!  Right?? RIGHT??  Hello??

I’ve never actually have voted, but David Cook is the best in m book.  I’ve liked him since his audition at the beginning of the season.  But, I think Archuleta will win since all of the teeny bopper girls are obsessed with him.

What I want to know is….Is Cook going to record a full length version of ‘Hello’?

I’ve been a bad blogger

I’ve been too busy reading other blogs to write in my own.  There’s not a whole lot going on around here.  Last night Brian and i went to see the movie What Happens.  It was pretty good.  Then we went and walked by the river for a little bit down on the levee.  There was a wedding going on and a bunch of kids out after their prom in their formal dress.  It was a beautiful night.  We were supposed to go see my cousin play baseball at Ohio State today, they were doing their senior ceremony for them today.  But, it’s supposed to rain all day and turn into thunderstorms at the same time the game would be going on.  So, I think we’ll be staying home.  Maybe we’ll try to go to the butterfly show today.

It’s been raining so much this week that the drain holes in my pots can’t keep up.  I’ve been having to go around and poor off extra water in some of my plants.  It’s poring right now, once the rain lets up I’m going to move some of the pots where they’ll be protected from the rain a little bit.

Here are a few updated pictures from earlier this week.  My jalapeño is really taking off.  I will have to get new pictures of it when it stops raining.

I had these two strawberries in a bowl of cereal the other day.

This is my little parsley plant. The only one of my herbs that seems to being doing really well.

Hey Everone!!

I’m sorry that I haven’t written anything in awhile.  I’ve been working a lot lately.  Anywoo, Happy Cinco de Mayo!!  Go have some yummy Mexican food today!  I just ate nasty hospital caffeteria taco salad.  Bleck!  Maybe I’ll talk Brian into at least getting some QDoba for dinner when I get off of work.  YUM!

Oh, and happy nurses week to all you nurses out there!!  I hope your hospital is taking good care of you this week.  Ours gave away a bunch of gift cards, I didn’t win one.  So kiss a nurse this week and give her a big thank you!!

I work again tomorrow, hopefully I will get to post again Wednesday.  I have pictures of my red strawberries to show!!

Tough Case

Yesterday at work was rough.  I had a pretty good group of patients.  One was emotionally draining.  She was only 64 years old, and looked about 40.  Her body has been taken over by cancer.  It started in her lungs and has metastasized to her liver, thyroid, and brain.

During the night shift her urine had turned from clear to bright red blood.  They tested it and she had a raging UTI.  Antibiotics were started and when the Dr came in he asked me to take the foley out.  I’m not sure why, usually when someone has blood in their urine they leave the foley in so we can monitor it better.  I’m not sure if he was thinking it was time for her to start getting out of bed some or what.   I left it in until the after noon because I had just given her Lasix and I knew she would be peeing every five minutes if I took it out right away.  She had put out over 2,000 when I took it out.  By that time her urine was back to completely clear.  I asked the patient if she had remembered it being tugged on by accident during the night, since this is often the cause of a new onset of blood.  She couldn’t remember it getting tugged on and since she wasn’t really capable of getting out of bed I believed her.  So, I took the thing out as ordered, knowing that every time she had to get up to pee from then on would cause severe pain for her.

Four hours later she had to pee.  She wasn’t in any pain at the time.  I helped her up to the bedside commode.  Not only did she have on the heart monitor that is required for all patients on our floor, but she also had a continuous pulse oximeter on.  The pulse ox instantly started beeping at me, stats went from 98% to 88%.  My phone was ringing, it was the monitor watcher at the station calling to tell me her pulse was almost 200, which I was already watching on the continuous pulse ox screen.  She peed and I quickly got her back to bed.   By this time she was screaming in pain, so I pushed the 6mg of morphine she was allowed to have every two hours.

A few hours later I was in a new patients room getting his medical history when my phone rang….they needed me back in her room.  I went quickly, knowing what was probably going on.  I walked to to find Robert, our awesome nurses aid helping her back to bed.  Same story, stats in the 80’s, heart rate near 200, her screaming in pain.  This time I had no morphine to give, it had only been an hour since her last dose.  Once she was back in bed I went to see if there was anything else for pain that she hadn’t already had.  Thankfully she could have a Percoset that she hadn’t needed all day.  I hadn’t been giving it to her because it wasn’t strong enough to control the pain.  The morphine was the only thing that would cut it.  I got it for her and cursed the Dr for making me take the foley out as I walked back to the room.  I also grabbed a bed pan hoping that the next time she had to pee it would be easier on her than the commode.  By this time there was only about 20 minutes of my shift left.

As I walked back her son, who is about my age was out in the hallway crying.  After giving her the pain medicine I went out to talk to him.  He apologized and said he never thought he would see his mom going through this when he was so young.  By this time I was upset and almost in tears too.  I told him he didn’t have to apologize and that I completely understood.  It’s so scary seeing patients that are around my parents age that are so sick.  I’ve taken care of one lady that was actually younger than my mom and already lived in a nursing home because she had given up.  My mom is in her early 50’s!!

When I left last night the night shift nurse and I decided that it was time to put the foley back in if the bedpan didn’t help the situation.  The poor sweet lady is eaten up with cancer and probably doesn’t have much time to live, leave the tube in and let her pee in peace!