Muddling on

I feel incredibly blessed. A few very good friends willingly (fairly) joined me in the Warrior Dash to celebrate my upcoming 40^th birthday. It takes a pretty good friend to slog through a lake, jump over fire and crawl under barbed wire. It was hilarious. Hard to take yourself to seriously when you are waist deep in mud. To top it off, those same warriors, as well as a group of very awesome friends and family, gathered to finish celebrating with me. I still don’t turn 40 for a few weeks but they were game to come join me and toast 4 decades of life.

When we originally decided to celebrate my 40^th in September instead of on my actual birthday, it felt a little like cheating. I did it for a variety of reasons but mostly because the Warrior Dash was yesterday and I thought by having the party on that day, I might be able to get a few more Warriors to join me in the mud. I had no idea when we set the date how much I would need the love and support I found in the midst of the celebration.

The morning before the Warrior Dash was one of the worst mornings I have had as a nurse. A man died unexpectedly on my unit Saturday morning. We have patients die occasionally on our unit – but most of the time they are patients that are on comfort care (similar to hospice) and it isn’t as surprising when they pass. This patient wasn’t even a stroke patient. I am not sure what went wrong for this patient but I was the one who found him unresponsive. Initially I thought he was just resting and in a very deep sleep. It took several minutes to realize something had really gone wrong for this patient. It ended up being quite a traumatic experience and I don’t want to go into detail. It was painful for everyone involved. I thought of this man all Saturday. I went to bed thinking about him…Wondering if I could have done more...Wondering if I am strong enough to go through this again - because as a nurse, I know I will. I ache for his family who I am sure is in shock.

What a contrast to be experiencing doubt and sadness on Saturday to slogging through the mud and jumping over fire on Sunday. Laughing, running, crawling and sliding made me realize how grateful I am to be alive and healthy. How lucky I am to have such good friends. It reassured me that I am okay. I have picked a profession that will come with sadness and some doubt but the rewards are worth it. The experience was terrible on Saturday but I do love my job. There is more to be done - more life to live, more patients to meet. I won’t always be able to follow up a sad experience with so much love and support as I experienced this weekend but I know it is there when I need it. I will take a lot away from Saturday’s experience and hopefully it will make me a better nurse. It is striking to me how in just 48 hours I experienced just about every emotion humanly possible but I am out the other side feeling amazingly blessed.

Hello, Fall

I have to post a picture of my kids the first day of school. It’s what we parents do. I don’t want my kids to somehow find out that I didn’t put their picture up and feel less special. ALSO, I feel like we need to celebrate the fact that we made it through this summer. It was a crazy, messy summer but we all survived, pretty much intact and I think I even see smiles on their faces.

I don’t want to linger too much on summer. I am just about ready to move on. I did a REALLY terrible job of planning how I was going to balance working nights and having the kids home during the day. I reached a new low last week when I had to go sleep in the car for 15 minutes at one of Mason’s golf tournaments because I had been up for over 28 hours and thought I might throw up. Lovely. I am not graceful when I am tired. I am grumpy and have trouble functioning. 

My hope is that the kids won’t remember the times when I fell asleep reading them stories at night or at the park disguised by my sunglasses. My hope is that they will remember the horseback riding at Black Butte, the backpacking, the bike rides and some of the fun we had. I guess I will know for sure when I get their “what I did this summer” stories returned to me in a few weeks.

I have had several people ask me lately if I have had any interesting patients or unusual situations and honestly, it has been a weird summer even at work. People have seemed sicker and possibly crazier lately – or maybe it is just me. I imagine it is a combination of the two. The first 9 months of my job I only saw a patient with a feeding tube once or twice. By the end of the summer I was seeing one almost every shift. Judging from the patient population – everyone had a hard summer.

The kids seemed excited this morning – also a little nervous. Impossible to believe this is Mason’s last year of elementary school but we will cross that bridge later. In the midst of the excitement, there were some nerves too – from the kids and me. I hope they like their teachers and their teachers them. I hope they make nice friends and stay close to the solid ones they already had. I hope they don’t get bullied. I hope they don’t pick their nose in class or get lice. Some of the fears are less shallow than others.

So, despite the heat expected for this week, I say, bring on Fall. I have always loved Fall. I guess I am a geek like that. I loved school. Fall also means soccer games, cooler mornings and pumpkin spice lattes. All good things. Thanks for coming September. It’s nice to see you.