ramblings from a girl trying to make her dreams come true

Sunday, April 22, 2007

life

ok so the trip to kentucky was AWESOME! laura "honfon" and i took 3 of her middle school girls and 1 high school girl down to Lend-A-Hand in Stinking Creek/Walker Kentucky. We burned brush, milked cows, weeded gardens, cleaned house, made butter, hiked, rode horses, played with baby animals, etc. we just had a great time!









































































































oh and P.S. I am moving to Raleigh North Carolina on May 17 to work at a women's prison. It is a 13 week travel nursing assignment. More to come later cause I am tired and need to go to bed! :)

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

what to do with my life


so, there are so many things going on it is just crazy!! first off, i kind of randomly decided to go on this mission trip with my friend laura to kentucky and we are taking 3 of her middle school girls that she works with. we are going to work on a farm with these two old ladies in their 70s. one is a teacher and one is a nurse and they live on a farm in the back hills of kentucky and started a place called the lend-a-hand center and they just help all the people who live there and teach in the school and deliver babies and do home health. so we will be milking cows, doing farm chores, leading sunday school, and working with the two ladies who run the place. i leave saturday morning and we are driving down in a big van and hopefully, maybe stopping at the cincinnati zoo on the way down.


next thing, i have been really really hating my job doing home health so i started looking into some travel nursing opportunities. travel nursing assignments are typically about 3 months long. i was told by two agencies that i need some more experience and they cannot travel me until september. but there is one other agency that was willing to take me at my experience level. this agency is not quite as good as any of the other agencies but they are better than nothing and i will still end up making a lot more money that if i was here. the plan at this point is to move to raleigh north carolina on April 19 (1.5 weeks after i get back from kentucky) and start working at a women's prison on the 23rd. this means that when i get back from kentucky i will have to pack up my entire apartment and move it all to storage in about 1 week which will be CRAZY! the only thing i am waiting for is for the prison to accept my start date which is a week later than what they wanted. so nothing is quite a hundred percent at this point but its pretty close.

so EXCITING stuff happening, hopefully it all comes through and works out in the end.

Monday, February 26, 2007

love


Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and opens your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up this whole armor for years so no one can hurt you then on stupid person wanders into your stupid life and you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats your insides and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like ‘maybe we should just be friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul hurt, a body hurt, a real gets-inside-you and rips-you-apart kind of pain. I hate love!

All men lie but calling a man out for lying is like playing basketball with a retard and calling him out for double dribbling, you gotta let some shit slide.

Friday, February 16, 2007

what i want...and deserve


...a man who calls me "beautiful" instead of "hot." Who will call me when he says he will. A man who will lie under the stars and listen to my heartbeat while I listen to his. A man who will stay awake until I fall asleep, holding me the whole time. A man who rub my back and gives me a kiss when I'm feeling down. One who kisses my forehead and holds my hand in front of his friends. One who wants to show me off to the world when I'm in sweats and thinks I'm just as pretty without makeup on. I want a man who doesn't care how long it takes or how much it costs. One who is constantly showing me how much he cares, even if he doesn't always actually say it. I want a man who will turn to his friends, nod his head, and say "That's Her."





meredith grey is my idol

So this is a quote from Meredith Grey of Grey's Anatomy and I love her cause she is awesome! I just love it! And I especially love the last part. It is a perfect way to describe how I feel sometimes when I wake up in the morning.

"Okay, the man I love has a wife. And then he chooses her over me. And that wife takes my dog. Okay, she didn't take the dog, I gave it to her. But I didn't mean to give it to her, I meant to give it to him. But that does not change the fact that she's got MY McDreamy. And MY McDog. She has got my McLife. And what have I got?! Do you know I can't remember the last time we kissed? Because you never think the last time is the last time. You think there'll be more. You think you have forever but you don't. Plus, my conditioner decided to stop working and I think I have brittle bones. I just... I just need something to happen. I need a sign that things are going to change. I need a reason to go on. I need some hope. And in the absence of hope, I need to stay in bed and feel like I might die today."

Thursday, February 08, 2007

the best therapy ever






















i just love these girls!!!

Monday, February 05, 2007

long time gone

sorry so long since the last post. it takes me a while because i am always so busy. i hung out with my quadruplets last night and it was so awesome. they are growing up so much and they are getting cuter and cuter every day. abby is just talking like crazy and she is so smart it just blows my mind. she is 2 and i haven't seen them in about 2 months and she remembered me and my NAME! i just can't explain how adorable they are and how much i love those little girls.

i will update about myself and my life at another time. but here are some pictures of my lovely ladies :)

Saturday, December 16, 2006

i was lost but now am found :)

Ok wow it has been a very very long time! A lot has happened over the past couple months. My job is still going very well, my class is going well also. We had midterms which went alright and now we are starting in on the medical side of things as opposed to trauma. My friend Steve was staying with me for almost 2 months but I kicked his butt out cause he started taking me for granted and he really needed to get his own place plus I was sick of cleaning up after him. But anyways...I also went on a date with this cute 29 year old deputy who led me on quite a lot and ended up telling me a week later he didn't want a relationship with me. He told me that on the phone the same night that my locks in my car went haywire and locked me out while the car was running and I was outside of it wiping the snow off. When the tow-truck finally got there I was upset over the whole being locked out thing as well as over the boy and I thought my night could not get any worse. Then the tow-guy worked on the locks for about 15 minutes and couldn't get the right angle so he moved the wedge and...oops...the window shattered!! I was wrong...it got worse! So I ended up driving it home in the FREEZING cold with no window. But I did end up getting the n-lock for free which I could have done myself by smashing my window anyway, but the towing company paid for the window to get fixed at the BMW dealer and the dealer switched the bad lock mechanism from the drivers door to the other one and put the good one in the drivers side all for free so now my car is all better. So now everything is back to normal...normal car, living alone, single with no dates, and crushing on a 37 year old married guy...haha, yeah well you always want what you can't have right? Anyways, I will just be single for a while and just be me for a little longer before I meet the right guy. :) So yeah, that's about all the the exciting stuff that has happened since I wrote last. Besides that, it has just been working, sleeping, eating, and going to school. Oh yeah, I made a lot of new friends at school and a really really good friend from work, Kerri. So when I do actually maybe have a day off ever, I have some fun people to talk to and hang out with which is very nice. I got a sweet Christmas present from Marissa who is in Tanzania which made my day when it came. I miss her!! I miss all my college friends who are far away from me too...like Liz in NY, Andrea in Chicago, and Steph in Africa on Africa Mercy. Well Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! I will try very hard to write again soon!

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

College and My Friend Steph

I had an awesome time with Steph the other night. We went to the Gathering which was awesome. The gospel choir was singing and they are always great. They sang a lot of really good songs. Being there was great but also a little sad because I used to be in gospel choir and I was thinking about how fun it was and then when we sang some of the slower songs I started thinking about college in general and how great it was and how much I wish I could go back and do it again. It's kind of funny because throughout college you have fun but you can't wait to get out but once you get out all you want to do is go back. I felt all nostalgic because it was so good and I miss my time in college when I would go to chapel and the Gathering with all my friends and we would mingle and have so much fun. After the Gathering Steph and I went to visit my brother in his dorm and he had a bunch of friends in there and that made me more sad because I was getting ready to go home to an empty apartment and I missed hanging out at night with lots of people around and friends everywhere. But besides my temporary depression that I am growing up, I had a great time with Steph. I have missed her a lot over the past year since I have seen her. But it was hard because at the end of the night I had to say goodbye to her again for a while because Steph is leaving for the Africa Mercy Ship in Oct. I am excited though because there is a slight possibility that if I raise enough money I could visit her and my other friend Marissa in Africa in May. When I lived in Houston I introduced Steph and Marissa and the three of us went on a couple camping trips and we all got along great and had a great time. Marissa is in Tanzania for 2 years. So if I can raise enough money I can meet the two of them in Tanzania and hang out with Marissa too. Then Steph and I would go to Malawi and work in an orphanage for a week and then the orphanage is setting up a mini-safari. This would only work if I could raise the money so I am going to be trying VERY VERY HARD!! I love those girls and I have a passion for Africa so this would be an awesome trip if possible. I can't wait! :)

the last few weeks

So here is an update of the past couple weeks that I have not written anything. First, I started EMT school. It ROCKS!! I LOVE class. In most classes you look at the clock wishing it would go faster so you could just get home. In my EMT class I look at the clok and pray that it will slow down so that class won't end so soon. The class is 4 hours long. :) So yeah, the class is awesome!

Next, I quit my job at St. Mary's. Yes, I really did. I very much disliked my manager the entire time I worked there but he started getting worse toward the end. I also worked with a horrible old woman who was mean and angry and nasty all the time and needed very much to retire. Between the two of them, I was miserable at work. But the other main reason why I quit is because after I passed my boards I only had 4 days of orientation and they had just changed the budget and staffing grid so there were more patients per nurse. So after my 4 days of orientation I had to take 4 patient who were all in critical condition and over two weeks by myself I felt uncomfortable and scared to go to work because I didn't feel safe. When I worked with that horrible old woman, which was A LOT, she refuses to answer questions so she was not someone who I could go to for help and with the staffing grid change there were only 3 nurses on at night and one would be me, one is the horrible woman, and that left only one person who I could go to for help and if that person was very busy that left me alone. So basically I worked too hard for my license to make a mistake and lose it, let alone make a serious mistake that could cause serious complications to a patient. It just wasn't a safe environment to work in so I left.

Now I work at a Jail. HAHA. No seriously! I'm not kidding! I work at Kent County Correctional Facility in Grand Rapids. It is pretty cool. I applied for some other hospital jobs but did not get any of them. So at the jail I do basic physicals of inmates, I am part of the booking process (everyone needs to be seen by medical in order to finish the booking process- everyone gets booked whether they stay in jail or leave right away), I triage "kites" (when an inmate fills out a request to see the medical staff it is called a kite), I perform STD testing, pelvic exams, TB tests, blood draws, give meds, etc. I have already learned a ton about countraband, and being careful about needles and watching how much medical info I give to make sure they don't use that info to fake things, I have experienced pepper spray because they had to do that to one guy and the pepper spray spread throughout the whole room, I have talked to prostitutes, rapists, armed robbers, drug dealers, meth manufacturers, etc. The whole thing right now just feels sort of crazy. But I like it so far. Don't worry, I'm safe. Anytime I am with an inmate there is a guard and there are guards swarming the place so it's all cool.

So that is the story of my past few weeks. :)

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

jobs

so...I quit my job today. actually it is kind of a relief because it was miserable and I hated going to work every day and it was just a bad situation. i'm not in a very good mood about it so I will update later.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Dear heart

Dear heart,
I met a boy.
Prepare to shatter.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

RN

I PASSED!!!
now an RN!!

I LOVE IT!
HIP HIP HOORAY!


...by the way, my birthday was on wednesday and i am now 23. it was a pretty good birthday and it was extra celebration because i passed my boards. life is good right now! i had a gre
at vacation up north in the UP with my family last weekend. we went up to munising and stayed at muskalunge state park. we took the pictured rocks cruise and it was amazingly beautiful! then we basically went two tracking in the four runner and found the mouth of "the two hearted river" and hung around there for a while too. then we went out to tahquamenon falls and played in the waterfalls and hiked around the falls. next we went hunting for moose with no luck (but for my birthday my brother got me a stuffed moose named monty. :) haha). the vacation was awesome. below is a pic of the a lighthouse from the pictured rocks cruise, one of a section of the pictured rocks, one of the fam, and one of tahquamenon.


Monday, August 07, 2006

five hours later

so 265 questions on NCLEX. the longest 5 hours ever. i had NINE select all that apply. that is INSANE! a bunch of peds, oncology, lupus, medications, and prioritizing which client to see first. other than that i havent got a clue about how it went. we will see on wednesday. ill update soon! keep your fingers crossed for me!

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

you would if you could, if you had another mother

so im sitting in the room of a screaming patient- THE WORST screamer/complainer i have EVER seen. she is here with a UTI and ARF (acute renal failure). she has a history which includes bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, along with breast CA, COPD, anemia, hypothyroidism, osteomyelitis, GERD, S/P catheter, HoTN and HTN, and memory loss. she is a typical 60 yo train wreck of a woman.

some of the things she has said to me tonight include:
"i have rheuma'tory' arthritis in my legs- help me help me! take this pain away!" -grrr i cant!

"you would help me if you could, if you had another mother!" -what does my mom have to do with anything?

"mother, mother, can i be a pretty princess too?" -i take it she wants to look like me, haha!

not kidding, she just screams and screams and then curses at me and then screams some more. she hits the call button to get other people to rearrange her pillows (every 2 minutes!) because she doesn't like the way i do them. she constantly says i am hurting her even when i am 5 feet away from her and she says that i want to kill her (the thought has crossed my mind i admit but i would never say or do a thing like that- i am a nurse you know). i swear i see multiple personalities emerging as she goes from screaming and cursing at me to all of a sudden all sweet and cute like a child and asking for her teddy bear. i am definitely witnessing delusions and hallucinations from this woman.

here is my problem. she has an order for haldol q1 hour which is good dont get me wrong, but her pain meds are only q4 and she is getting ultram. i have not had any experience before tonight with ultram but at least on this woman it seems to wear off after about 20 minutes and she only gets it every 4 hours!! the other 3.5 hours are spent screaming and begging for more ultram because she is "dying" and"cant stand the pain." it is 5:00 in the morning and i am mad about getting pulled to this other unit anyway let alone have to sit with this horrible patient who by the way is in contact precautions for MRSA which i forgot to mention. i was given the option to go home at 11:00pm and use PTO for the last 8 hours of my shift but i thought i should stay and work- oh boy was i wrong!!!

i try to have patience with this woman, i really do. but seriously, there is only so much patience a person can have and i ran out of mine about 4 hours ago. i will admit that i dont have the largest store of patience in me but even someone with 10 times more patience than me would have run out long before now. i am getting a migraine from all the yelling and screaming. please god just make the next 2 hours go by fast and take my mind to a place of peace right now. im out.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

bad day?

and i thought i was having a bad day today. i was looking through old emails and i found this one. it made me laugh and it made me put my bad day a little more in perpective even if some of these things are way out of wack!

1. The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the ExxonValdez spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of themost expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, they were both eaten by a killer whale.

2. A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadlycurrent she whacked him with a handy plank of wood kept by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment, he was happily listening to his Walkman.

3. Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.

4. Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it.Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.

Your day's not so bad, is it? So, the next time you want to complain, remember .... things could be a lot worse. . . .

5. Fire authorities in California found a corpse in a burned out section of forest while assessing the damage done by a forest fire. The deceased male was dressed in a full wet suit, complete with SCUBA tanks on his back, flippers, and face mask. A post-mortem revealed that the person died not from burns, but from massive internal injuries. Dental records provided a positive identification. Investigators then set about to determine how a fully clad diver ended up in the middle of a forest fire. It was revealed that, on the day of the fire, the person went on a diving trip off the coast some 20 miles away from the forest. The firefighters, seeking to control the fire as quickly as possible, called in a fleet of helicopters with very large dip buckets. Water was dipped from the ocean then flown to the forest fire and emptied. You guessed it. One minute our diver was making like Flipper in the Pacific, the next he was doing thebreast stroke in a fire dip bucket 300 feet in the air. Apparently he extinguished exactly 5'-10" of the fire. This article was taken from the California Examiner, March20, 1998.

Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed!

6. A man was working on his motorcycle on his patio and his wife was in the kitchen. The man was racing the engine on the motorcycle when it accidentally slipped into gear. The man, still holding on to the handle bars, was dragged through the glass patio doors and, along with the motorcycle, dumped onto the floor inside the house. The wife, hearing the crash, ran into the dining room and found her husband laying on the floor, cut and bleeding, the motorcycle laying next to him and the shattered patio door. The wife ran to the phone and summoned an ambulance. Because they lived on a fairly large hill, the wife went down the several flights of stairs to the street to escort the paramedics to her husband. After the ambulance arrived and transported the man to the hospital, thewife up righted the motorcycle and pushed it outside. Seeing that gas was spilled on the floor, the wife got some paper towels, blotted up the gasoline, and threw the towels in the toilet. The husband was treated and released to come home. Upon arriving at home, he looked at the shattered patio door and the damage done to his motorcycle. He became despondent, went tothebathroom, sat down on the toilet and smoked a cigarette. After finishing the cigarette, he flipped it between his legs into the toilet bowl while still seated. The wife, who was in the kitchen, heard the loud explosion and her husband screaming. She ran into the bathroom and found her husband lying on the floor. His trousers had been blown away and he was suffering burns on the buttocks, the back of his legs and his groin. The wife again ran to the phone to call the ambulance. The very same paramedic crew was dispatched and the wife met them at the street. The paramedics loaded the husband on the stretcher and began carrying him to the street. While they were going down the stairs to the street accompanied by the wife, one of the paramedics asked the wife how the husband had burned himself. She told them and the paramedics started laughing so hard, one of them slipped and tipped the stretcher, dumping the husband out. He fell down the remaining stairs and broke his arm. (Taken from a Florida Newspaper). Now THAT is a bad day!!

Monday, July 31, 2006

ranting

one thing i really hate is when people talk about other people behind their backs. its mostly women i have to say. and i hate that. especially because i picked a career that surrounds me with women and hardly any men. women are SO catty and stupid when it comes to talking about other people and stabbing people in the backs. why can't people just grow up?? i have talked to a couple people about this and everyone says that basically you get it anywhere. i HATE that. when i started working on this unit i was told that it was the worst unit in the hospital when it comes to that backstabbing and cattyness. i didn't believe it at first but the more i work here the more i see underneath the cover and see how mean everyone is to each other. they all act like friends but really they are running to the manager with every little things and being really immature about handling their problems. they sit around in the break room making fun of other people and then when they see those people they act all nice and friendly. seriously, if people talk behind my back and go running to the manager about me then don't act like we are friends because we aren't. most of the time now i think about how much i just want to quit working here and work by myself or only with a couple of other people that all get along and know how to handle issues. i dream about being my own boss and not having to deal with all the crappy politics of the hospital and the the cattyness of the women i work with. don't get me wrong there are people at work that i love and that aren't like the others but i have to say that i think the majority of them are catty and immature. the problem is that there is really nothing to do about it and that is what gets me. the manager can't seem to handle the issues but honestly what could he do? people are gonna talk no matter what? it's the same at my mom's office (mostly women), my dad's office (mostly men), as well as the workplaces of all the friends that i have talked to. you can never get away from it!!! grrrr! i just had to rant!!

food for thought


HOW OLD
would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

some people
walk in the rain...
others just get wet... (roger miller)

life is too important
to be taken seriously
(oscar wilde)

our truest life is when

we are in dreams awake

(thoreau)

anything is possible (proverb)

live to the point of tears (camus)

yesterday is history
tomorrow is mystery
today is a gift
(eleanor roosevelt)

the purpose of life is

to live it,
to taste experience
to the utmost,
to reach out eagerly and
without fear
for newer and richer

experience.
(eleanor roosevelt)

Thursday, July 27, 2006

hilarious


This is awesome!
bad day?...watch this.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

you know you're a nurse if...

▸ when using a public restroom, you wash your hands with soap for a full minute and turn off the faucets with your elbows
▸ you find yourself checking out other customer's arm veins in grocery waiting lines
▸ your favorite dream is the one where you leave a mess at a patient's bedside and tell a doctor to clean it up
▸ everyone, including complete strangers, tells you about each and every ache and pain they have
▸ you want to put your foot through the TV screen every time you see a nurse on a soap opera doing nothing but talking on the phone and flirting with doctors
▸ you can almost SEE the germs on doorknobs and telephones
▸ you can watch the goriest movie and eat anything afterwards, even spaghetti with lots of tomato sauce
▸ you use a plastic 30cc medicine cup for a shotglass
▸ you've sworn you're going to have "NO CODE" tattooed on your chest
▸ you believe every patient needs TLC: Thorazine, Lorazepam and Compazine
▸ you would like to meet the inventor of the call light in a dark alley one night
▸ you believe not all patients are annoying ... some are unconscious
▸ you can only tell time with a 24 hour clock.
▸ almost everything can seem humorous ... eventually
▸ every time someone asks you for a pen, you can find at least three of them on you
▸ you can intubate your friends at parties
▸ you don't get excited about blood loss ... unless it's your own
▸ you live by the motto, "To be right is only half the battle, to convince the physician is more difficult."
▸ you've basted your Thanksgiving turkey with a toomey syringe
▸ you've told a confused patient your name was that of your coworker and to HOLLER if they need help
▸ when checking the level of orientation of a patient, you aren't sure of the answer
▸ you avoid unhealthy looking shoppers in the mall for fear that they'll drop near you and you'll have to do CPR on your day off

Monday, July 10, 2006

lemons

when life hands you a lemon, say, "oh yeah. i like lemons. what else you got?"
-henry rollins

just something to think about.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

bursting at the seams





i just LOVE the hogans. from the top left: steph and paul (amazing parents of 5 kids), keyan elizabeth, mckenzy faith, abagayle grace, sidney ann, jamahl daniel (4yrs old). i spent the day with them as i do a lot and they are all just TOO cute! i can't even stand it! the whole family is amazing and i love them all so much like they are my own family. steph has been studying with me for boards and she gets on me worse than my own mother about how i procrastinate and will do anything to get out of studying but i am so thankful for everything she does and i don't know how i would get through this nclex crap without her. i watch steph as a mother and i can only hope to one day be as good of a mom as she is (as well as my own wonderful mother)! steph's parents live with them too and they are also great! no pictures of them though. :( i was just sitting here in steph's sunroom tonight studying and i started thinking about how i just have this bursting love for so many people in my life right now and i wanted to write it all down (after i finished studying of course). steph and i went to captain sundae's to eat ice cream and study tonight and then we stopped at my house on the way back and when i saw my parents i felt like i missed them so much since moving out and i just wanted to hug them forever. i felt like i loved them so much i could cry. then i was thinking about the hogans and how they have pretty much adopted me right into their family even when there are already 5 kids and 4 adults in one house and i just feel so lucky to have the family(ies) that i do! i am one lucky girl! i feel like i can't even put into words how appreciative i am to the hogan family for everything they do for me and for my own parents and all the support i get from everyone. i don't feel like this entry really was able to explain half of what i wanted it to. i guess there are just no words to describe how i feel. steph is the greatest friend in the world, the babies and jamahl are too cute for words, paul cracks me up, my parents rock my socks off, and i can't thank anyone enough!