I WANT YOUR PIZZA!

Today I felt the urge to wrestle a piece of pizza from a two year old and shove it in my mouth.

It wasn't like she was really eating it. No, she was using the pizza to dip into the ketchup and then licking the ketchup off the pizza. YUM. Oh to be two again....

It's funny with this whole restricted diet thing. I've been doing well, not a whole lot of cravings and then- BAM! I sat down to help this two year old eat her lunch and I WANTED her pizza. WANTED.

Sigh.

I miss cheese. Pizza. Cake. Cookies.
I want to feel better, but wouldn't it be nice to have your cake and eat it, too sometimes?

The Best Part of My Job...

...is 5 year olds. Seriously.

Today I had a waaaaay hyper little boy. I was outside his room getting ready to come in and he popped his little head out of the door.

him: "Hey you! You are my nurse!"
me: "Yup! Hi patient!"

him: "Guess what? I can be anything!"
me: "You can? Awesome! Can you be a bunny rabbit?"

him: "YES! I CAN!"
me: nod my head encouragingly.

He then starts jumping up and down screaming, "I'm a bunny, I'm a bunny, I'm a bunny!!!"

Hahaha. So cute. I almost busted out laughing.
Five year old are awesome.

Goodbye Oakland

Today was my last day working at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in our Oakland campus.

When I go back to work Tuesday, I will drive to a different city, park in a new place, and walk into a brand new hospital, work on a brand new floor, with brand new rooms, room numbers, nurse phones, call buttons, playroom, elevators, lockers....everything. Even how we give meds are changing. More technology. More computers. More ROOM!

It's a good change and I'm excited.
We've been looking forward to our new building for SO long!
It feels like we've been building forever.
Now it's here and it BEAUTIFUL!

Seriously, go check it out. It's awesome.

It was just odd today working in a hospital that's all packed up.
The things we use everyday are packed up. We're working out of boxes, running all over to find simple things like pens, paper and monitor wires. So funny. It's great.

We're trying to get the census of the hospital down so it's easier to move, but someone didn't tell all the kids with asthma, seizures and gastro illness. lol. We're still pretty full. Almost at full capacity. :) I'm interested to see how this move is going to go.

We've been practicing for months. It will go well.

I just wish I could watch it!
I am off this Saturday when the move starts at 7am.
I'm excited I'm off, but a bit sad, too.

Not everyone can say that they helped move an entire functioning hospital to a new city.
But on Sunday...we'll be able to say that.
So cool.

WHOO! Go Lawrenceville!

P.S. - I posted new pics on the slideshow to the right. I had a ton of fun in downtown Carnegie....about a 1/2 mile from my house. AMAZING place! LOVE the pictures! Hope you enjoy them, too!

Cute Littles

I have two cute little ones today with cute stories so I thought I'd tell you all.

(I LOVE when I have cute kids.)

#1 - Five years old, curious about everything.

I took him to the bathroom cause he's hooked up to an IV pole and such. The pole is like 3 times his size, lol. The funny part is when we got back to the bed I was like, "climb up!" and he looked at me and was like, "Can we make the bed first?" Ok, that is really funny to me! What 5 year old asks if he can make his bed? And after I made it for him, he "fixed" it so it would be REALLY made. lol. SO cute.

#2 - 12 months, the cutest red cheeks ever.

So I went into his room and this Dad was feeding the kid. What I mean by feeding is that Dad set the tray of cream of wheat and scrambled eggs on the seat of a chair, opened all the containers and proceeded to let the kid stand and dig in. TOO funny. Dressed only in a diaper this child had a circle of eggs and cream of wheat on the floor around him. He was just grabbing handfuls of eggs/cereal and shoving it in...or down his front...or on the floor. He was covered head to toe. Hilarious. I laughed. I'll have to remember that.

4 days.
the end.

Errr...

So, I was going to update, but the kiddos have kept me running all night here at Children's. Maybe tomorrow.

Oh dear.

So, it has somehow managed to become *today* (that being January 20th, 2009 - in case you didn't know our new President [i think] is getting sworn in today...i could be wrong) without me ever closing my little brown eyes once. And I wasn't at work. Sigh.

What was I *doing* all night you ask?

Well, I watched tv until the thought of watching more pointless (not very entertaining) entertainment made me want to vomit all over my nice furniture.

Then I moved to the kitchen, where I proceeded to eat half of the fridge over the course of the (very) long night. Thank goodness for those lovely Italian genes that permit me to eat 6 large pancakes as PART of my midnight snack. Oh yes, sorry, I forgot the butter and peanut butter I smeared all over them before dousing them in pancake syrup....heavenly.

Then, I laid on my newly-re-covered-pretend-down-comforter-because-I'm-allergic-bed-covering that is YELLOW which reminds me of settling down in nice fluffy yellow-ness.

--contented sigh here--

I know, I know, that means nothing to some of you. Sorry. Suffice it to say, I enjoy laying on my soft yellow comforter....AND read an entire....let me check...563 page book in approx five hours, maybe less. Eh. It was ok. But not because the book isn't fabulous, it was, but because I feel icky being up all night when I'm not at work.

After book, I ate, again and then proceeded to check for updates on all the sites I read. I can't BELIEVE you all did not ALL post new posts between midnight and 4am. Come on! What were you doing people!?! Ahem, I digress. I forgive you all by the way.

Then I decided to finish reading someone's blog from her first post to where I started reading her blog. I accomplished that goal and read approx 2 years of very enjoyable blogage, where I learned much about raising MSC*.

*that would be "Many Small Children" of which I plan to have someday.

Now, I am here. Writing because it is 6:30am exactly and it is still to early to call someone if you are trying to be polite. Which I am, because I for one hate being woken up myself.

I am still over 12 hours away from the I've-been-up-for-24-hours-mark and I am barely even tired. I could draw blood, reset IVs and give a coherent hand off report for at least another few hours. :)

Let me just say that I am a silly duck. Very silly. I HATE staying up all night when I am forced to. I LOVE staying up all night when I decide to. (and oh yes, that could *lovingly* be referred to as evil wicked sin otherwise known as rebellion in my little heart...not something I try to foster but...eh..I am a sinful human) Tonight, last night, I was forced to, because I did not force my body out of bed before 6pm. (MORE rebellion!) Granted, I did not go to bed until 10am. My body has a little rule that I should be familiar with by now. I need 8 hours of sleep. Count em. Eight hours. Anything less and I am semi-incoherent and need at least five LOUD alarms to wake me up. Silly, I know, but true.

YET, time after time when getting off of night shift, I convince myself to "fool" my body, stay up late (in the morning after getting home from night shift) and then wake up early so that I can go back to bed by 10pm that night and sleep the entire night. I can count on one hand (finger) that the above scenario has actually worked. Since then, I've just been lying to myself. But it's hard. There really is no good way to get my body back on a day shift from working a night shift then to just be miserable for a few days and try to be polite, nice, welcoming, etc to others while I adjust. (Think going through jet jag every two weeks without ever getting to leave the time zone)

While I love my job, I'll be glad for the day that I can trade all these night shifts in. They send me for a loop.

And I am not really that miserable when I'm adjusting, I just feel this way right now since I've been hanging out all night doing nothing. Because the lovely thing is, I am awake enough that I can't sleep, yet tired enough that I didn't even hold up the book I read all night most of the time. It and I laid on my bed. I was using almost NO energy and yet I was still ravenous! crazy.

crazy crazy crazy

and now I have this urge to go sew a multi-colored striped quilt!

Do I know how to make a quilt? Do I have all the fabric necessary for this image in my head? Do I have a child to put under said quilt that I would make? Do I have to time to make this quilt and STILL get my house clean (because I'm still working on that last pile)?

No.

Does that stop me from wanting to try it anyway?

Never.

Change of Plans

So, change of plans. I am at work tonight instead of tomorrow night. My supervisor called me yesterday at about 6:30pm begging for people to come in to work 11pm-7am. She offered to switch me my 12 hour shift for this little measly 8 hour shift. I had slept until 12:30pm yesterday, so I figured it wouldn't be too much of a stretch. So far, it's going pretty well.

But the clean up at the house. Oh, the clean up. There are many things to do. Christmas decorations to take down, Christmas ornaments to put away and reorganize for next year, sewing projects to FINISH and then pack away, kitchen table to de-clutter, room to clean, fold, wash, reorganize, put away and then furniture to rearrange to accomodate a piano. QUICK BREATH. Goodwill stuff to take there, boxes of stuff to pack for previous roommates, fridge to clean out, food to eat. Sigh.

Oddly enough, I'm looking forward to all this. When I'm in the mood, I like to clean. I actually obsessively clean. When I get it into my head to do something, thats ALL I want to do. It can be a good thing. For instance, that's how I finished the bathroom in two days, EVEN though I "had" to paint the bathroom twice. Three times if you count the primer.

Can I also say that the book Ragamuffin Gospel is changing my life? It's so good to be reminded that Jesus LOVES us, is rooting for us and some times, it's not about you being happy, but about being HOLY. That's a good one.

All for now.

(Hopefully I will get bathroom pictures up tomorrow.)

Grey's Anatomy

The past few weeks at work, I've had several critical situations. I feel like I'm on Grey's Anatomy!

Last week, I had to bag a patient (breathe for him with a bag that forces air into his lungs) and this week, I had to hold pressure on a patient who was hemorrhaging! Crazy! I even had to walk all the way down to the ICU holding pressure leaned over his bed....very dramatic, but was totally necessary at the time. Again, CRAZY!

Sigh.
Who am I kidding? I love it.

Warm liquid in bare hand

I caught a kid's puke in my bare hand the other day for the first time.

I was behind him and he was in the bed facing his poor Dad who was sleeping in his bed. I heard the noises, I knew puke was coming, and I had nothing but my hand. I didn't want poor sleeping Dad to get woken up with warm puke trickling down his face. GROSS.

This is the first time I've ever caught bodily fluids in my bare hand. (Although I did grab a paper towel to catch more puke in....I know! I couldn't find anything better, ok?) It was not as gross as I'd always imagined it to be and yes, I did wash my hands MOST thoroughly after that.

Ahhh, the joys of being a children's nurse.
I'm gonna be such a good mom!

Nursing Blue's

Work stinks. (!!!!)
I feel like I want to scream, but I'm WAAAAY too tired for all that.

I love my job, I really do, but I hate how it's been the past few weeks. There is never enough time to take care of everyone how they are supposed to be taken care of. It's horrid. I have been getting out late for the past two weeks, I'm behind on administrative stuff I'm supposed to be doing, and at the end of the day, I still feel like a crappy nurse. Basically, the kids are really sick and busy and high maintenance and I have 5 of them at once!

It's pretty bad when you put in an entire 13 1/2 hour day 3 times a week, without a lunch or pee break sometimes and you still feel like you didn't do enough.

Grr.

Hmm...where's that blog I wrote awhile ago about "why I love my job....to read later when I hate my job." ??

Some reasons why I <3 my job.....

- I get to hold and feed teeny weeny beautiful 4 lb babies
- I get to take two year olds by the hand and help them pick out smiley stickers
- I get to draw happy faces on band aids after I make a boo-boo
- I get to make funny faces to make kids laugh
- I get to work with funny cranky small people
- The Pop Stop downstairs makes REALLY great chocolate milkshakes
- I get an honest to goodness sit down hour for lunch
- I get to go to a 12:45pm yoga class on a weekday and have a private lesson because I'm the only one there. lol.


The floor is great right now, but I know that during respiratory/winter season when it's crazy I might need this list of why I like my job.

:)

It gets crazy.

this is hard.

I feel completely beat up and broken today. Sore all over, hurt mentally, just....hurting.

I finished 4 days of working 12 hour days all in a row yesterday at 9:30pm. Yes, that is two hours after I am supposed to be off work. You see, yesterday at shift change, one of our favorite patients, a patient who is at the hospital more than he is at home, stopped breathing. Hand off report between nurses was interrupted by 10 of us running to the back hallway to grab supplies, administer fluid bolus' and call the ICU. Within minutes the situation was overwhelming. Several times, I had to remind myself that I could not cry. Not yet. There was work to do.

In that moment, you close everything of yourself emotionally off, just to be able to complete the task at hand. Saving someone's life.

At the same time this was happening, another patient started bleeding from their fresh surgical wound. Within another couple of minutes, the same hallway was even more crowded as one team prepared a child for transfer to the ICU and a ventilator, while the other team prepared a child and their hysterically crying family for another trip to the OR. Truthfully, I've never seen that much bright red blood all in the same place before. It was horrible and very scary.

At the same time, yes all these happened in the same 30 minutes, I received a patient from the ER who had a very questionable neuro exam. Ugh. More stat pages, more yelling into the phone for someone to come up, quickly please and evaluate this patient.

I felt numb at the end of the day. It took two hours to return the unit to semi-normality.

I cried all the way home. I cried in my bed, explaining to my roommate why I was crying, and feel like crying again today.

It's going to be okay. I am ok, but it hurts. I just have to acknowledge that right now. It hurts and it's ok.

Just breathe.

Friday's are yucky

It was a good, hard day today.

The day started out pretty rough. I had quite the attitude at work first thing in the morning. I was trying not to, but seriously, if my mom had been there, I would have asked to be grounded. I had a thousand excuses, but none seem sufficient now.

I prayed early on for help, because I knew how yucky I was being. The Lord decided to help by making me more conscious of how awful my attitude was. Sigh.

I can say that I tried today. I can't say how much I succeeded.

It just makes me more aware of how much I need the Lord. It's been a rough two weeks of switching back and forth from night shift to day shift and I'm pretty emotional from the lack of sleep. I haven't met with the Lord like I have wanted to these past few days, and it shows. Without the Lord, I am a mean, petty, selfish person. He is necessary for my life. He is necessary for me. He is necessary for His sake alone.

It's like when I have the Lord, when I've met with Him and felt his absolute goodness, mercy and grace on me, my heart can't help but be softened. My spirit can finally sit it's bum right on my flesh for once and have victory. When I are with Him, I want to be more like Him. It's a funny thing, but true.

The day ended well. I was able to overcome most of the attitude (I think.) I went for a walk. I swung on the swings across the street from my house, tilted my head back and felt the sun on my face. I got to enjoy the sun, instead of hiding from it. It's so funny how much I LOVE the sun. I actually almost cried the other night when I turned off my light to go to sleep, because my room was DARK. It was pitch black dark. (!!!) It was so amazing to go to bed without having to hide my head under my covers so the sun won't keep me up.

Tonight, I am celebrating the Lord's victory in my life, making cards for a friend, doing laundry and relaxing. No matter how many bad days I have, I know that the Lord will always draw my heart back to His. He's necessary.

baby woes

hi all. i've got a cute little one in my arm, (12 days!) so i am typing this one handed. you'll have to excuse the typos. please.

[ i love holding babies. ]

i had promised a more in depth post regarding the train of thought i've had lately in my time with the Lord. Meeting with the Lord has so many aspects to. You could really talk about them forever.

consider the following scenario:

a lot of times i want to meet with the Lord, so i grab my Bible, sit down in a corner and say, "Ok God. I'm here. show up!" I wait a bit, open my Bible, read a bit, and....sit there. At this point i get a little frustrated and start to wonder why the Lord is not showing Himself to me. Somtimes, I get up and leave, defeated, to frustrated to keep trying. Other times i sit there, continue to stew.
and wait.

Why doesn't the Lord show up?

Lately the Lord has been teaching me (again) about positioning. I'm not talking ballet poses, although I do love those, but rather how I prepare myself to meet with the Lord. You see, in the scenario above, I was physically prepared to meet with the Lord, but most likely my heart was lacking.

The position of my heart matters when I am trying to meet with the Lord! When I come to Him and demand His presence because I'm ready now, it shows that my heart is selfish and demanding. It shows that I am thinking of my needs first. It says that I think that I am important. It says that I think I am more important than the Lord.

Whoa. How did we get there? Very quickly.

It's easy as humans to come to the Lord all flustered, all hurried, thinking of the next place we have to be, without regard to the feelings, wants and needs of the Lord. You don't come to the Lord just for you. Jesus desires a relationship with us. Relationships require two. It requires two that place one another above themselves. It requires that one think of the needs and wants of the other. In essence, it requires a marriage covenant type relationship. One in which you die to yourself to prefer the other person.

Now, that's hard. We are sinful people, full of flesh, constantly in battle with our flesh and spirit natures. Sometimes, you just have to remind yourself of the truth. Sometimes I just have to read myself the riot act. Lovingly.

Kristen, where we you when the Lord laid the foundation of the earth?
Kristen, who forgave you yesterday and forgives you today?
Kristen, who has made you clean?
Kristen, whose faithfulness stretches across ALL generations?

Kristen, remember that His ways are higher than your ways.
Kristen, remember that you don't know everything, that you aren't perfect.
Kristen, remember the compassion of the Lord, that He wept.
Kristen, what does His heart beat for?
Kristen, what does the Lord want for today?

Suddenly, instead of standing above the Lord, foot tapping, demanding, I find myself positioned entirely different. I find myself sitting at the feet of Jesus, head bowed, repentent of my sinful nature. My heart open to just see Him, touch Him, feel Him.

In this position, I don't want something FROM Him, I want Him. In this position, I place myself under Him. Under His authority, under His leadership, under His care, under His covering.

It's not always easy to get there. Tonight, I find it hard. I am tired, cranky, emotional and know that I won't be getting much sleep in the next immediate 20 hours.

However emotionally hard the positioning process is, just know that it doesn't take much physically or in time. All it took for this girl, was one tired sleepy post at 4am that she didn't want to write.

My heart is reminded and I am thankful. [deeply]

A Couple Thoughts

I really love my job. Every time I get to hold a kid, make a fishy face, blow a kiss, wipe away a tear, or reassure a parent I just think of how lucky I am. I can't even explain to you how amazing it is to work with small people. Or even what's its like to work with a team of intelligent, dedicated, caring individuals. It blows me away sometimes.

I love the Lord. I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to really know the Lord. To not just know about Him, to not just have the capacity to grasp and recognize His presence, love and grace, but to know Him. As some people say, to know what it's like to look into His eyes, instead of always just taking from His hand. It's not enough to just be grateful and love how His presence in your life has changed you. It's not enough to just be thankful and fall on your face before Him. At least, it's not enough for me. Jesus refers to us as His friends. I want to be closer to Him.

I'm really glad summer is here.

I'm working on the things that come out of my mouth. To lessen the complaints, the obvious annoying comments, the rash harsh thoughts, the judgments, crass slang. It's just not good and I'm working on it.

My painting class starts next week and like with anything new, I'm a bit nervous. And excited. :)

It's time to start working out again, slowly, so I don't re-hurt my back. I'm feeling about 95% back to normal, most of the time.

I have amazing friends. And church.

Wish Dean a happy birthday when you see him. It's his birthday.

You know.

You know, everyone thinks I am pretty lucky, having 4 days off a week.

I am.

BUT, do you know how hard it is to motivate myself to do ANYTHING on my days off? lol. It is extremely hard....at least for me. It's so much nicer just to "rest" and sit on the couch for a few minutes, that turns into an hour, that turns into me reading a 400 page book in one sitting. Wow.

So yeah.

BUT, today was wonderful. I had the day off and I was PRODUCTIVE! I folded all the clothes that have been staring at me from my floor, I cleaned the living room so it doesn't have piles of random "stuff" in every corner AND I dusted. *GASP!* I took $500 worth of nursing textbooks to the Half Price book store. They gave me a whole $25 for them. lol. Then, I loaded up my car with things destined for the Salvation Army thrift store.

I feel great, and happy that I was productive. It sure beats feeling guilty at the end of the day for having done nothing. :)

Overnights #15

Tonight was fun.
I'm reading a book that seems to have no plot, which is very upsetting considering the first and second book in the series were quite good. Bah.

It was, for most of us, our second night in a row. Tomorrow will be our third. Tomorrow I will be responsible for the floor as I'm filling in for the charge nurse every now and then over this summer.

Eck.

Pray for me, for strength and wisdom.
That's all.

Only three more overnights till I'm back to days! YAY!

Overnights #13

Hi.

Overnights #12

Here I am at work.
It's been a great night so far. I love the people I'm working with tonight. It's been busy, I have some really sick kiddos, but I like it that way. It definitely beats sitting around feeling sleepy all night.

I'm reading a Max Lucado book, and this is a great quote from it. The book is "When God Whispers Your Name".

"So, what do you think? What does God do when we are in a bind...He fights for us. He steps into the ring and points us to our corner and takes over...His job is to fight. Our job is to trust. Just trust. Not direct. Or question. Or yank the steering wheel out of His hands. Our job is to pray and wait. Nothing more is necessary. Nothing more is needed."

I love it.

I have been feeling the urge to simply pray more and more lately. There are so many things over which I have no control. Problems that I have no way to solve, fix, or quicken. I can only pray and believe with faith that God is in control.

It's a nice feeling.

Overnights #11

Back to another week and a half of overnights.

I'm finding that the more time I spend rotating, the easier it is getting to rotate and still "be normal." I am adjusting and I have a "routine" down for getting onto night shift and coming off. I have adjusted my expectations of myself, and life is settling down. It's going well and I'm happy.

I'm reading in Jeremiah right now. Sometimes it's hard going, but really, most of what I see is the jealous love of the Lord for His people. I read today about false prophets that were prophesiying in the name of the Lord. I think it read like, "And God said, they prophesy in my name, but I did not speak to them." He talks all about how the false prophets have lead the people astray, but this is what is amazing about our Lord. He doesn't just throw His hands up and let the people be lost. He has a plan. HE will return the people to the truth if the leaders won't speak the truth.

Even disobedient humans cannot stop the will of the Lord, it will be accomplished with or in spite of them.

I like that.
God is bigger than us and our stubborness and sin.