Because Jimmie said so...

My friend Jimmie has a fabulous blog.  You should read it.  She's funny and witty and just basically wonderful.  And I lurve her.
She is so funny and witty and wonderful and writes so pleasingly that she won an award!

Now, this award caused her to point to me and some other bloggers to tell about other bloggers that we think folks should read.  Jimmie did 11.  I am not in the Nigel Tufnel club of blog following, but there are several that I enjoy.  So:

Obviously,  Jimmie's World, for all the aforementioned reasons

but also,
 Runner Girl (she's pretty famous, but she's also local -- to me-- and awesome) She's super fit but so encouraging to anyone who wants to try to become fit or more fit

 No Bags to Check is a personal favorite.  I am a travel junkie and this is right up my alley.
911 You Can't Make This Stuff Up is less of a blog and more of a facebook page, but I love it.

and finally, The Happy Hospitalist, it's irreverent and right on.

Jimmie also asked us to answer her stolen interview questions.  That sounds like fun, so here goes:

What is your favorite word?

Purulent.  No, really.  It is.  It is much better than trying to relate, in writing, a patient's complaint of drainage from, say, an ear, than trying to turn "pus" into an adjective.  Trust me on this one. 

What is your least favorite word?

Ratchet.  As in, "I thought she was cool, but that bitch ended up being ratchet."  First, it's a bastardization of the word, "retched" and second, it alludes to the scariest, worst example of a nurse of all time.  

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

It's sick, it's twisted, I know.  But, the hardest shifts, with the sickest and most injured patients, when I get to really use all of my skills and experience to make a difference in a patient's life.  That's what covers all of the above for me.  

What turns you off?

A sense of entitlement.  From anyone.  Whether you think someone owes you some sort of deference because of your supposed social standing or whether you think just the world in general owes you.  I can't stand it.  No one owes you anything.  No one.  

What is your favorite curse word?

Jimmie stole mine.  It's fuck.  And any of many variations on that theme.

What sound or noise do you love?

The sound of my pups' paws clicking on the tile.

What sound or noise do you hate?

Monitor alarms that are being ignored.  Set your parameters so that shit only goes off when it means something and stop ignoring it!

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I've tried others.  This is it.  Maybe teaching, but even then, I'd want to teach nursing.  

What profession would you not like to do?

Respiratory therapist.  I know and love many of them.  But, dude...I can't deal with snot.  Just. Can't. Do. It. 

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Your Pop is standing over there, he's been waiting.  And be careful, because Erica is hiding behind the gate waiting to jump out and say, "Boo!"

Quarantine

Yes, Ebola again...

How did this whole conversation about quarantine or no quarantine become political? It's ridiculous.

Here are the facts:

* No, it is not airborne, though it can be spread by droplets (cough, sneeze)

* It is not super contagious, but it IS contagious enough that whole counties are overrun with it and even medical professionals who know how to maintain precautions have become infected

* If someone becomes infected, they have a 70-90% chance of dying. That same mortality rate is the reason we give tetanus vaccines to EVERYBODY for even minor scrapes and give updates even when we aren't sure whether you might have had one recently enough.

Even though your chances of contracting tetanus are very, very low.

So, how has a simple 21 day quarantine been turned into a political battlefield?

Reason, folks.

It's somewhere in between the panic and the insane need to insist that this disease is no threat at all.

And it's apparently beyond this country.

No video required...

You know...it's almost Labor Day, so now seems an appropriate time to post this:

I think it's great that so many people have jumped on the "ice bucket" bandwagon and tooted their own horn for a good cause. ALS is a horrible disease, absolutely. It seems to always strike the most active and vibrant people, slowly stripping them of the lives they've built and leaving them with an active mind and a useless body, eventually leaving them unable to breathe on their own.

For more than 50 years, though, the Muscular Dystrophy Association has worked toward finding a cure and treatment and provided needed assistance with care to the sufferers and their families. For ALS and also for more than 40 other neuromuscular diseases. Trust me, all of them are horrible. Many of them affect children -- thus "Jerry's Kids".

Any charitable impulse will always be applauded by me, but let me offer the MDA as an alternative for your ALS dollars.

According the the ALSA's own info, only 27% of the money they receive actually goes to research. Compare that to the Muscular Dystrophy Associaion (MDA)-- yeah, Jerry Lewis' schtick.

I incorrectly listed an old stat a bit ago that that greater than 90% of every dollar taken in by MDA goes to research and treatment, it's sadly dropped in the post Jerry Lewis era to about 74%, but that still outstrips the ALSA by 300%.

So, this Labor Day weekend, it'd be great if you could send a few bucks along to the MDA.

No video selfies required.

Happy Birthday, Pop

August 5, 1941

Japan had not yet attacked a US held port in Hawaii, pulling America into World War and out of the Great Depression.

Susan Dean gave birth to a ginger haired, blue eyed boy.  He was the 5th boy, the 8th child (of the 10 she would eventually have).

By all accounts, he was a cheerful and inquisitive boy.  He would go on to be popular in his high school, in the drama club, a jokester. 

He would become well known for his loud, Santa-like laugh and his jovial countenance.

After returning from his 4 year Army stint, he married Florence, known to all as "Sissy" and becoming the father of 5.

I was the 4th of 5.  It just occured to me that we were the same fraction, I was just a reduced fraction. 

He loved being a dad.  He actually looked forward to those long road trips that have become fodder for standup comedians and TV shows.  And he made them fun.  The end point was always worth the long road miles, too.  King's Island most every summer, camping/hiking in the deep hills of My Old Kentucky Home, seeing my oldest brother graduate basic training in New Jersey and then jump school in Georgia.  Picking oranges and playing in the surf in Florida. 

And there was always education along the way.  Everything was a game of trivial pursuit with Pop.  Whether watching a movie or helping with homework or driving down the road.

He loved learning and he loved teaching, things he passed on to me.

I'm missing him pretty hard lately. 

But, it's getting easier.  Mostly when I think of him now, it's good.  It's sometimes bittersweet and sometimes it still hurts like hell.  But, mostly it's good. 

Happy Birthday, Pop.

Oh, NOW I get it!

I haven't posted much political stuff lately, and will largely refrain in future, but this resonated for me.

So, I'm actually just sharing someone else's blog.

This doesn't apply to every left leaning person, but to too many.

"Truth is that which serves the party." The capital-R revolution was such a good, it could eliminate all that was bad, that manipulating facts was not even a venial sin; it was a good. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. One of those eggs was objective truth."
This part I have determined for myself.  Truth is meaningless, feelings and good intentions are everything for a certain element of the left.
But, the following was a revelation and finally explains something that I have never understood: the disconnect folks have when the current president is doing the same and worse as the previous president and yet they refuse to acknowledge it:
"messages in this left-wing forum publicly announced that they did what they did every day, from voting to attending a rally to planning a life, because they wanted to destroy something, and because they hated someone, rather than because they wanted to build something, or because they loved someone. You went to an anti-war rally because you hated Bush, not because you loved peace. Thus, when Obama bombed, you didn't hold any anti-war rally, because you didn't hate Obama."

Most conservatives I know will quickly agree that W signed every spending bill that was put in front of him and will objectively review his bad decisions.  Anyone who reads this who loves the current president, please name one thing that he has done with which you deeply disagree.  I'll wait here.

If you are reading this, and you lean left and your immediate reaction was to mentally call me names, read the attached blog again.

I think it bears thinking  about.

It actually makes me rethink my own positions to ensure that I'm coming from a place of building and improving and not hating. 

I'm not really digging this revelation

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.” 
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars


Grief does not change you, it reveals you...
Well, hell.

So, when Pop died, I felt broken.  But, in not too long a time, a year, two maybe, I was able to learn to cherish the memories and push the sadness down so that it wasn't the overriding feeling.

And, it hasn't been such a long time since she died.  Just a few months.  So, maybe I'm expecting too much.  But, I'm sick of being Debbie Downer. 


Being in Colorado, with my Colorado Peeps, minus Erica...it was hard.  It was meant to be all about celebrating the happy, long marriage of a couple of our friends, and it WAS about that.  But, I felt her absence so acutely. 

I drank too much at the vow renewal reception and did a whole Granny Gert Ugly Drunk Cry.  Thankfully, not anywhere where the bride knew about it.  Publicly, I was just the friend who got tipsy and everybody laughs and a few shake their heads.  I was trying to celebrate.

But, just now, I was walking Cookie, on a perfectly lovely evening and I haven't touched a drop, and I started doing an uncontrolled ugly cry.

Now, it probably doesn't help that I'm currently reading The Fault in Our Stars.  I keep wondering what she was really thinking at the end.  She kept up such a cheerful countenance, until the very end when pain and probably the knowledge that she was really losing caused her to lash out at those who were there with her.

I've been having a rather rough go of it and I keep trying to just push the sadness into the background again, but it just doesn't seem to want to go.  It's all wrapped up with this anger that I keep having, anger at her, anger at the cancer, anger that I no longer have someone who will text me goofy, random stuff and call me so we can talk on our respective drives home from work.  Nearly daily conversations and/or messages for two plus years just stopped.  And I feel robbed.

And, I wonder if I was a good enough friend.  I keep flashing on a conversation we had the last time I actually got to see her.  I'd gone to Denver to go to a speakeasy themed party as her date and one night we were talking about her frustrations with various people and how they related to her and her illness.  She didn't want to be "the chick with cancer".  This is part of my anger with her, btw, because this need on her part to not be viewed as her disease caused her to omit and even outright lie at the end so that no one would realize how bad it really was. 

My medical experience made it difficult for me to deny how sick she obviously was.  Still, I tried to go along with her program. 

But, that night, as we were talking about how she disliked it that some folks could only look at her and think, "cancer", I said something to the effect of, "Right, I mean, damn, so you have cancer.  YOU arent't the cancer. You're just Erica.  We're all going to die of something."

We looked at each other and there was a split second of acknowledgement before I said, "Not that I'm saying you're going to die..."

She made a joke and we moved on.

But, I always wonder if she felt betrayed by me in that moment. 

And, I wonder, a lot lately, what grief is revealing about me.  Am I just a weak, weepy jerk?  Because that's what I feel like lately.  I feel like I'm dishonoring her by feeling so sad so much of the time.  But, I just don't know how to not be sad, sometimes.


I'll keep working on focusing on the joy that is available in life, and there is a lot of it.  I'll keep loving the people in my life and being grateful for their love.

And, I'll keep trying to live up to her memory.

 

Life is beautiful

Cookie and I are settled in now.  Enjoying life in Baltimore, enjoying working at Hopkins (well, Cookie isn't working at Hopkins...).

I started at Hopkins with a group of 9 other travelers and there was another group of 4 travelers who started a couple weeks before us.  Several of us have sort of bonded and we have had some good times on our days off and have plans for some other fun downtime activities coming up.

 

And, Cookie and I have had some other adventures on our own.  We've been hiking

and checking out the city and some of the cool things it has to offer.  This weekend (July 4th weekend) there were tons of people at the Inner Harbor area, and even though the coworker I'd planned to meet got sick and backed out, I had a good time just wandering around, people watching, feeling like I was part of a community.

Now, I'm floating on the euphoria of knowing that I'll be back west, if only briefly, in just a few days and I'll get to sleep in the same bed with my husband and get to hang out with my CO peeps.

Last time I was in Denver, it was decidedly sad and somber.  I'm very much looking forward to celebrating, celebrating the happy, long marriage of my friends (they are having the big wedding they didn't get to have originally) and just enjoy each other's company, spending a couple days at the home of our friends Brunhilde and the original Paulie D before the big party.

I'm about to enjoy the gorgeous early evening sunshine as I walk down to the lightrail and head off to another mellow shift at work with great people.  And, appropriately for a Sunday, give thanks and praise to God for my blessed life.