Me!

Dear readers,

Hey, I am actually writing on the blog for once.Emma.Yeah, I know that I never write on here.So I am going to make my share of the blog.Fourth grade is so hard!I am so bored right now because I have to wait for about two hours just to make horse cookies.Today I am sad because Dad has left.Blue is my favorite color.We still have three dogs, two fish,three birds, and a turtle.I love to ride horses and my wish is to have one.Well,I am only nine so this much writing is making my fingers hurt.So I will be back............dun dun dun.......

From,
Emma

How to be a model nurse.

Another essay by Corinne. (I'm on a roll, what can I say?)

Worked a twelve last night in the ICU part of the NICU. Critical kids all night long. I'm exhausted. BUT. Emma spent the night at her dad's house last night, and today is picture day at school. I'm not really going to take my chances that her hair and everything else will be completely ignored. SO. I made a deal with Dad that he would drop the Memma off at my house on his way to work so that I could get her ready for school pictures. She'd be late but hey guess what? Today we are working on the premise that beauty is more important that grades. Because not only am I the best nurse ever, I am also the world's best mother.

So I throw the kid in the tub, blowdry her hair (The kid has the prettiest hair!), put her in a DRESS (Cue lots of whining from Emma about having to wear a dress. I pull the "when I was a kid I had to wear a dress to church every Sunday for FOUR HOURS SOMETIMES MORE SO SHUT IT LUCKY CHILD" card. She doesn't care. Whining continues.) and get the kid in the car.

We're finally on the road. I've been up for nineteen hours now. I'm tired and any caffeine I ingested earlier in the morning has completely worn off. I'm a little grumpy over the fact that when dad dropped her off at my house he hadn't signed the homework that he watched her do yesterday or even packed her a lunch. I'm driving, singing along with Michael Jackson with Emma but secretly plotting a way to get him audited by the IRS. (Just kidding. Mostly.)

Driving, driving, driving. (We've moved so it's a bit of a haul to Emma's school now.) Look, a Haflinger! Look, cows! Oh look, a car crashed into a pole with a few guys standing around it.

Crap.

I have driven past accidents before. Yeah, yeah, I'm medically trained. I should stop to see if everyone is alright. I have a moral obligation to society to make sure that there's not someone bleeding out. But realistically, I have shit to DO peoples. I can't be everyones Superman, er....woman. And let's face it, unless you weigh less than twelve pounds there's a good chance I won't know what to do with you.

So I roll down the window at the red light.

"I'm a nurse. Everyone ok?"

Gawking Construction Worker Number One explains that there is a woman in the car who seems to have had a seizure and hit a few cars but that's she ok. She's sitting in the driver's seat looking confused but not bleeding. They can't find the cars that she hit. (What the....?) I appropriately grimace.

The light turns green.

There's a semi gunning his engine behind me.

So what do I do?

I do what any Nurse with compassion would do. A nurse who has been trained to always put the needs of others above her own. I do what a nurse who is now running on physical and emotional fumes would do with a nine year-old complaining about her tights in the backseat.

I yell "Good Luck!" out the window and drive away.

And THAT, my friends, is how to live up to all of your nursing instructors' expectations of you and leave a very confused Gawking Construction Worker in the dust.

A short essay in torture. (Or for those googling, WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER SINUS SURGERY.)

By Corinne.

Last week I had sinus surgery. It was a run-of-the-mill sinus surgery, according to my ENT (who, despite all of my ranting here, is really an AMAZING doctor and a very nice man). Lots of people have fungal tumors and chunks of staph infection in their noses, who knew? (Yes yes, EEW. YOU try living with it!) We drove to Scottsdale at 4:00 in the morning. I changed into the paper gown and some hawt purple footies, donned a set of those inflatable anti-embolism pump calf-warmers, was versed-ed, whisked off to the OR and my sinuses chopped up and sucked out under general anesthesia. I liked not being awake for the 90 minute procedure. It was nice. I do sort of recall trying to push the gas mask off my face at the beginning and tell the doctor something which I thought was of great importance, but they promptly placed it back on my face. I don't remember what exactly I was trying to convey but I have a suspicion that it probably wasn't as vital as I thought it was at the time.

Woke up in a puddle. Told the nurse I thought I had wet the bed. Apparently I had 2 liters of fluid during the procedure and my traitorous bladder decided it was going to throw in the towel. (The nurse says I sneezed.) Oh well, I was still pretty groggy and didn't really care. I'm sure it happens all the time, right? (RIGHT?!) Was driven home by Chad.

The post-op instructions: Don't make any life-altering decisions. Don't drive. Take pain meds. Drink fluids. Don't touch your stitches. (Which would have been difficult considering I didn't have any to begin with.) Start sinus washes on Monday. Monday rolled around. As I am still liberally enjoying my Percocet and am unable to drive, Chad picks up something benignly labeled a Neti Pot at the local Walgreen's. Developed by physician Diane Heatley! The Sinus Expert! Safe and Immediate Sinus Relief! Patent Pending!

Diane Heatley is the DEVIL.

Whoever thought it would be a good idea to slather SURGICAL WOUNDS WITH SALT WATER WAS SMOKING CRACK. Medical board people are you listening? Please take away this woman's license. And you patent people? Don't even THINK about approving that one.

So there's THAT.

My doctor called a few days later to see how I was doing (I told you he was a good guy - wait, you didn't read that. I'm still mad at him.) and I explained that I am really dizzy and in quite a bit of pain still. He was surprised, since I should be feeling better by this point. Maybe I have a clot. Come in Thursday and he'll "take care of it".

Yesterday morning I went to the ER for dizziness and pain. It took those morons TEN STICKS to get a freakin' IV in my arm. After the third stick I was demanding that a NICU nurse be snagged from upstairs but they wouldn't listen. Ended up in tears on the CT scanner with two people hovering over me trying to get a needle in for contrast to be injected. Once they GOT the IV my nurse nearly air-embolused me when she forgot to clear the line, hooked me up to it and let it rip. Had a freakin' anxiety attack over my really STUPID near-death experience as I snagged the IV and disconnected it quickly. At least after all of this I got some morphine. (I probably didn't need anything as strong as morphine but if I'm GOING TO BE STUCK TEN TIMES AND THEN NEARLY DIE I MIGHT AS WELL GET SOMETHING GOOD OUT OF IT DAMMIT.) CT came back with some inflammation, perhaps some infection. Bloodwork had high white blood cells and my blood sugar was sky-high, but I'm also on prednisone so who knows what's really going on. (Note: On this drug you will have an insatiable appetite for Ho-Hos but your pancreas doesn't have a good working relationship with prednisone. This will make you want to eat MORE Ho-Hos. You will feel WONDERFUL as your blood sugar climbs to mountainous levels. I'm being sarcastic.) My ENT was called and since I had heavy staph growth on one of my post-op cultures some IV antibiotics were infused into the tenth hole in my arm. After all of this the nurse who took out my IV (and incidentally the one who actually got the thing IN in the first place) decided to joke not to drink too much water or it would all come out of the needle punctures in my body.

Everybody's a comedian.

So TODAY! Today I'm feeling a THOUSAND times better. And here I'm really not being sarcastic. I think the antibiotics did the trick. Aaaaand the morphine couldn't have hurt. Dr. Hurley wanted to see me again in his office for a debridement. Oh. Uh-huh. All you medical people reading this? You know what that means. All you non-medical people, this is the definition of debridement: the doctor is going to SCRUB OFF THE LAYER OF HEALED CELLS YOUR BODY HAS WORKED SO HARD TO MAKE THE LAST WEEK TO REVEAL A FRESH, RAW LAYER OF CELLS UNDERNEATH. Oh and when you have sinus surgery? He's going to do that with forceps and a suction catheter UP YOUR SCHNOZZ after spraying lidocaine up your nose with a pressure hose. (Lidocaine tastes like POO by the way.) With a freakin' camera. He's going to VIOLATE YOUR NASAL PASSAGES WITH A CAMERA AND SCRUB THE HELL OUT OF YOUR SURGICAL SITE.

And then afterward you don't even get a sticker.

And that is why I am mad at my ENT right now.

Even though he really IS a good doctor.

Nurses really do make the worst patients.

And now if you'll excuse me I have a post-debridement Friday night date with two Percocets.

No government coverup needed.

"Greetings, earthling."

"My friends and I come in peace."

"Except for me. I don't wish to play a part in any more of your buffets."

"And we will no longer stand for being fried and dipped in ranch! Prepare for your doom!

A savior arrives. She is young but capable.



Oh, the carnage.


The Crusher shows little remorse for her elimination of the fungi.


The earth is spared once again by the Memmanator.

There has to be a way around this.

It really surprises me, although it probably shouldn't, how "on hold" my life feels right now. It's as if my whole world revolves around Chad's deployment and training schedule. My calendar, which normally includes only my varying work schedule, now has things like "Chad home", "Chad in field", "Chad leaves for NJ" written all over it. But I'm acutely aware, having dealt with the army for over five years now, that although Corinne's calendar states that on September 9th Chad will be available for moving all of the crap out of his office so I don't have to look at it for the next year while he's away, the army might swoop in and decide that he will be picking his commander's nose instead . The army needs to get its finger out of my appointment book BECAUSE IT'S MAKING ME CRABBY. Due to this uncertainty I feel that I can't make any sort of plans. Can I go to Walgreens today? I don't know, what does the army say? Should I eat a chicken salad for lunch? (If I actually knew how to make chicken salad but that's not the point.) Consult the calendar -there might be a conflict with what the army wants! Friends will say, "Hey, let's go out! What's a good date for you?" and I can't really answer because WHAT IF THE ARMY SAYS IT'S NOT A GOOD NIGHT FOR HANGING WITH THE GIRLS?! It's like I'm paralyzed until The Big Deployment Date. I've worked everything around it - my surgery, my work schedule, my sleep schedule. I'm irritated that I've let the army worm its way into every piece of me but I think that's just how it goes. Isn't it? This is my first deployment as an army wife so I had no idea how often my moods would swing from proud to annoyed to angry. There's gotta be a way to get my own life back! I'm hoping that once he leaves that this will die down but we'll see.

So in honor of The Deployment and my screwed-up schedule here are a few photos of Chad's last trip to a war zone.

And one of Heiko from his glory days since we are still missing him so much.

Beastie Boy.

We've lost our Heiko.

We've known this day was coming for a while. He came to us two years ago already broken, without his tail, having been dropped by a handler prior to being retired. The drop shattered his hip and the army vets had to take out the head of his femur, and then his tail when it became infected too. He had degenerative joint disease. He suffered from degenerative myelopathy, a disease that was slowly making him lose control of his back legs. He had little muscle in his hindquarters. He had a lot of problems. But I would fight anyone who says they love their dog more than we loved Heiko. And he loved us, especially Chad. Dogs remember people that are important to them, of this I am convinced. It had been over ten years since Chad was his original army K9 handler. Ten years since they had worked together daily, catching bad guys and drugs hidden in cars. A decade since Chad spent the night in the kennel, worried, after Heiko sliced open his paw while on duty. Yet from the moment Chad drove for days straight to Texas to get his "boy" when he received word of Heiko's retirement two years ago, Heiko refused to let anyone separate them again. He cried if Chad left for work or even the room. He got up every morning with Chad. He would walk into the bathroom EVERY day and peek his furry head around the corner, to see Chad showering, just to make sure he was still there. He wouldn't leave his side and was beyond ecstatic when Chad came home from work. Chad was the center of his whole world. So it was entirely appropriate that the last thing he knew was Chad holding his head, telling him it was ok to go and that he loved him more than he had ever loved any dog. It didn't make it any easier for us to know that, as a friend put it, he would have done the same for Chad. The last few months and most especially the last few days have been torture for all of us. He'd struggle to stand. The last few weeks he had become incontinent. He couldn't make it up the stairs anymore and would cry at the bottom if Chad went upstairs for anything. He would try to take a few steps but it always ended in a fall. The last two days his front legs started giving out and we knew it was time.

The worst part about losing a dog in this condition is that he was still all there mentally. He WANTED to be here with us. I can't speak for Chad, but I feel like a traitor for ending his life only because his body betrayed him. I know his quality of life was pretty much crap the day we decided to stop his pain. But it's still the worst decision a pet owner might have to face. I'm not sure I'll be able to put down a dog again if I'm asked. I don't know how we'll go through it with our other three. This is the second time I've been present for euthanasia, and it was worse this time because I watched Chad suffer along with Heiko. I was the only one present for my first dog, Otis. Words don't express the heartache I felt watching the two of them say their final goodbye.

Heiko, I'm so sorry. I love you. You really were the best German Shepherd on the planet. You served your country. You let us love you. You let me sneak you people food and you never told on me. You let me call you silly nicknames like "Beastie" and "Beeko". You even allowed me to put humiliating Halloween costumes on you so we could parade you around while we trick-or-treated.

Please know that you did nothing wrong. We were trying to help you. I hope you forgive us. I don't know how long it will take until we can go a day without crying. How long it will be until I finally wipe off the nose streaks on the cabinets where your dog food bowl used to be.

We will miss you forever.

We're baaaaa-ack.

So we've returned from our week-long hiatus to California. (A note about California freeway drivers. Those guys are INSANE. I fit right in there.) Spent the first three days at the Disneyland Grand Hotel and park-hopped for those three days (thank you discounted tickets from the army, THE one and only perk to having your husband shot at in foreign lands) and then we made our way to Hollywood. I blogged about that previously, so no need to revisit that subject except to say this: L.A. is a hole. Hollywood? HOLE. I don't care how awesome your celebrity memorials are. I HATE YOU L.A./HOLLYWOOD.

There. That's done. Cheerily moving on!

The last three days were spent lounging around in San Diego. I adore Disneyland, but I gotta say this was the highlight of the trip for me. There's something about the constant ocean breeze, large blobs of seagull poop flying through the air and *juuuust* missing your husband's head, the smell of salt on your skin at the end of the day, and the lack of 100+ degree temps that turns my mind to a lovely and welcome mush. San Deigo melted my brain so much, in fact, that I completely forgot to put on sunblock the day we went to Sea World and I ended up with a second-degree sunburn on my CHEST of all places. Complete with tiny blisters. Frickin' yeowch. (I was also talking to an awesome group of Canadians in the hotel spa one night and may have accidentally and stupidly asked if we could trade a Canadian quarter, which we somehow ended up with at Disneyland, for "real" money. Spoken like a true American with pudding for brains!) We've been home for three days and the skin on my upper chest is now coming off in charred chunks. Attractive. Chad's cousin, who lives around the corner, stayed over at our house with the dogs while we were gone. She's coolio and we love her for doing that for us. Thanks Aubrey!

You can go here (click!) to visit the rest of our pictures from the trip, but here are a few. (I recently discovered the awesomeness that is Flickr. :D)

Emma baits the seagulls with dried banana treats just so she can run at them (RAWR!) and scare them away.

We now enter the next stage of our lives: The Deployment. We had a mandatory family meeting the day we left for our vacation that was supposed to be informative but in true army fashion it was more of a "here, stand in this line for two hours and then when you're done with that go stand in THAT line for another two hours and oh yeah army wives are also expected to take orders" meeting. (Let me just tell you how well the "army wives will take orders" thing went over with me. It didn't.) I'm also trying to decide whether working part-time in the NICU would be an option for us financially. Let's be honest: the thought of Emma spending all of that extra time with her dad and That Stepmother makes me a little nauseated. Since I work 12-hour night shifts it'll be really hard for me to work full-time anyway, since I'll need to be sleeping most of the week when Emma is awake. What to do what to do? I'm sure we'll figure it out.

Tomorrow? Emma's ninth birthday. Every mom says this and I can't believe I'm saying it but here it is. How did my baby grow up so fast? And why has she taken to calling me "dude" lately?

As a final P.S. - CONGRATULATIONS to all of you pregnant people! I love you guys and I can't wait for all of the new family members. (Including those of you I consider family even though we don't have a speck of shared DNA. You know who you are.) Some of my friends/family worried that I would be all weird with pregnancy announcements since Chad and I can't have kids, but I'm not that type of in-vitro woman. Maybe it's because I get paid to work with infants. I love newborns (except for the ones that shoot projectile poop at me and the ones that yank out their ET/breathing tubes. Those little people go on The List. Eh, who am I kidding. I love the naughty ones too!) and I get excited when people make announcements. You can even whine about your morning sickness. I don't mind in the slightest, as long as you will excuse my inadvertently doing a full assessment on your baby the first moment I get my hands on them. Don't be alarmed if you observe me feeling your new little junior's fontanelles and cranial sutures. I'll try to restrain myself from checking femoral pulses or pulling out my stethoscope, but no promises.

Over and out.