Things I was never told when moving to Seattle

In bullet form because it’s neat and I am feeling OCD at the moment.

• 44 degrees in Seattle is different then 44 degrees in say Santa Rosa, CA.  I am so incredibly cold and I don’t know what the sun feels like anymore.
• The Wind, yes, it’s capitalized.  The Wind blows hard, this making you even colder.
• The righteous indignation of pedestrians.   People just walk out in the middle of the road and everyone flippin stops, if you happen to not give then an extra twelve feet of roaming area they glare at you.  In California, not only would be hit you, we’d rob you too.
• In the PNW they have the best sunrises, I’m serious, the BEST.
• In Seattle, everyone complains about the traffic, I suggest they go drive the 101 in California on a Wednesday between the hours of 1530 and 1830 and then come back and tell everyone how great the traffic is in Seatle, because it is.
• The squirrels, they are little fury ninjas.  I’m serious.  At my apartment they watch me, at UW, they watch me some more.  I am fairly positive I am their next hit, especially since I refuse to feed them after one of them ran up to my grocery bags.
• Now maybe I don’t get out very often and maybe my life looks something like this: school, homework, school, clinical, school, work, homework, test, test, barf, test.  But at the times I have been wandering around the city I have noticed people mainly wear neutral colors, this makes me stand out, since I wear lime green, hot pink and baby blue hats and scarfs all the time.  What is up with that?  The sun like comes out once a day, wearing brown and moss green will not brighten the day.
• The do not call it a DMV here, it’s called a Department of Licensing and California, note how it’s done, you have been schooled.
• Oh, by the way, Washington, why do you call soda “Pop”, what “pops” about Pepsi?  I still get confused when someone offers me “pop”.
• Also, why doesn’t anyone give me a straight answer on if it snows here.  People say “no–well maybe a few inches a handful of times a year” hmmm…why is there snow shovels and ice picky things for your shoes at Target?!  It snowed in Santa Rosa once in 2002, Target wasn’t in stock with shovels!

So it sum it up, it’s damn cold, really doesn’t rain that much (at least yet), it might snow, no one’s really answered that question for me yet.  Has the best sunrises, peeps are just babies about the traffic and the squirrels will steal your food if you leave it beside your car.

Saturday Bullets: Mulder-lovin edition

• Last Saturday night, while watching and listening to the Annie and Burl show on Blog Talk Radio, I was having an adult beverage of the rum variety and was inspired to buy Mulder and Scully Barbie dolls.
• Basically I got drunk and found my Debit card and bought a Mulder doll.
• Ahem
• This week at school marks a special week, as in the last full week without a major test.  Next week tests start rolling down, and in two weeks, finals.
• UW are playing WSU and as I type this kickin WSUs ass, haha.
• Had a flippin nasty ear infection that is still healing up.
• Moe is most def a boy, I can show you his fuzzy kitty balls to prove it if you want.  Yes, I am disturbed also.
• I seriously I have nothing, I have never been this uninspired in my life.  Something but all my brain power being sucked out by school.

Mulder doll

It becomes apparent Kim has nothing.

This was going through Kim’s head

In roughly this sequence…

Curiously strong mints…hmmm, why do they put that on the box?…

…those mini altoids have little As on them…

…I wonder if the big altoids feel left out?….

…I remember when I first heard Eminem’s name I thought he liked M&M candy, heh….

…I like brown M&Ms the best…

…Rufus is a brown tabby, but he’s mostly grey, I wonder why the vet calls him a brown tabby…

…these scrubs make me look like Tinky Winky…

…Tinky Winky isn’t so bad, but that slutty red one…

…Why was there a snow shovel at Target?  Are they lying to me about it snowing here?….

…I hope it snows on a Saturday that why I can text everyone and be like WTF it’s snowing, eh…

…should I get a landline?…

…I totally have to send that one picture I took to my brother…

…what is that smell…is that pho?…

Me thinks I forgot to take my Allderol this morning.

There is something very definite about the way my mother says it, as if it is something I should have expected all along.

I could go into the specifics of why my parents who have been married for 33 years are getting a divorce, but that really isn’t important.  That is just details in a much larger picture.

There isn’t much one can do now, knowing all those details, other then thinking about what one could have changed, what one could have noticed. 

As the youngest of five children, fourth biological child of both parents, the divorce has seemed to affect me the most.  My sister is in her own world, barely taking care of herself to realize family drama brewing on the left coast.  My two middle brothers have families and jobs and responsibilities and remember a time before my memory when family life was similar to what it is now.  My oldest brother, well, he doesn’t much care for family drama, he remains distinctly out of it, although he is the closest in space to them.

There is something distinctly odd about being twenty-three years old and being told your parents are divorcing, the inner child, the wee Kim wonders whose house she will stay at when she comes to visit.  Whose side will I have to take, because invariably there will be sides.  I think about these questions a lot, I wonder if I will have to be the peace keeper at family events.  Will one not come to my graduation because the other is bringing a “friend”?  Will one be surly at my wedding because the other is there?

And most of all I wonder what will make my future relationships last if the people who raised me can’t make theirs?

 I know I am not my parents, I know future relationships will be based off of me and that other person, not based off of my parents and their faulted one.  But it begs to be considered if I too will follow that same path, because what I see in myself is what I see in my parents.

I have not been known to have solid relationships, they are at best, high hopes and quick decisions, based on the need to be liked and loved rather then finding a match.  The men and boys I have surrounded myself with have not been good, sure there has been a few who were better then I deserved, but most were everything I thought I wanted but like sugar to a diabetic toxic in the long run. 

That very statement is proving to myself that isn’t those men and boys who are the problem but perhaps myself.  I’ve asked myself why I fall so quickly into relationships which I know won’t last, the answer is simply because I allow myself.

As a young child, growing up religious, growing up where sex before marriage would excommunicate you from church, from your family, where riding in cars with boys alone was not allowed, marriage at a young age was common.  I grew up with a fear that if I wasn’t married by 23 there would be something profoundly wrong with me.  Maybe I wasn’t pretty enough, smart enough, spiritual enough, thin enough for someone to find me worthy enough of marriage.  I almost married a boy at 18 due to this fear, it wouldn’t have worked out, in fact I know for sure it wouldn’t have worked out. 

So I sit alone, trying to find out where they went wrong, where I won’t go wrong.  I wonder if it will work, or if I just need to take a chance.

I guess my parents divorcing has made me look at myself and figure out that there are things inside me I don’t like.  To fully give myself over to another person, I must find ways to make those things I don’t like better, livable within the confines of my soul.

Saturday Bullets: Givin’ Blood Edition

• Gave whole blood this morning, my second time in Washington State, doesn’t even hurt one bit and hopefully helps save some lives.
• Having two cats is not twice the work, it’s like five times the work, the cat hair in my carpet is unbelievable.
• Okay, Grey’s Anatomy, besides the hot, hot new Trauma Surgeon is really pissing me off, I wish Medical dramas were more realistic.
• Inserting foley catheters is fun, on SimMan, ask me about when I have to do it on a real person how I feel about it.
• Oh and this was the highlight of my week.
• Note to family: No mo’ drama.
• I rode the bus around Seattle, got lost a little and took some pictures.

World Diabetes Day

Friday, November 14, 2008 is World Diabetes Day.

Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure in the United States, it is estimated that 52 % of my patients are diabetics, so today is day for awareness.  Check out the above link and look at the warning signs, it’s important to know them.

Bookworm

A very hard thanks to Paramedic SuperMonkey for not only being Super but for also awarding me with a Bookworm Award…aw, thanks man!

So the rules are as follows:

Pass it on to five other bloggers, and tell them to open the nearest book to page 56. Write out the fifth sentence on that page, and also the next two to five sentences. The CLOSEST BOOK, NOT YOUR FAVORITE, OR MOST INTELLECTUAL!

So my closest book was on my nightstand and a little bit of Kim trivia, I love poetry, this book was actually given to me by my ex-fiance (gasp, Kim, you had an ex-fiance?  Another post dears) and it is called The Random House Treasury of Best-Loved Poems Second Edition, I opened it up to page 56, fifth sentence reads as follows:

“To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.”

From the poem The Snowstorm by Ralph Waldo Emerson

This does not mean I read poetry all day, because seriously the book below it was book three of the twillight series.  Ahem.

So my five picks are as follows:

Pennies from Heathens

Neu Med

Wardbunny

Wounded Healer

Trauma Queen – because his post entitled “blame” broke my heart, as I am sure, will break yours too.

Thanks again SuperMonkey.

Heard from above the SimMan

Or Things said in Nursing School that will get you a bad nickname

Me: I really need more practice with a penis…

Group (collectively): Bawahhhhhhhh

Back story: Foley catheters on Steve the SimMan/Woman after I successfully cathed Stevette.

There isn’t always a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow

There isn’t very often that one sees the beginning and the end of the rainbow, it isn’t very often that one could look towards the ground below and see where the colors fade.

Today I was standing by the window’s overlooking the city, the sky was cloudy, a light mist in the distance and the two crosses from the old Catholic hospital where in the distance illuminated by the sun peeking through the clouds. 

I felt so incredibly lucky to be working in a place with a view.

I turned and faced my patients before me, most everyone had cleared out, it is a Sunday afterall, patients and staff do not want to be here on a Sunday, so they don’t show, don’t call, like a bad first date remnant.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t?”  I comment, really to know one but myself, but hoping someone will respond.  The elderly man to my right with is wife next to him in a folding chair smiles at me, I smile back and turn to the woman kitty-corner to him.  She stares into nothingness, not even acknowledging anyone.

I go to her chairside and lower myself to where her gaze is at, I ask her if she is okay, she doesn’t respond at first, her eyes blank and staring.  When she finally looks at me all I see is sadness and loss.

“Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” She says, the weight of her words fall on me.

This was a moment where I didn’t have anything to say, where I was left speechless and burdened with a sadness.  I felt for her, every fiber in my body hurt, often sadness like this not expressed.

Her eyes flickered from my face back to the emptiness of before and I thought about it as I rocked back up to my heels and moved back towards the window. 

I could feel the bleakness she felt at that moment, in her life there was a long string of bleak moments that stretched along every moment she was tied to the machine.  In this place we call an out-patient clinic we have the cheery yellow and green paint of the walls, the 180 view of the city, we have the televisions set on comedy channels and the staff wear bright colored scrubs. 

Somtimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes the path before them is just too bumpy to imagine crossing, sometimes it’s just a bad day.

There isn’t much I can do for her, there are days I feel I have done nothing, I can call the social worker, I can call the doctor, I can check her meds, we can up her anti-depressants.  But the constant in her life is dialysis and the evilness it spreads.

There are people who climb out of this feeling, it’s a normal feeling for awhile, and they find their way out of the darkness, they find something that makes them smile, if even for a moment. 

At the end of the day, as I took her off the machine, flushing her cleansed blood back into her veins, I stuck two fingers between her half-clenched hand as a blood pressure took.  She looked at me for a moment and I smiled, it wasn’t long before she looked away and her blood pressure was taken and her needles were out and she was ready for home.

There isn’t always a pot of gold at the end of those rainbows, but they always end somewhere and usually just past them sunlight appears.

Saturday Bullets:Radio Star Edition

• I was a guest on the Doctor Anonymous show, you can hear me here, the show is about an hour long, I talk about dialysis, my future as a nurse and a few other things.
• Yes, that is what I sound like, yes I do say um a lot.  I love you too.
• This week at school we are at the first part of starting IVs, which meant we got to start them on each other! And the SimMan, I got the first one but I need a whole lot more practice before I can feel comfortable with them.
• But Kim! You stick needles in people’s arms all the time!  I know.  However a fistula is different then someone’s dorsal, cephalic and basilic veins.
• I got my placement for my Med/Surg rotation for next semester, and I am extremely excited about it. 
• It is a Level 1 trauma center, yippee!
• Yea, the Election.  The canidate I wanted to win, did win, this however, is going to be a long road before we can get the country back where it should be.  I wish President -elect Obama the best, but I also hope he realizes that the country is willing to change and that even means him if he does ‘f’ it up.
• Prop 8 did not pass, it makes me sad but I forsee a change in the future, so we shall wait and see.

 

That’s all I got this week…I’m exhausted and have to work a double shift on Sunday, 18 hours.

See you in a few days.