Mondays don't have to be bad

Right now it is so beautiful outside. It is so beautiful. It mystifies me why I am sitting here writing this blog entry, and not being outside. I'm going running with Grace in like 40 minutes though, so that will be glorious. Thank the Lord. It is fall.

I spent this past weekend at home with my family. My first birthday present was a rather large lesson in humility, in the form of an equally large speeding ticket......swell....there goes my perfect record. This in all seriousness was the very first time I'd ever been pulled over since getting my license almost five years ago. ANYWAY. I'm so over that! It was bad luck...the guy in front of me was going at least that fast.

Anyhow despite that opening, and the fact that it rained most of the weekend, I had a good time. I always love seeing my little brothers, who are up to their usual...tearing around the house and taking up the whole futon room with their legos. It was great to see mom and dad as well. Also saw my cousin and aunt, who came up on Saturday. Mycousin got me a cute little bag of gifts, amonst which was a 3 disc set of the first Die Hard movies!

And when I got back to school the surprises didn't stop. Seriously...

So thanks everybody, it was really wonderful. Now I've got to organize my life and start getting some stuff done. It's an academic jungle safari coming up this week!

Lillywhite

This post is titled in honor of Cat Stevens. 

Sometimes, life comes at you fast. You are forced into sitting up straight and asking yourself honestly, just what am I doing with my life...why am I wasting my time selfishly, idly...why aren't I  really, really listening for the voice of God, and why am I hesitant to hand over my plans, my dreams, in exchange for His? And why does it take something beyond my control, like physical suffering, to bring me back to the ultimate question (that I should already be answering, every day)..."What is my place in your plan, Lord?" 

My joy is in pursuit of this. 

Pray for me!

Today, I am not a fan of refrigerators so cold that they freeze your salad. Many things are delicious frozen.....ice cream, granita, freezie-pops... mushrooms and spinach are not.

Yesterday, our flag football team, the Super Sweet Show Ponies, won our season opener against The Abusement Park. It was my first game ever, and I did enjoy it, even though my position (O-line) entails mostly running into people and getting a lot of bruises... I have a riDIculously nasty shin bruise, but as long as it's not like a fracture or anything I don't care that much.

Right now, I'm watching my fish Marvin and Merlin swim little circles in their fishbowl and studying a little Med/Surg nursing...ah, I love my life.

Didn't think I'd be doing this...

So since getting back to school and moving into my house, i'm realizing more and more how difficult it is to buy food and cook for just one person...I have eaten out more in the past week than I have for the past three months all together. I've known some people who lived on their own, and I would give them a hard time about not cooking for themselves more...well, never again. I have seen the error of my ways! Now, this doesn't mean that I'm NOT going to cook for myself. Because I will not be daunted...

Also, I've watched in these past few days the first 17 or so episodes of a japanese cartoon series called Death Note....I'm hooked. Didn' see THAT coming.

Goodbye, July

I'm not so much happy to see July gone as I am glad to see August come. August means three things:

1) I get to participate in the wedding of a very dear friend, my household sister Mary Droz (soon to be Mary George!). This entails carpooling across several states with a few other household sisters, going to a bachelorette party, sleeping over at Mary's house for several nights, rehearsing with the organist, and singing for the wedding! So much excitement. I simply can't wait.

2) I get to pack up and go back to Steubenville. My second home. My home away from home. A place that sometimes feels more like a home than my own home does. A place that I'd better be ready to get the hell out of by May when I graduate - because otherwise, I'm going to be heartbroken. I get to move into the house that I'm renting, and make it a cozy little home for a year...houseplants included.

3) I start my final year of nursing school. That's right. The externship I worked all summer has excited and energized me, and I'm looking forward to being a student extraordinaire...growing in wisdom, grace and knowledge. I can hardly wait to whip out the crisp new sheets of paper and hit them with my felt fine-tipped pens. And to my infinite joy, we have a class with Harris again. Praise God.

So, August offers me the promise of many good and pleasant things to come. July was great, but by no fault of it's own, it just wasn't August. And August will be great.

The gift unasked for

What makes a person want to die?

This feeling that everyone in your life would be better off without you - that there is nothing to look forward to, that you are too tired to go on, that life is cruel and exhausting, that there is no reason to continue to live - how do you come to this feeling, and then believe it, and finally invest in it, with aspirin and vodka, a razor, a gun to the head?

There are so many layers of self-preservation woven into the human fabric...and yet they are overridden by grief, distress, psychological disturbance, fear, despair...agents too potent at times for the weakened human condition.

What strikes me most, however, is how powerless I am in the face of the intensity of despair and depression felt by another. Preserved as I have been from these depths of suffering, I have no words to touch them, and my natural inclination to give advice is thwarted.

"Life is a gift". We did not ask for it, and yet here we are - manifestations of the mysterious creative energy of God. As such, we are keepers of a treasure not our own. I will show my love of God - by my love and care of what he has created: my life and the lives of others. Though it be laborious and excruciating, somehow He calls us to journey back to Him, bearing the life He gave us. For some, life is deep pain - and I can only imagine the courage and grace it takes them to face it, and the glory they give God in struggling through.

For those who take their lives into their own hands, Mother Church is yet a true Mother and intercessor for her children. "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives." (CCC 2283)

Perhaps the question we should rather pose is this: What makes a person want to live.

St. Jude and St. Dymphna, pray for us.

Two heart caths and a book by it's cover

Got off work, where today I had the opportunity to observe two cardiac catheterizations. I was considering only observing one, but I'm so glad I stayed and watched two; the two cases were as different as night and day, just going to show you that something simple and routine can be very different the second time, because each patient is different.

The first patient was a man, mid forties, clearly a little jumpy, but in control of himself, nervously cracking jokes. He was a little spazzy and needed to be reminded to lie flat after the procedure (any lifting of the head or bending of the leg immediately afterward causes increased pressure in the groin, threatening to dislodge the collagen plug inserted into the femoral artery to block the hole made by the catheter) - but on the whole, he was great. His cath was negative, as well, meaning there were no occlusions or problematic narrowings of the coronary arteries. The answer to what's causing his intermittent chest pain must be sought elsewhere.

The second patient was a different story. Her family sat surrounding her in the preoperative room, and when we came to take her into the cath lab, she began loudly insisting "No! You're going to put me out, right? I don't want to leave this room conscious!" She was 79, one of those ladies who screams in protest if you so much as press on her firmly (feeling for her femoral pulse was a trip). She didn't want to see anything in the procedure room, so we covered her eyes with a towel. The doctor also had an unusually difficult time finding the artery with his needle, which he puts into the artery in order to place the guide wire, and then advance the catheter. He ended up needing to use what is called a "smart needle" - it uses doppler to give the physician an audible idea of where the needle is in relation to the rhythmic swooshing of blood through the artery, helping him locate it more easily. Even with the aid of the smart needle, the woman's vasculature was located so deep that he had to probe quite a bit. The complicating factor here, I believe, was that she was quite a bit overweight. The doppler made sounds like the doc was navigating a windswept, frozen mountain peak in Greenland or something. Anyway, eventually he got to where he was going. This patient's heart cath revealed a partially occluded right descending coronary artery.

It was a nice plus that I was with some OR nurses who really liked to teach, and were great about it. Especially Brice. At first impression, I was like, greeeaaat....this guy won't even make eye contact with me, I know I'm a lowly student, but you don't have to be such a stiff about it...lol my preceptor dubbed him "Mr. Evil Hottness" because he is really quite good-looking, and young. BUT, hooray, he ended up explaining like EVERYTHING about the heart cath to me of his own accord, and really involving me in what was going on. So it was sweet. The end.