Whatever Works

Yesterday evening, I ran into a colleague who is one of those fearless nurses who goes anywhere in the city. She's not exactly fearless, but that's how she's perceived and this is how this cockamamie culture of skewed safety perseveres within my work environment. She told me she couldn't go where I go at night--even though it's where she goes during the day. Everything looks a little worse in those neighborhoods under the cloak of darkness. Interestingly, just when you'd think most would be tucked safely in for the night, it's those neighborhoods that are just starting to come alive. These people are fooling themselves into thinking daylight makes these areas safer. They're not.

Anyways, this nurse is also into Healing Touch therapy. Her patients swear by her energy restoring treatments. With the touch of her hands and a few murmured words, she heals people of pain, anxiety and stress. Last night, she insisted on giving me a treatment that lasted just a few short minutes. It couldn't have come at a better time, because late last night, security didn't answer their phone. I needed an escort into the city--right into the heart of an area that makes me quake in my Danskos--and they didn't answer the damned phone.

I went, reinforced with a fearless nurse's healing touch and brand new energy shield meant to protect me. I must have looked like a crazy woman driving down I-94, repeating over and over, "nobody will hurt me with my brand new energy shield."

It worked.

Fearless has her own Healing Touch practice. I'm scheduling a one hour appointment. Stat.

Don't go thinking I didn't rip security a new orifice this morning. I did. It's not the first time they haven't answered their phone at night, but I'm willing to bet that it may be the last time they don't. Bright and early today, in addition to my new energy shield, I'm also armed with alternative numbers for our security escort service.

Spring Has Sprung

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It was a whopping 65 degrees in the Motor City Tuesday. I've ditched my coat, my down vest, mittens, hat and heavy wool pants. I'm back to wearing scrubs with just a little scrub jacket. Everything looks lighter and brighter and while the only greenery I can see are, besides my Irish colleague's shamrock painted nails, new shoots of weeds, I'm reminded summer is right around the corner.

It feels so good to have the warmth of the sun on my face. It also feels good to be out doing my job during the light of day. Though more people are out, at least I can see where I'm going, or more importantly, who else is out there with me.

A couple of weeks ago, before the big kerfuffle over at The Women's Colony brought daily missives to a relative halt, I read somewhere, I think in Friday Confessions, that someone there hates the Beatles. Really? She (or he) just didn't get their popularity.

Sacrilege!

Abbey Road makes me think of spring. In fact, it's my policy that spring cleaning doesn't happen unless Abbey Road is on.

While I may never change the minds of certain WC readers, they can go listen to Lady Gaga or some other such illustrious talent. For the rest of you, and my loan officer, I offer a taste of Abbey Road. No, we still don't have an answer on the mortgage. We have no information left to offer except maybe the results of yet to be scheduled colonoscopies.

Wanna Make Yourself Go Nuts?

Try reading the side effect profiles of the medications that you take. I guarantee, your drugs are affecting you in some way that you never expected.

I finally threw in the towel and started taking Zoloft. I started last week Friday. By Sunday, I had excruciating nerve pain in my face and a headache to beat them all. I thought, oh great, another root canal is in my future. But it wasn't my tooth. It was the Zoloft, which gave me bruxism, or if you will, a fierce case of grinding my teeth while sleeping. I walked around for days with my jaw clenched so tight that it was impossible to relax. I was miserable. So I stopped the Zoloft and within a day? No pain.

Up until now, I've just been seeing a therapist, but today I saw the candyman psychiatrist. During my 15 minute appointment, we discussed how I was feeling, what the Zoloft did to me, and how he could help. He asked me if I wanted to lose weight, because if I did, he could help me with that. Now, I know I'm 15 pounds overweight, but I found the question indelicate and ludicrous. Fifteen pounds is not morbidly overweight--my regular doctor doesn't even mention it to me. Was he even reading my chart? He offered to put me on a mood stabilizer that would make me thin. Really? Hell, sign me up. I can lose weight while I knit. Then he said he was doing this because he was going to put me on a different antidepressant that would make me gain weight. Great. A pill for this, a pill for that. When getting ready to leave, he gave me his business card and told me to call him in one week. When I asked him why, he told me, "to thank me for changing your life, of course."

It was a bizarre visit.

I briefly read the side effect profiles of my two new drugs. I'm hoping for the fatigue and weight loss. I'll take them both at night and while I sleep the sleep of the drugged, I'll get svelte.

Maybe I should have held on to all those skinny clothes I donated last year.

Inertia

For some reason, I'm suffering from a profound lack of moving momentum. I just can't get myself to do much of anything to get ready to move. Yesterday, I came home from sweater class and watched Aladdin with Rachel. I didn't go downtown to see The Yarn Harlot. It was pouring cold, nasty rain and my heart wasn't in it. Aladdin proved a good alternative and Rachel was thrilled to spend the afternoon with her mom and dad.

This inertia I'm experiencing is not beneficial on the packing front. There are boxes all over the place, but nothing's in them. Nothing. Time is ticking, and to make matters worse, while I was sleeping, I lost an hour of valuable time.

So today, fully intending to shake it all off and get busy, I sat down to have a cup of coffee. Before I knew what hit me, I cast on the second sleeve for my sweater and watched Babe. If that wasn't enough, when that was over, I started the colorwork on the cuff and watched Pirate Radio.

We close on Thursday and have to be out by the 25th at the latest. I'd better get my rear in high gear, don't you think? Just as soon as I finish that second sleeve and watching Phenomenon for the 10th time.

I am nothing, if not good a procrastinator. However, as I knit away my anxieties, I'll have a cozy sweater to show for it all, now won't I?

It's Good to Win

I was beside myself when I had a $3 winner in the lottery on Tuesday. Feeling lucky, I parlayed my winnings and bought 2 Powerball tickets (jackpot $200,000,000) and 1 Megamillions ticket (jackpot $20,000,000). I'm hoping for all the numbers for the Powerball to hit on Saturday, but hey, if I win the paltry $20,000,000, I'll be satisfied. I mean, if I won 200 million, when would I knit? I'd be too busy in the counting house.

Some others are winners this week, too, and I think their winnings should keep them busy for awhile.

The runner up for the Knitcircus giveaway is Rositta! Congratulations my friend. You are winning the patterns to the spring collection. Since I have your email address already, I'll be forwarding the pattern collection directly to you. I'm kind of tickled that you won this since I know you want to knit that little green dress.

The grand prize winner for the Knitcircus giveaway is Stephanie V. Hey! That's a Canadian sweep! Wasn't the hockey gold medal enough? Congratulations, Stephanie! You win a one year subscription to Knitcircus. Awesome. Send me your email address (rudeek45atgmaildotcom--use symbols for at and dot). I'll forward your email to Jaala so that she can enter your subscription.

I don't think either one of you can complain about not having anything ewenique to knit for awhile now. Congratulations!

Thanks to everyone for playing along and thank you, Jaala, and Knitcircus for the great giveaways.

I'm thinking I should use the random number generator to pick my next set of lottery numbers. If it worked for Rositta and Stephanie, maybe it could work for me!

Odds and Ends

Tomorrow I have sweater school again. By that time, I should have one sleeve done and the second on the needles. I've ripped the one sleeve out twice. I'm making the small sized sweater because it's big. It has a lot of positive ease, but the sleeve size going with that sweater would only fit Twiggy. Luckily, I had only knit the cuff and was using magic loop method so I tried it on right away and felt the truth of the ill fitting cuff and out it came. I cast on the number of stitches for the large sweater sleeve, but knit the rest of it as the small. It's over my elbow now and feels fine. The cuff was the issue, but so was the cast on edge, so instead of the long tail cast on, which is tight, I used a cable cast on for elasticity. It worked. It won't match the cast on edge of the sweater, but at this point, I don't think anyone will know except me.

I haven't decided if I'll skip out of class early to go listen to The Yarn Harlot speak on Saturday. If she were anywhere else but the Detroit Public Library, I'd likely go. I go into the city enough on work time, and have no desire to go down there for this. Maybe I'll catch her next year, or maybe I'll change my mind by morning. Who knows?

On the mortgage front, we're supposed to close on the 18th, but the bank is nickel and diming us for every last scrap of documentation we can come up with. The latest is they'd like photographs of the other homes we own including Rachel's, and two investment houses. Really? Photographs? They're making us nuts. Shouldn't our consistent tax return statements be enough for them? This bank prides itself on being one of the only banks that didn't get into financial trouble because they never made subprime mortgage loans. Now I wonder if they ever made any loans at all. We're remaining hopeful and have started the monumental task of packing. Again.

Don't forget to leave a comment on Monday's post to win your subscription to Knitcircus Magazine. Comments close at midnight tonight, and the lucky winner will be chosen by Random Number Generator.

Good luck!

Rx for Life

As any ICU nurse worth her salt can tell you, sedation and pain relief is part science, and a whole lot of art. Getting the perfect chemical concoction without going overboard is delicate. If I learned nothing in the unit, I learned this. It's why I do so well as a hospice nurse on the off shift. While I don't prescribe the drugs I use, I tend to get my two cents in to the physician on what I think will work to treat poorly managed pain and anxiety. When it comes to psychic or spiritual pain though, I feel out of sorts without a magic concoction to soothe a troubled soul. Last night, I was challenged to help ease someone's emotional pain. Though I thought our visit went well, I wasn't quite sure and I don't know if I eased any suffering. It was that intense.

Many people that I meet have come to a crossroads where pursuit of a cure for disease intersects the reality that disease has progressed despite heroic efforts. It can be a frightening and sad place, or it can be the perfect convergence where modern medicine has failed and now the spiritual work can begin. While some people can never give up the fight to survive at all costs, others are able to turn from one direction to the other without too much trouble. They're ready to move ahead and spend as much quality time as they have left with the people that they love. Often, they're tired of the frequent hospitalizations, needle sticks, chemo and radiation that sap every last bit of energy and intuitively know that they need to conserve a little for the type of work that lies ahead. The people who fight death to the bitter end seem to suffer the most emotionally. Ask any hospice nurse to describe "terminal restlessness," and they will tell you it is the most difficult crisis we encounter. I've witnessed patients run in circles around a bed as though something is chasing them and, indeed it is. Death. When I see this, I know the end is quite near for these people; sometimes only hours or a day or two away. It's a traumatic event for patients and their families, though not everyone encounters this. People who are prepared psychologically and spiritually often pass from this world quite peacefully.

Plenty of people tell me they can't do what I do for a living. I hear this a lot, especially when I go to a home to pronounce a death. They say this as though death is something that's abnormal and that it takes a special person to do this. Perhaps they think my work is of the macabre; very dark, mysterious and disturbing. After all, none of my patients escape death. There are no close calls in hospice that have happy outcomes, but I believe in my heart that there can be good outcomes. We can die a good death and this one idea is more about making the most out of life than it is about dying. This basic tenet is what I hold onto when I start to feel as though hospice isn't a good fit for me. In my mind, my job is part mission, and partly a way to pay my bills. Mostly it's a mission. There are easier ways to earn a living in nursing.

Long before I started down this path, I read the book, Dying Well, by Dr. Ira Byock. I bought it when my mother in law was dying and right after my best friend's daughter was killed. This is such a well written book on the art and challenges of being a hospice practitioner with stories that bring meaning to our human condition. I followed up this book with the second book this author wrote, The Four Things That Matter Most. My closest family members have read both of these books and have found them beneficial, too. They're not only handbooks for the dying, they're great guidebooks for living.

In a nutshell, these four things that matter so much are love, thankfulness and giving and receiving forgiveness. This book was life altering for me. It's not easy to ask for and give forgiveness, but we humans are imperfect creatures. It only stands to reason that over a lifetime, we may need to give and receive forgiveness more than once. As for love, well it seems to me it's something we all strive to feel and give. Some are luckier than others in this department. Being thankful can be difficult, especially if someone is dying, but I think it's important to tell the people who matter in our lives that we're thankful for them and long before we're losing them.

What I took away from both books is the importance of being ready for the curveballs life can throw at us. We never know when it'll be our own turn to leave this earth, so it's important to live a life embracing things in our lives that matter most. Several years ago, my best friend lost her daughter abruptly when she was hit by a car. As horrific as that was, their relationship was in a very good place which helped my friend to heal and survive this event with her psyche intact. When we talk, she never ends a phone call without saying, I love you. It's important to her. She lives the principles in Dr. Byock's books.

It's been awhile since I've read these books, but I plan on rereading them from a new perspective as a hospice nurse.

In the meantime, I do what I'm able and ask only for insight and clarity when I'm trying to help those who make me think outside the box.

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