Hi, my name is Michele and...

I have an 18 month old baby boy who is unable to walk. Or talk. Today, this is killing me.

You can't always get what you want

Hit the ground running, I did. In the OR and delivered by 0741AM. No time to think just move, move, MOVE! I loved it. I needed it. If they had told me I was going to be in the back all muthahumpin' day, I would have been all: BRING IT ON. 'Twas a day I didn't want to think, 'twas a day I needed to just do.



Handling losses is a part of my job that I embrace fully and totally. I ask for the patients who are losing their babies and willingly assist my co-workers when the job is theirs that shift. I want to be the caregiver because I care. No horn tooting or back slapping. I just feel very, very confident in my ability to help the patients & families who find themselves in the worst set of circumstances possible.

So, no pause, no hesitation: I leave the recovery room and my c-section and I take the patient waiting in triage.
The 19 year old about to lose her baby. She's quiet (understandably), she's pensive (of course), she will not make eye contact (totally expected). And she's alone; oh, sweet suffering souls of the planet do I wish she had stayed that way. Stayed alone. That her awful, sad, scary, damaged family had stayed away. There was no way in to any one of them. Closed, angry and insulated. It was like having 4 separate families in that room. No one spoke, no one made eye contact they all wanted what they wanted and not one of them asked the patient what she wanted. She's 19 years old! She already has 2 children! You are her lover, her mother, the baby's grandmother! Someone be gentle with her!

When the sweet babe finally delivered; delivered through much bleeding, I scooped him (yes, a boy) up in a warm blanket and whisked him to the warmer. The little one's hands were up by his face, his legs and big, beautiful feet were curled up tight. He was perfect. And I told him he was. I also told him that I believed he had made the right choice; that he was a smart, smart boy.

Beam me up

So yesterday, I told my husband (with a hearty amount of sincerity) that I wanted to go live in a yurt. A yurt with a roof garden. HA!

We had just endured the most humorless wireless phone salesperson in all of the whole wide world for about 20 minutes of just the worst mind-melitng script of red-taped-the-COMPANY-knows-best BULLSHITTEDNESS. The smarmy-ness could have greased the engine of my 2001 Chevy Tahoe. My husband left first because the baby was tearing apart ACCESSORIES for the CELLPHONES and gettin' a bit crunky from the aforementioned humorless episode that just kept going on and on and on and on and on..... and on. I finished the transaction alone. This may have not been the best idea.

I didn't say anything mean. I mean I didn't use mean words. You know what I mean? (If you've been paying attention, obviously my previous post has been blown to bits).

I walked out of that store so fucking annoyed and Yurt loving. Yurt yearning. Instead, I got a new data plan.

Mirror, mirror

I do a lot of reflecting now. But maybe not in the way you thinks, ole internets. Here's an example: When I see the extraordinarily buffed out dude at T-ball, I no longer jump to the conclusion that he's a meathead-ed Marlboroite. I wait till he SCREAMS and spews SALIVA through the fence for little Timmy to "RUUUUN! RUN IT OOUUT!" and then I judge.

I'm not sniffin' my drawers reflecting. I'm stealing little moments in the day to make sure I don't say/think an ugly/stupid thing reflecting. This new habit is likely to help me in my new life ON THE DAY SHIFT. The place where I get to spend far too many hours with "Puerto Rican Republican", the "Squirrelly-eyed Conservative", and the " Mayor of I-don't-care-how-slowly-I-walk-I- am-still-not-coming-to-open-a-delivery-table-for-you Town".

Ah, perhaps I *am* still the same old me I see.

Final Whine of '09

Having a brand new baby arrive in the house in late 2008 pretty much set me up for a sleepless nightmare of burning eyes out of their sockets hell of depravity. And boy! I'm riding 2009 out on that wave of shit, let me tell you.

I've said before, this boy is sweet. Sweet, sweet, sweety, sweet. And it is precisely that sweetness that keeps me from giving him something to cry about, know what I'm sayin'?

In 2 hours I leave for work for the final few nights of '09 of baby birthing and I suppose that there is some sort of symmetry that I share with my patients, what with the over-packed black bags under my eyes. Perhaps they see me not only as the person who is capable of (and often dispatched to) inserting any manner of tubes into their various orifices (and occasionally, making new ones), but also as their ally in this brutal war of the BABY WHO WILL NOT SLEEP.

Wish me luck and send care packages.

Counting it down, chapter one

I hope (and I know you do, too *wink wink*) this will be the first of a few year-end posts from your beloved Nurse.


Some smart lady said recently: "don't people have diaries anymore?". Good gawd, lawd. I couldn't agree more. 2009 may go in the books as the year I started to dislike the internet a leeeetle, leeetle bit. Why? Lemme make a list, this being the eve of Santa's big dance and all, a list might be fun.

1. Please. Please. STOP using your facebook status as the billboard for why you called in sick to work. We get it. You need the time off. We don't need to know about your ass-assault or the viscosity of your mucus. Just stay the fuck home and off the computer, k? *because it's kinda suspicious*

2. Don't like something? Good for fuckin' you. If it's not open for debate, I don't give a shit.

3. Think you're sexy? Think your third grade teacher's grandkid thinks your sexy? Surprise! He does now after you posted that profile pic of yourself giving oral sex to a popsicle using that "artful" I'm-taking-a-picture-of-my-self-hope-it-doesn't-make-you-nauseous angle

4. If you wanted to be a writer/English teacher/professor I'm sorry that didn't work out for you. But you must know, I MUST tell you: it's FUCKING DEPRESSING to read about your favorite poems/essays/themes every. time. you. log. onto. a. computer.

This really isn't about me being bitter. This is about my beloved internet turning into a peep-show for the socially defunct. I LOVE that the webz helps the shy and introverted shake their money-makers. But I fear the shark has been jumped. I want it back the way it was! I want they mystery back. I don't want to know how much you had to drink last night and how much of a hard-on you have for the chick who works the register at the health food store.

Round 1

It took about 24 hours before she went in for the hit. Have you lost a TON of weight?! You look like you have lost a TON! A TON! I may in fact still be bleeding from the eviscerating.

Bitch, please. Don't you know that I no longer suffer from *that* kind of body dysmorphia? Where you see a beached manatee, I see one skeeeeeeny mama. You reminding me that there are 10 extra pounds laying around does not endear me to you. In. The. Slightest.