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I’m a doctor, not a physicist!

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IMG_4059 This guy came in a kids Burger King meal at least ten years ago. It belonged to my nephew Tyler and he would push the button over and over again and the guy would say I’m a doctor, not a physicist. It drove Brian’s parents insane so they hid it from him in their house. That summer we went to Disney World with Brian’s parents and his sister and my other nephew Kyle. We took two cars and as always when we traveled we had walkie talkies so that we could talk back and forth. Yes, this was the day before cell phones with unlimited texting. As we were leaving I spotted the guy so we (ok it was me because I’m actually ten years old) snuck him out of the house. About an hour down the road we played him over the walkie talkies. It then became a game the rest of the trip to steal him from car to car and play him and annoy the folks on the other end. Ever since then he has sat on the end table at Brian’s parents house. Every few visits I would push his button just to hear him say “I’m a doctor, not physicist.”

Brian’s parents did not get to come to Emily’s graduation because his mom was in the middle of passing a kidney stone. The stone passed on Saturday and was by far the biggest one I have ever seen in my life. So they gave Emily her gift a few days later. Larry had a nice speech all ready to go and a fancy bag with gift wrap to hand to her. He said since she’s a doctor now, she gets to keep this guy and he can go with her for all her travels. She was thrilled and since she has taken a job as a traveling Physical therapist, this little guy will get to see the country. I was probably more thrilled than her because it’s the kind of crazy gifts I give and I love this stupid toy.

Mole Moral~ If your phone rings in a couple of weeks, you may not want to answer because it just may be a guy saying I’m a doctor not a physicist as Emily and I will be traveling to Gridley CA for her first job.

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Suburban Junky:From Honor Roll to Heroin Addict

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A few a weeks after my five week headache, my niece Sierra told me she was reading this book about a kid from Chesterfield that becomes a heroin addict. She said it was really good and since she never reads, I decided to buy it on kindle. I read it in three days which was really fast considering I was still recovering from the headache and my concentration had not fully returned. Here is what amazon says the book is about because I do not want to give too much away:

Jude Hassan came from an upper-middle class household in suburban St. Louis. For most of his life, he was an all-around normal kid. He excelled in sports and academics, and cherished his time at home with his family. It wasn’t until he turned fifteen that things went seriously wrong. While attending his first high school party, he was introduced to pot and alcohol. Needless to say, he gave in to the pressure. A month after that, he discovered heroin. The drug had just made its way into the suburban party scene, and Jude was sure that he could get away with doing it only once. He was sadly mistaken. Within a few short months, his entire life was in shambles. His fate appeared certain, but it was just the beginning.

​In a series of events that leaves you grasping for the next page, Jude spares no amount of detail in his account of his near-decade long struggle with drug addiction, and the horrors he witnessed along the way.

The book is well written and I felt like I was in the middle of the story the entire time. Maybe partly because when my headache was at its worst I would have shot up heroin if that would have gotten rid of it, partly because I have always heard one try and you are addicted, and this kid lived in Chesterfield which is a short drive from where I live.

This is a mole blog so you know this is just the beginning of the story. Last night I was scrolling through Facebook which I haven’t done much of with all the stuff going on lately.  I came across a post that said Suburban Junky made the top 500 books on Amazon, I am so proud of my husband. (Now in the book he had a friend named Rachel from high school, who after he got clean they spoke, he told her everything and they eventually married.) So I looked to see who posted this and I froze because I was so blown away. I work with this Rachel as she is a tech on women’s health who is going to nursing school. She is an amazing tech and I know she will be an amazing nurse. I will be real honest here when she was first hired I was jealous and upset. First of all, I have always been the only Rachel wherever I worked. Heck in high school of 2000 kids there was only one other Rachel so I considered myself special. Rachel also looks like a supermodel. So not only is she super nice, and smart, she’s beautiful. So after a month or so I decided yes I like her and yes I can share my name without being a green eyed idiot. I also feel like I now know a famous person as well. Who would have guessed that she was the Rachel in the book. God is always showing me his ways are better than mine.

Anyway I just want to encourage everyone to read the book and if you have middle school or high school kids, they should read it as well. One stupid decision can change your entire life and lead you down a road no one should ever have to travel.

 

Mole Moral~ Women’s Health now has a third Rachel who is an RN. (Can you believe it? We only have about 50 employees and there are three Rachel’s!) The newest Rachel received the Five Star Nurse award this quarter so she is cool to share my name as well! The other two work nights so it’s really fun when I hand my team off to nurse Rachel and then tech Rachel is the patients tech as well. Rachel’s rule the world!!

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Is this real life?

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Two days ago Rockhurst University sent out an email letting the students know that Westboro Baptist Church would be protesting at their graduation. My very first thought, of course they are because that is life with moles. Someone then posted the flyer which really annoyed me. Actually that is an understatement.

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Let me start with the website, god hates fags? WTF? Sorry for the language but seriously. First all God does not hate anyone. I mean that would be super hard if he did indeed create everyone in his image. So he hates himself? And the word fag, are we back in the era that I grew up in. Last I checked Jesus did not hang out with the so-called religious people but instead all the regular normal people and it probably included “fags” but there may not be a Hebrew word for that term so it was left out. Totally kidding but trying to make a point in my CR way.

Also Rockhurst is a Jesuit University, as in Catholic. So the Catholic faith is nothing but a lie as well. Either these people are stupid or crazy but most likely both. They had wonderful community outreach and service projects. One of the best stories Emily has is when her sorority sister Julie wanted to do a planting project and out of Emily’s mouth flies “do I look like I garden?” Julie’s dad did not let her live that one down. Since the Catholic church totally believes that Jesus is God’s son and he rose from the dead, I cannot understand these people. However it should make for a great story come Saturday when Emily receives her doctorate in physical therapy.

 

Mole Moral ~ It is good to share one’s faith with others, however when you are screaming and attempting to shove your beliefs down someone’s throat the effort is futile.

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The Last First Day of Clinicals

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Yesterday was Emily’s last first day of clinical’s and she chose Mercy Burn Unit to finish out her physical therapy education. It was a proud mom moment since I worked in the burn unit from 1990 until 2000. She was born in 1992 so perhaps all that time I spent there while pregnant transferred into her. HAHAHA. She had a great first day and really enjoyed it. She was able to see debridement on a brand new burn and told me she wished she could help with the peeling off of the skin. I think the nurse told her the pain medicines she was giving and of course Emily was familiar with all of them because of me. Her clinical instructor is dynamite and she really likes her. She asked Emily what her plan would be for a patient and then told her she agreed with Emily. Perhaps Emily’s presentation on burns helped with this as well as all the questions she asked me. She also met Dr. Smock yesterday and liked him as well. He is the director of the burn unit but will be out-of-town for the rest of her clinical’s.

I was thinking back on to my first day there. I was working on my BSN and had a choice to do 80 hours with management or 140 hours in a clinical setting. (I was already a RN and that’s why I had a choice.) Even back then i had no interest in management so I chose the clinical and was placed in the burn unit. A nurse named Gere was my mentor and I will never forget my first day, walking in and saying I was with Gere. The person responded with “the nurse” and I wanted to say “no the housekeeper” but I actually had a filter back in the day so I kept my mouth shut. My very first day they flew in a 90% burn and I spent most of the day watching what all went into an admission on that big of a burn. I finished my degree in March of 2000 and then applied and started in the burn unit of August 2000. I was thinking about the people I started with and almost every single one of them stayed with mercy so I am not the only one with twenty-seven years experience! John and Rosina went to the OR. One Mary went to cardiac rehab the other to cardiac cath lab. Lisa went on to case management. Jessica did one day in the OR and eventually ended up over in the burn clinic with Diane who just recently retired. Sue went to the JFK clinic. Jeff went to Epic and Jay went to work in one of the doctor’s office. And my two besties Tricia went to NICU and then interventional radiology and Sue is in the PACU so I get to talk to her a lot. My other bestie Lisa left to take raise her kids and came back five years to the burn unit. She tried talking me into coming back but my time had been served. I must mention Tracy who was there when I started and still works there. It’s hard to believe it has been twenty-seven years since I first walked into the burn unit but it was a life changing experience and I learned so much from my co-workers and the patients. I would do it all over again in a heart beat.

 

Mole Moral ~ All those years of talking about how people were burned and how to prevent it must have paved the way for Emily to think it would be a really great place to work as well.

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Postponing the fifty mile ultra marathon

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I’ve been waiting a while to write this blog because honesty it sucks. However, I have known since three days after I came home from the hospital I was going to have to postpone my fifty mile run. Today was my first training run since February first and there is no way after not running for five weeks I could jump back into it and do forty plus miles a week. That would most certainly lead me to an injury and a visit to Dr. Larkin. I have not seen him in over three years and even though he is super easy on the eyes, I still do not want to have to visit him.

I thought I would be a lot more upset about this than I actually am. The first time I said it out loud, I almost broke down into tears but after that it hasn’t been an issue. I guess the main reason is because I had no control over getting a headache. If I had to postpone because I was just lazy and didn’t do the training it would be one thing but a medical condition makes it much easier to cope with.

Last week I started looking up fall races and I was getting highly discouraged. There was one that said the trail was marked with markers on trees. I immedialty eliminated that one because I have zero GPS skills and would be lost out on the trail for hours until a search and rescue team came and found me. A lot of them were like up and down mountains (I’m exaggerating a little) and I am not ready for that kind of craziness ~ yet. So I finally found one in South Dakota at Custard State Park. The park is located right by Mount Rushmore and The Crazy Horse Memorial. About twelve years ago the girls and I visited it with Brian’s parents. It seems as if Brian went fishing in Canada that year and skipped it. So I am totally excited he will get to see it. Devils tower is two hours away so I am already planning the insane road trip. I priced to fly out there and with it being 800 a person I said we are driving. My goal is to find some other places to see on the way back. I am so looking forward to this adventure because if it is half as crazy as our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary we will have a blast.

I fully believe everything happens for a reason. Perhaps had I run in Springfield I would have fallen and broken my ankle. Another thought I would have had a heart attack and drop dead. Or even worse someone coming to watch me would have been in a car accident. This change allows Brian and I to have another vacation alone with just the two of us. We have only taken one by ourselves a couple other times the entire time we have been married. Yes I will admit and say I am really excited about this. Now to stay injury free and start training. The two bad things about starting over is I already did the first eight weeks or so and they were hard. I am not looking forward to that and now I get to run huge long distances in the summer. Due to a lack of winter, I am afraid this summer will be unbearable but whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger. So official training starts the first week of April and until then I will be trying to build my stamina back up. After five weeks my cardio has shot craps and todays four mile walk/run was hard.

 

Mole moral ~ What you work at, you get better at. What you don’t work at, you get worse at. (Pastor Tom Noblitt on marriage)

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The Headache Clinic Visit

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I didn’t write this yesterday because I was annoyed. I know me annoyed that’s super shocking. Anyway the nurse practitioner was super nice and I really liked her. However she didn’t really know what to do with me either. She was trying to ask me the questions about my headache but since I have never had a migraine they made no sense. For example, how many migraines do you have a week. I’ve never had one except this one for five weeks. Do you have an aura? No, it just started hurting at this work meeting and never went away. She was fine with not taking the preventives and took them all off of my chart. We were reviewing what medicines i was on and I found out my Vicodin dose was 10mg and not 5mg so it’s a good thing I only took a half of one at a time. I also had no clue how much Indocin I was taking. I told her I felt like an old person who would say I take a little white pill for my heart. She felt that because my headache has been slowly getting better that it was on its way out. However no real explanation of what caused it. So I am going back to work on Monday which I am looking forward too. She also gave me a different migraine medication to try if my headache comes back. Should I make a spread sheet of which weird side effect it will give me and take bets? Nothing could be worse than the chest pain Imitrex gave me. I seriously thought I was having a heart attack. I am headache free today and going to the eye doctor to get new glasses. I’ve been wearing my back up ones since the cruise because my mom accidentally knocked them out of the back of the airplane seat and the arm broke off. This was before we even landed for the cruise. She of course denies this and I didn’t care because I was planning on getting new frames this year anyway.

 

Mole Moral ~ I am sticking with my diagnosis of NURSE CURSE and no one can convince me any differently.

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How He Loves

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How He Loves is by far the very best and most important song ever written. There is incredible meaning and a story that goes along with it that I will get to a little later in this post.

Most people do not know that I have had a headache for over a month straight. It all started at work during a meeting. I did write about my visit to the ER eight days later.(CR visits the ER) I remained headache free until the day after I finished the steroids and then it came right back. It finally got to the point that by five or six in the evening I could no longer function at work and the supervisor would have to watch my patients while I slept before I could even drive home. The last day I worked I realize now that I could barely function and people would talk to me but I could hardly register what they were saying. On a Saturday I started having numbness and tingling in my arm and face so I had my sister drop me off at the ER. This time they did not give me compazine because of the twitching and what they gave me did not touch my headache. They decided to admit me to do a MRI/MRV to check to make sure I did not have blood clots in my sinuses. All of that came back normal. I was in the hospital for six days and even had a lumbar puncture. Every single test was negative. Nothing they gave me got rid of the headache and I slept a lot more than I realized. So they sent me home on a Friday and said your headache will go away eventually. That weekend was horrible. I started throwing up on top of being in the worst pain of my life. I asked God several times to just take me to Heaven to be with my grandparents, but apparently Jesus isn’t ready for CR because I am still here. Finally on Tuesday the nausea left, the pain cut in half and I could sit up without feeling like my head was going to explode. For ten days I could really only tolerate laying on my right or left side I couldn’t even lay on my back without feeling like my head was going to explode. It was just awful.

Tonight I went to the Edge (our youth service) and its the first time I have been out of the house in over two weeks. I mean I have left to take short walks around the neighborhood but I have not been anywhere else besides the hospital. Tonight the band played How He Loves. It’s been a long time since I have sung that song at church. The first time I heard it was 2008 at Big Stuf camp. That was the first year I went to camp and it was a game changer for my life. During the camp for the first time I ever I could feel that God loved me. Prior to that I never felt anyone really loved me. I knew in my head people loved me but I couldn’t feel it.  This kind of talk did not go over well with my husband who told me basically that was the stupidest thing he had ever heard and I was wrong. I was already in counseling and that was the final straw, I started looking at apartments because I was finished with him. (A friend of mine told me about the movie Fireproof and we did The Love Dare and all things changed.) However for the next two years or so every single time I heard that song, I would end up crying by the time it was over. Well tonight that song started and the tears started full force. God was with me during one of the most difficult times in my life back then and I knew he was here with me right now. It was like he was saying hey CR I’m still here and you will get through this as well. I thought I could explain this experience in words but it’s just not working out.

My headache has greatly decreased which is how I am even able to write this blog. Usually when I try concentrating it starts ramping up but so far so good. I have an appointment with a headache neurologist on Thursday. They are calling this an irregular migraine. I am not really buying this as I have never had a migraine in my life. These headaches usually start in the teen years. Brian has had migraines since he was a kid and he said he has never seen anything like the way I have been. They wanted me to take a bunch of drugs to prevent the next one. I could not stand the drugged up way I felt so I stopped taking all of them. Plus why am I trying to prevent something that won’t even go away. We shall have a nice discussion at this appointment. I want the cause of the headache discovered and resolved, not sit around in a semi comatose state for the rest of my life.

How He Loves

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

And oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves us all

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

Oh, how He loves, yeah, He loves us
Oh, how He loves us, oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves

And we are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking

And heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way

Oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves all
How He loves

Yeah, He loves us, oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us, oh how He loves
Oh, I love

Yeah, He loves us, yeah, He loves us
How He loves us, oh, how He loves us all

 

Mole Moral ~ My final diagnosis will be NURSE CURSE!

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CR visits the ER

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It’s been almost two weeks since I was at work and started getting a headache around four in the afternoon. I took motrin which did not help and took an excedrin as well an hour or two later. I had a meeting after work and by nine my headache was so bad I threw up and got sent out of the meeting. I went and laid down on the couch in an empty room because there was no way I could drive home. After sleeping for about an hour I was able to make it home. I had to work the next day and the headache was there when I woke up but I took medicine and knew it would be gone. Yeah, no that didn’t happen and by five I had to clock out and go lay down again. I also proceeded to vomit. I was off for the next four days and I thought to myself in the morning this headache will be gone. It never went away during this time but it was never so bad that I had to lay down or throw up. So Tuesday I went to work with the same headache but it was tolerable.However I wasn’t my normal get on everyone’s nerves usual self either.

This past thursday I am at work again and the headache is still out of there and out of control. I have now googled brain aneurysms, stroke, and other neurological conditions and am convinced I have a brain aneurysm. I really didn’t want to go to the ER because if it was that I would not be able to do my fifty mile run. (True story!) We had a bunch of unexpected discharges and they said I could leave at five so I agreed to go to the ER since everyone had been bugging me to go since Tuesday. The ER was crazy busy and has been since right before Christmas so I had a bit of a wait. They offered me a stretcher in the hall and I said sure because I just wanted to lay down. I was right by the nurses station but my head was bugging me so badly, I couldn’t even enjoy watching the nurses at the station.

My nurse wasn’t even born when I graduated from nursing school. Apparently the ER has a grant to draw HIV tests free of charge so I said sure draw one. You all will be happy to know I am negative. The doctor came by and he was nice looking but my head hurt so bad I couldn’t even enjoy the eye candy. He felt I had an intractable migraine but since I have never had a migraine in my life, it would best to get a CT scan as well. So the treatment for that was twenty-five milligrams of Benadryl and ten milligrams of Compazine. The Benadryl counteracts the twitching from the compazine. Ok every single nurse knows that drug seekers want dilaudid pushed followed by Benadryl pushed super fast. When that nurse pushed the Benadryl I felt as if all the air had been sucked out of my lungs and then started coughing uncontrollably. I informed my nurse I’m “allergic” to Benadryl because it caused coughing. She started laughing. I am at a total loss as to why anyone would want that feeling. So then they sent me to the scan in a total drug induced state. I barely remember the scan. But let me just say bu the time I returned my headache was half as bad.

The doctor comes by and sees I’m still twitching and orders cogenten. I look at him like he has two heads and he tells me its a safe drug. Because of my drug state I couldn’t respond with I’m not concerned about its safety, it’s old as dirt. But it worked. Then they show up with sixty milligrams of prednisone and ten milligrams of percocet. I tell my nurse no way am I taking ten of percocet. I will take five only. After all this picture was taken of me after taking a five of percocet so I can’t imagine what my kids would capture with ten milligrams on board.

They let me sleep for a bit and I am finally headache free so they give me a prescription for five days of steriods and some percocet. The doctor told me it’s very unusual to get your first migraine at the age of 49. I said yeah no kidding it’s called “nurse curse” and it’s alive and well for me. So now the headache is gone but I’m experiencing “roid rage”. I don’t know why anyone would want to take this stuff and buff up. I have not slept more than four hours for the past three nights. I haven’t been up to four in the morning in forever. I did manage to find The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on Nick at Night. Someone was wanting to buy the house they lived in and that someone turned out to be none other than Donald Trump! I was dying. Tonight i am taking fifty milligrams of Benadryl and if that doesn’t work i am taking more. I have to sleep tonight, I am working tomorrow.

 

Mole Moral ~ Leave it to mama mole to have her first migraine that won’t go away with over the counter drugs but takes a cute doctor in the ER to make it go away.

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Two is better than one

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img_3288Brian has been driving a work van for about five years now. It also happened to be the oldest one in the fleet. He works for C&R but if you don’t notice the and sign it looks like he drives a CR (crazy Rachel) van which is comical and takes people by surprise when they see it for the first time. So a couple of weeks ago it passed inspection but the check engine light was on and some fix it codes came up. The company decided it was time to replace it (as it is a 2002) instead of fix it. Well I hadn’t heard anything about a replacement.

On Wednesday when Brian was driving home from a class (pipe-fitter’s have continuing education units they must obtain to keep their license active) for the second time a tire blew out on that van while driving down the highway. Either Brian is an excellent driver or it just wasn’t his time to go because he managed not to have an accident either time.

I came home on Friday to see this in the driveway. Brian has to take all of his junk (I mean tools and stuff) out of the old van and put it in the new one. Since he has to think about everything before he does anything he told his boss he couldn’t do it on work time it would take all day. I have a feeling he might be finished when I get home from my 22 mile run today. But I will not be surprised if he is still working on it. He is dressed in his heavy work jumpsuit and tells me I’m soft because I am not running outside today. It it were five or ten miles I would but I’m not about to be out in 30 degree weather for six hours. I’m not that crazy.

Kayla is home this weekend as one of her friends is having a baby shower. So that means ring around the driveway as if Emily is home too. Yes I do miss my girls but I never miss their cars!

 

Mole Moral ~ If you want a new work vehicle, just have it need a bunch of work and blow out a tire. It gets replaced much faster!

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Our old TV

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Sometime this past summer I had went to Costco and was looking at TV’s that hang on the wall. I was trying to get an idea on the price for a future purchase. This cute red-headed kid approached me from Direct TV and started talking about ways to save me money. By the time I had gotten away from him, I was saving a seventy dollars a month by switching to direct tv and would be receiving a three hundred-dollar gift card to Costco in the mail. Now our old TV is the kind that has a light bulb and it was never right from the very beginning. Everyone else’s light bulb would last years and ours burned out every three to four months. At first they were two hundred dollars to replace and I finally wised up and found a web site for fifty bucks. So Brian and I both agreed once the current light bulb burned out, we were getting a new TV.

So we waited and we waited and we waited and waited some more! Until finally I said the dang thing isn’t ever going to burn out so lets just get a new one and that is what we did New Years Eve. We purchased a nice sixty-five inch flat screen after Brian told my sister anything over sixty and the picture was too stretched out. She will never let him live that down. And then the issue was what are we going to do with the old fifty-five inch dinosaur that we own. It still works great but I refused to put it in the basement. For starters, I am sick of the lightbulb and to move it down there we would have to redo the entire sitting area and Brian would have to build shelves for my ten million scrapbooks. That thought alone made him agree to get rid of it.

First we called the salvation army and they wanted no part of it because it was not a flat screen. We drove up to Goodwill because they would not answer the phone. Same response, that is not a flat screen get lost. So I found a recycling place in Arnold that I had no idea even existed. I drove past it for at least four years when Kayla and Bridget carpooled to dance together. Brian drives up and they take one look at it and said nope it’s not a flat screen go to the dump. Ok not exactly what they said but close enough. During work today Brian’s buddy said if the recycling people won’t take it bring it up to my apartments. He said to set it by the dumpster and it would be gone by morning. Brian said no way would that happen so they bet a dollar. So Allyson and Brian drive up to his friends and he helped them get it off the back of the truck. They hadn’t even set it on the ground before a guy walked up and inquired about the TV. Brian told him it works great, he just bought a new one so his friend helped the stranger carry the TV into his apartment. After that Brian paid his friend a dollar.

 

Mole moral~ Always pay up on your bets, after all it may just help you give a perfectly functioning TV to someone who could use it!