When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandpa; not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

Well, I suppose I should update this blog. I make no excuses. When life and school get busy, this thing takes a back seat.

Quick run down of what has happened since my last post on here:

1) I managed to pass my pathophysiology class. Not everyone in my class made the cut. =(

2) DURING FINALS WEEK, my family and I moved to a new house. Exhausting, but the house is nice.

3) I am taking some summer courses. I just finished the lecture and clinical portions of my psychiatric nursing class, now all I need to do is finish up the last bits of my care plan and turn that sucker in. I think my brain squeezed out of my ear and ran away screaming. I did NOT enjoy my clinical rotation AT ALL. I now know which area of nursing that I do not enjoy. I got my first experience with "countertransference" and it was not pleasant. DO. NOT. WANT.

4) I had a mini-freak out/breakdown/stress out crash and caught a cold for my trouble. I'm still honking my nose like a fog horn. This is related to my suck-tacular experience at my clinicals. That, and some jack off in the movie theater happened to be sitting behind me and sounded like he was coughing up a lung, a spleen and very possibly his shoes, too. Remember kids: SHARING IS NOT CARING WHEN IT COMES TO COLDS!

Aside from that, I'm pretty busy with finishing my care plan and getting caught up in my pharmacology class for the days I was out of town on said clinical. Here's to hoping that I pass these classes and am able to move on the the classes I need to take this fall.

I make text-y faces because they make me happy!

So... Yeah. I've been so busy that I've barely had time to catch my breath for the past 5ish weeks! I guess I'll just post the condensed version.

I got done with my clinical hours for the semester on Thursday. On one hand, I was happy to be done with them and be able to sleep past 5am again. On the other hand, I was sad that I would not be working with anymore patients until June. I especially liked my last patient. She was someone who had such a good attitude, a good sense of humor and a very kind heart.

I only have a couple weeks of school left until finals start. I have a butt-ton of material to cover in both my classes. Ugh! X_X At least the finals are not comprehensive, but it is still a LOT of material to cover!! This is why I am such a rare sight outside of my home or the college campus! I have time to eat, study, sleep, study, bathe, study... and did I mention, study? I can't afford to really do anything else, or my grade may dip too low. It's really frustrating. My English Literature class has been keeping me busy with writing papers, as well. I have to take this class, as it is a humanities category and the last "general" I need for graduation. After this semester, I only need nursing courses.

I don't even want to talk about how my nursing pathophysiology class is going. I'm passing, but I hear many folks are on the border line. The anxiety and stress that they emit is almost as bad as second-hand smoke! I can tell when it is affecting me. I don't know what I can do to help my classmates (that won't get me kicked out of school) and it's got me feeling pretty sad. I don't like seeing people feel as awful as many of my classmates are feeling. ;_; BUT, I can do without all the drama that is going on. I am SO damn sick of the "us against them" mentality that is starting to creep into everyone involved. >=(

So, anyways. The Princess is tired, exhausted, highly annoyed and ready to start biting people. Ain't life grand?

Paying One's Final Respects

Today, people from my church gathered together to say our final farewells to a lady of our congregation. She was 95 years old and lived a full life. A very sweet, amazing person to know. She had known my parents since they were like 13 or 14 years old. Mom had been quite sad to see her pass away.

After the memorial service, we went to the cemetary. Funny thing, most of the people who showed up for the dedication of the grave were women. The fellow from the funeral home and our bishop were a little dismayed. Who were going to be the paulbearers?? There weren't 6 men who were healthy enough to carry the casket from the hearse! In the end, the fellow from the funeral home rounded up 8 of us women and we carried the casket which held the earthly remains of our friend to her final resting place. Our bishop had thought women paulbearers were fitting. All 8 of us were her friends or children of her friends. My mother, my sister and I were 3 of those 8 people. It may seem a little odd, but it felt like an honor to help lay her to rest.

This got me to thinking. Why has it always been (to my knowledge) men who were the paulbearers? When it comes time to "plant me in the dirt", I think I want 6 or 8 of my female friends and family to lay me to rest. (Unless I have a husband or any male family or friends that want to be paulbearers, then they would be welcome to join the women doing the job.) I also think, like my bishop, that it is entirely appropriate for women to be the paulbearers for another woman.

Opinions?

The Fashion Industry Should Die in a Fire For My Amusement

So, done with my second week of clinicals. I get a week off to recover. I feel really sad. I really liked my patients last week, they were able to talk about things. My other patients had pretty much been non-verbal, so this had be a real treat for me. It was fun to be able to talk about religions and not have any bat an eye or give you the "that makes people (who aren't even a part of the conversation) really uncomfortable, drop the subject, or I'll go tell on you!" lecture. I got to hear about great-grandchildren, what it was like to ride a horse in the desert and all sorts of other stuff. I'm no great conversationalist, but I do enjoy getting to hear what people think about things, as it forces me to try to think outside of my comfortable little "bubble."

My weekend sucked. I went clothes shopping. If you know me in person, you know that this almost NEVER goes over well. Such is the lot of this fat girl, it seems. Mind you, I made sure to go to stores that sold the plus or "fat" sizes and to stores that sold ONLY the "fat" sizes. You know, so I MIGHT have better than a snowball's chance in hell of finding something that fit and looked decent on me? What did I find? Jack and Shit. And Jack was out of town. I kid you not. NOTHING fit.

You know what made me break down in tears? One of the clerks (at the fat clothes store, no less) told me, "You shouldn't bother coming in here until you've lost like 4o pounds." AT THE FUCKING FAT CLOTHES STORE!! Let's be real here. My current dress size is a 26. (Yeah, yeah, take those "fatass!!" cat calls and choke on them, fat haters.) This store advertized sizes 12 to 30. Let me see... 26 is BETWEEN 12 and 30!! Logically, this shop should have had clothing in my size. Well... do socks count? Bras are nice, but I need something to wear OVER them in public.... Aside from that, not a fucking thing was to be found that fit. As I was driving home, still in tears, I realized I wished I had said to the clerk, "If I could lose weight with a snap of my fingers, would I even BE here, lady? By the way, how you treat someone who WAS going to be a paying customer? Shitty. Same for your attitude."

"Oh, you must be mistaken about your size, Sarah, you DID put on some weight!" Oh no, I am NOT mistaken. I took my measurements and they were pretty much what a size 26 in a dress would be. (Minus the ginormus boobies, darn it! I am the only fat girl I know who is not well endowed in the boob department. ;_; ) I even had a friend who makes dresses double check me! What is the damn deal here?! 100 pieces of size 12 clothes, a couple 16s to 18s, one 20 one 22 and two 30s do NOT cover the entire 12 to 30 spectrum!!

I think I'll just start buying more of my nursing scrub uniforms and wear those around. At least I know those fit. I hate wearing scrubs, but at least I'm not made to feel like an entire pig stuffed into a 1 pound sausaage casing while in them! I'm debating if I have enough spare time from my studying for exams, writing 2 research papers and somehow finding time to sleep and bathe, to take up sewing. I'm way past frustrated. One more incident like this and I'll just walk my ass naked around town. I'm half way serious, too.

On a Badass-ness scale of 1 to 10, I'm a -20.

No, it's not the sequel to the doll story. This is something of rather questionable quality that I decided to take a risk and share. A sort of look back at the things that didn't go right for me in life... and my turning around and giving it the "middle finger salute" to its face. I won the fight. It didn't. More moody than my usual wont. Feel free to use the air-sickness bags if you need.

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“The Dam Was Damned”

The dam breaks. The water rushes in, around and over.
Too long. Too long.
These hurts and feelings have been held back too long.
It hurts. Sweet Mercy, it hurts.

The poison is being drawn out, so it can no longer harm.
The body wants it gone.
The body and the spirit want it gone.
They want it gone NOW.

But Pride, always Pride, is in the way.
Vainly it tries to stop the crack with a finger.
But this day does not favor Pride’s little Dutch boy.
The village that Pride built will know destruction this day.

I fall to my knees. The village walls crumble.
Pain long hidden away runs like a captive animal from an opened cage.
Tears cloud my sight. The village is flooded.
The raging waters beat against the proud wall that is my throat.

I want to… and yet I don’t… give voice.
Voice to the pain, to the anger, to the offended sense of right and wrong.
Voice to the sadness and grief over what could have been.
I want to give voice so that the poison will torment me no more.

The waters rage and push with greater force.
It will not be denied. Dues must be paid.
Anger, hurt, grief and sadness have no cares for the prideful mind.
Pride never solved a problem. Pride never soothed a troubled soul.

At first just a ragged breath. And then a quivering jaw.
The waters have won. Pride has been washed away.
Then a sob, and then a howl. The torrents continue.
The waters pull the toxin with them as they speed on their way.

I lay there feeling utterly devoid of energy.
Where Pride’s village once stood, only a muddy mire remains,
Not even a ragged fence or piece of wall to remark that it was once there.
My eyes close, leading me to my first peaceful dreams in years.
---

As always, feel free to speak your peace.

Be happy I didn't write about a G.I. Joe action figure!

Alrighty. I got brave yesterday and put together a little piece. I was feeling down, so I decided to channel my "blues" into a story. The result is the story of a little girl's toy. It may not be the best thing to ever be made, but I had quite a bit of fun writing it. I have a second short work written in response to this one, but I'll save that one for another day.

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Memories of a Doll

The corner is dark. This wooden chest hasn’t been moved in years. The only things that have moved are the dust and the cobwebs. Here I’ve sat, years on end.

I used to remember what light and color looked like. I used to remember what moving felt like, what freedom was. I was loved once. That, I remember most of all.

I was a little girl’s best friend. I was her constant companion. Tea time, whispered secrets, hop scotch and adventures in the garden; all had in the span of a day. It seems like it was just yesterday that we imagined a flowerbed to be some exotic jungle and hoped to spy a lion, a tiger, or even a bear.

Then came the day, that horrible, awful day. We were in the park. An older, bigger girl made her cry. Had called her a “baby” for playing with “that dumb old dolly!” All the way home she ran, not caring how I’d flailed in the wind.

This chest, this very wooden chest, the first to catch her eye; into this chest she threw me. She looked down at me, tears in her eyes. Her face was red with anger and shame. At first, she left me there, lying on my back and all a-kilter. Soon after, she gently sat me upright, fixed my dress, and smoothed my hair. Ever so gently, the lid came down and a soft, hesitant click was heard.

Oh, the many, many times I’ve played this in my head. How I wish, that right then, I could speak. To comfort her. To console her. To remind her that a bully is as a bully does. Is throwing a friend away the price one must pay to be accepted? Is a bully’s opinion worth more than a friend?

Most of all, I miss my friend.
---

Questions and comments welcome!

The day I followed the Circulating Nurse in the M/S unit!

So, on to a bit of real life. Today, I got to do my observation day in the Operation/Med-Surg. unit. I was so excited that I didn't sleep much of the night. I got to the hospital around 7am. I wandered around a bit, because I was lost. (Perhaps fortunately for me, I've only ever been to the hospital for being born, and for the yearly blood work to check my thyroid hormone levels. I pretty much only know where the Labs and bathrooms are at in this hospital.) Eventually, I found someone who works in that unit and she showed me around. Then I changed into some surgical scrubs. I was quite shocked that they carried scrubs big enough even for someone as fat as I am! They looked pretty good, too.

After finding a few patients who agreed to let me watch their procedures, and having them sign the consent forms (so I could watch), I got to see several things for the first time. I saw 2 colonoscopies, 1 endoscopy and 1 gallbladder removal. I can't give any details about the patients, due to the HIPPA privacy clause. I hope y'all understand.

At first, I was kinda squeamish during the colonoscopies (I mean, after all, they are sticking a camera up someone's bum! Ick!) but it got better. I got to see what a phyllop looked like in someone's colon. I got to see what diverticulitis looked like. They had a hell of a time with the endoscopy, the patient had a hair trigger gag reflex. (They stick the fiber optic camera tube down your throat for that one.) I got to see what vocal cords look like in real life.

I have to say, that in my opinion, the gallbladder removal surgery was the most interesting and the coolest! I watched the team prep the room, prep the patient, and even watched most of the surgery. Wow! They did all of that with just one small incision! I think it's called a laproscopy. The surgeon was using these really long instruments to perform the procedure. I would have stayed to watch the whole thing, but my time was up and I was getting light headed from hunger.

After a bit of being lost and wandering, I found the cafeteria. The food was actually pretty good. Nothing like the slop they feed you in public school. Amazingly enough, I managed to wolf down my food without feeling the least bit queasy after watching the surgery. Heh. Now if I could just pull that trick off for my fear of needles. I do okay if I am the one GIVING the injection, but I still freeze up in terror if I'm the one GETTING the injection. Quite embarassing.

I'm still not sure what department I want to work in after I get my licence. But Med-Surg seems pretty interesting. I've still got a whole nother year (and passing my state boards) to go before I need to make up my mind.