This week

Work wasn't the worst ever. This week was actually alright until the last night. For some reason, the city decides to explode and everyone shows up at the ER on the same night. The problem with this is that we have people waiting in the waiting room for eight hours before they are taken back to a room. Once they get to a room, they still have to wait to be seen by a doctor. This in turn makes the patients and their families fairly irritable, and they tend to take it out on the staff. Sadly, we can't control the fact that everyone in the city decided to take a visit to the ER, but people think it's our fault that the wait time is so long. It's all about having someone to blame I guess.

That's a pretty frustrating part about my job. I can only do so many things at one time, and it's the same for the other nurses and doctors I work with. I'm not the most skilled or knowledged person in my field. I'm still new and learning the processes and what works best for me. However, I believe I am still proficient in what I do. It simply feels like we don't get enough credit for what we put up with.

Enough of the complaining, that's gotta get old! Today was a good day. Nothing too exciting to post about, I'm just content with where God has put me in my life at this point.





Went to a wedding with Daniel a couple months ago. I caught the bouquet (...). Anyway, this was me. Daniel took the picture. I absolutely love this dress, btw. It's from anthropologie in the uptown shopping center. Great store. It's a bit pricey, but I love love love it.

My once a year update?

I actually intend on keeping this up a little more, but who knows if that will actually happen. I seem to fade in and out of the online blog thing. I enjoy it because I can keep my friends and family updated, but it's hard to remember to make a post in the midst of my busy days.

I've been at Pres for a little over a year now. It went by so quickly, it's hard to believe that all that time has gone. As of yesterday I've had my house for a year, and that doesn't even seem right! I feel like I've been living here for a few months, not a whole year. Things are starting to come together a little more in my home. I finally bought a patio furniture set and started on sprucing up the downstairs bathroom (much thanks to my creative sister).

The patio set that I bought was great, and I was even surprised when I got home from my cruise to see that Daniel had taken everything out of the box and put it together while I was gone. A week later, I looked out at my backyard to see that the table's glass top was shattered all over the ground. I have no idea what happened, but I have an idea. To avoid unfair accusations I'll just keep it to myself. Speaking of which, I'm going to have the walls of my backyard built up. They are about four feet tall right now, which means that anyone can just hop right on over. My parents are replacing their patio set, so they gave me their old table as a nice gift to replace my broken one.

Work has been busy, too busy most of the time. It's not an easy job, and being understaffed makes everything just that much harder. I guess I'll have to wait prayerfully and see where God is going to take me from here. If he opens other doors, I might just look into them. It's so difficult to know where He wants my life to go, especially since I don't get a letter in the mail saying "Hey, Christy, I want you to work here for x amount of time, and then go here". Wouldn't that just be fantastic? A girl can dream. :)

And now for some pictures from the cruise I went on with my mom and sister! We went with Carnival to Cabo San Lucas.






This seagull was following me around on the side deck while I was taking pictures. Kinda cute.








These are the towel animals that they made in our room every night. The last one... well I'm not too sure what that was supposed to be. Maybe the new guy made that one? They put our sunglasses on them if we left them in the room, it was fun!







This was the captain's dinner night. The first three pictures are of the people we sat with for dinner every night. They were all good company.




Just hanging out on the deck by the pool. They had a buffet up there for lunch.




It was HOT in Cabo, but it was certainly beautiful. The sun was so bright out on the water, it was hard to keep my eyes open for the picture. The rock formations were really interesting.

Slacking

Yeah yeah, I know. I'm slacking on my posts. Just seems like I'm hardly home these days. I'm working in the ER full time now, and it's going really well. I work every Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night until the middle of October, so I've been missing church on the weekends. Thankfully I've found a really great Wednesday night program called "The Bridge" for young adults at Sagebrush. Daniel and I have been going and we've really been enjoying it so far. The people are great, I've already met some interesting and fun people. Whenever I get myself a camera, I'll take pictures of the group and post them. I've got a full day ahead of me, so I'll wrap up this short post.

First post from my new home

I bought a house almost two weeks ago, and I got the internet set up on Monday. I just finished working a twelve hour shift in the ER (which I'm enjoying a lot), and now I'm sitting at my computer. Most of the time I forget to post until my sister reminds me that I haven't written anything in a good month. I'm not sure if I'll get pictures of my new place anytime soon, but I'll post them if I do. Today was a crazy day, I did my second shift in the ER, and it's actually a really fun place to work. The only problem I have is actually getting used to the controlled chaos, which can feel a little uncontrolled at times. There's a lot to learn, and that's exciting, but very intimidating at the same time.

I weighed the pros and cons about working in the PACU (post-op) and the ER. Both units have their ups and downs, and I like the staff in each place. I spoke to the ER manager today and found out that she would probably start me off on nights because it's easier for me to learn with a preceptor, as days can be a little more crazy. I could either do nights or day swing shift (12 to 12). So it's a bit of a draw back, because even PACU would start me out at 10am to 10pm. Either way I can kiss part of my social life goodbye. Also, ER requires you to work three weekend shifts a month. I could do a full weekend and a half weekend and get it overwith. PACU doesn't require as many weekends, infact you might not have to work them at all if they have enough staff to cover it. ER also requires you to be on call once every two weeks, and PACU isn't as much (I think once a month?). So the upside to ER is the experience, the learning, and the fact that you'll seldom get bored. PACU can be a rather monotonous job, and you're forced to watch the clock all day because of how much you chart on your patient. The shifts in ER seem to go by faster, and I get to practice a LOT of nursing skills. I think I started about 12 IVs on Tuesday. It's a tough decision, but I went ahead and made an appointment for a peer interview in the ER. We'll see how it goes, and I hope the Lord's answers to my prayers for the right direction get a little less confusing and a bit more clear.

In the end, I'm a nurse to treat my patients and to care for them with the best of my ability. No matter where I work, I pray that God will always keep those thoughts in my head. That's what matters most.

Settling

No pictures this time, just a little update. I've started my job at Presbyterian as of June 9th. I made an offer on a house with 3 bedrooms 2.5 baths, and they accepted (it's over on I-40 and Coors). I've made a lot of friends since coming back, most of them through work. I miss my brother, his wife, and their three beautiful children since they moved to Brooklyn. I've learned that asking for insurance quotes online will get you twenty phone calls and a hundred e-mails the next day. It's really nice to be home where I can see the majority of my family whenever I want to. Anyhow, that's about it.

Kitty cat

Well, Kuno and I are enjoying our time off now that school is coming to an end. She spends the day getting in trouble, then relaxing on any flat surface she can find. Here are some pictures of her lazing the day away, and getting into the cubby hole above my filing cabinet (she barely fits).

Spring Break

I'm finally getting a little time to myself to relax and kick back, but wait! What am I going to do now that I'm not studying for a test or doing clinical all day? I guess I'll be watching a lot of Law and Order. I'm gonna get together with some friends while I'm on spring break, but I'm doing my best not to spend a whole lot of money.

Graduation is getting so close, it feels like just yesterday I was getting together with Monica and Lori to study for Anatomy and Physiology over the summer before nursing school started. It's hard to believe it's been almost two years since then. One more rotation of clinicals, two more tests, and finals, then it's all over and I graduate in May.