Over-sized Loads and Shotguns

I had to work today. As I was driving through the boonies--curses to 22 construction!--I came upon some stopped traffic. This was no ordinary "Over-sized Load"...it was like twice the size of my house and looked something like a nuclear reactor part....and it was trying to make a 120º turn. Yeah, that took a while.

Then when I when I got to work, chaos ensued as they sent me to Neuro but no body seemed to know which patient I was supposed to get. I ended up with this kid named Chris, who's about 3 weeks older than me, but he's been shot twice and has a 4 month old. Yay for working in the ghetto! Anywho, one of those shots was to the head, so you can imagine he's in a lovely state of mind. And oh yes, when he was coming to in ICU, he ripped his breathing tube out so now his throat is extra scratched up and he can't talk at all.

Chris ended up being pretty good though. His family, however, was quite another story. His mom only came to visit after his girlfriend...or "baby mamma," if you will...called to say the hospital needed her since Chris got transfered to ABI and that requires signatures and stuff. Oh boy. She gets there and starts telling him how Melvin, apparently the dude that shot him, was in front of the house and she "was trippin'," went inside and got her shotgun and ran him off: "Ain't no *bleepity-bleep* messing wit' my boy, runnin' me outta my house!"

Oh. Then the best time for his mom to purchase/smoke some "stuff" was determined so she can come visit in an acceptable state tomorrow.

Blogathon

Too bad I didn't find out about Blogathon 2006 sooner or I probably would have tried to do it. Put my crazy-watching staying up all night skills to good use, lol. But anywho, to any random person that reads this...are there any?...you should go sponsor Nikki who is raising money for the Children's Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation in honor of Christi and a bunch of other kids. Linkage: http://bloggingforchristi.blogspot.com/

It's a bad sign when...

A. Your day starts with a panicked call from work, saying you're desperately needed a few hours early.

B. Your walk in to find your patient tied to his chair, which he eventually learns how to scoot around the room.

C. That patient has likes to get a death grip on anything in reach...and his nails are reeeeeally long.

D. All of the above.


Now, of course, the answer is D, making for two rather crappy days at work. Monday started out with the panicked call, which woke me up. I showered, ate and finished getting ready in about twenty minutes and then drove to work really fast. Luckily for my extra few hours, I was in ABI with a kid that was about to get discharged so he was only mildly goofy. But then -tear- they sent me to 12E, which I was hoping meant overdose patient--they're usually pretty docile...or totally unconscious. But alas, I walk in to find this creature tied to his chair--SCARY looking guy, which it finally ocurred to me last night just what he reminds me of: an oviraptor. He ended up not being so bad. I'm good at avoiding the grab since Julie used to do that a lot when we were little and Sarah and I pretty much lived at each other's houses. The only thing that ended up being not so cool was that to calm him down at night, he required a nice, long ride in the wheelchair. So I put him in the chair around 7:00 and didn't stop pushing until around 9:00. About 12 laps around the floor is a mile; I'm pretty sure I walked about 5 miles. Hopefully he'll be gone tomorrow when I work again.

Q: How do you kill a zombie?

A: Play country music, of course.

One of the on-going activities at camp was movie making. Some producer guy came and helped the kids write and shoot little movies. Ty wasn't particularly interested in this but two of our boys, Kellen and Harrison, signed up. Their movie was "Camp Quality Under Attack!"...or something like that...and of course, it featured zombies attacking camp. But just when all seemed lost--camp with be doomed forever!--it dawns on them! Zombies hate country music! So the scene went something like this: Five or so little boys and their companions have zombie facepaint on and are attacking one of the lower girl cabins, walking in the arms-out, very monstrous way, when the music starts. They then collapse onto the ground, tongues sticking out b/c they're dead, of course.

There was also "Prom Date with an Alien"...the aliens mind-warped their dates with little toy speaker thingies that made fart sounds.



And now for something completely different...I went to the Italian Festival in Wheeling with Duane and his parents today. Yay for good food; boo for extremely hot weather. But then we went to his Aunt Deb's house for a random cookout. That's always a fun time, especially since my family sucks³ and we never do anything like that, and well, there's Jenna, lol. And, of course, there's spending the whole day with Duane, which is just about the best thing ever...but, I'm pretty sure no body wants to read mushy stuff so I'll just leave it at that.

Playing Mommy

As could be expected with a 4 year old, I definitely had to play mommy all week at camp. And what better time is there to play mommy than bedtime.

I'm pretty sure I only slept Wednesday night. Sunday night, I was unaware Ty wheezes in his sleep so I thought he was dying..oops...Monday night he wet the bed and was understandably upset for a while...Tuesday night he rolled outta bed and did a face plant onto the floor, ouchies!...Wednesday night=sleep!...Thursday night he had a bad dream and made me lay by him because he was "afwaid!"...and Friday night, it was hot and sticky and I was crying b/c I didn't wanna leave in the morning. :-(

But what's playing mommy without a good poop story, lol. On Monday night when we were lunar bowling, Ty yells that he's gotta go potty so I'm like ok, let's go and he goes into the guys room. Well, like ten minutes later, he's still in there so I get a guy companion to check on him. His message: Ty says to tell you he's done. Oh great, I think, I gotta go in there now. So I retrieve myself another male companion to stand guard...don't want other little boys in there while I'm in there!...and I proceed to go in and help Ty out, meanwhile the bowling alley guy is looking at me like I'm insane. Oh well.

Oh, how I love my job...

So I had to work tonight and well, never a dull moment in the hospital, but for once, the nut wasn't my patient. He was quite docile. His roommate, however, oh goodness!

I got up to the room just past 3:00 to find my patient being a good boy and not escaping while his roommate is moaning and groaning about his pain...between violent hiccups. EIGHT HOURS LATER when it was time to go home, he is STILL HICCUPPING! Now he can't just hiccup to himself, of course, that's not what pain-in-the-ass patients do. About every fifth hiccup, he yells that he has cronic hiccups, ya know, and someone should really help him. And then, due to his negative memory, he yells that he hasn't gotten any of his meds even though the nurse is in the process of leaving the room after giving him said meds. And oh yes, one more tidbit to make this guy even better, he was aiming for the little "pee jug" but missed and went aaaaaaall over the floor. Now Mr. Hiccups realizes he's peeing all over the place but does he stop?! NO! thus leaving a rather large and unpleasant puddle on the floor and his clothes all nice and wet.

And this, my friends, is why I want to work with children.

I have a scary monster face!

Touching Camp Story #1:

For the first few days of camp, Ty was REALLY shy. He pretty much didn't talk to anyone but me until Tuesday, especially if we were in a large group of people. So sometime Sunday afternoon, we're all hanging out outside of the cabin and the boys are making scary monster faces and roaring and such because, well, that's what little boys do. Skipper, the camp director, also happened to be there on his golf cart and noticed that Ty wasn't making any scary faces or anything so he got down and asked if he could show him a really scary monster face. Now is where I wish I had a picture of Skipper...let's just say he's a fairly big guy, so to your average four year old, he's probably pretty imposing. So poor Ty is probably scared out of his mind and just shakes his head no!!! really fast.

All was not lost, however, lol, because about twenty minutes later when the roaring monsters and Skipper had dispersed, Ty taps me on the leg and whispers: "I have a scawy monster face now," and then he makes some adorable little contorted face and roars. Too cute!! I felt all warm and fuzzy inside...this is totally why I LOVE children, btw...knowing that he already felt comfortable with/liked me.

-sigh- I can't wait til I can go visit him!

Yay, its my first post!

Me and Ty in our official camp photo

So I'm bored and thought "hmm, what the heck, I'll make myself one of these." after needing to register to leave a comment for Christi Thomas (http://christithomas.blogspot.com). She's nine and has neuroblastoma. I met a close family friend of her's at Camp Quality this past week...you should all go and give her some encouragement.

Anywho...so yeah, I was at camp last week.
GREATEST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE!!!
If I haven't already cornered you and made you look at my pics and hear me ramble about what a great time I had, it works like this: Camp Quality Ohio is a camp for kids with cancer and their siblings. The kids can be in active treatment or have been in remission for years. Each camper is assigned a companion (thats what I was) that's like an insta-best friend for the week. Well, due to the lack of male staff that I'm sure every camp in the world experiences, the littlest boys get female companions, so I had a little boy. His name is Tyler and he's four....and also, quite possibly the most adorable kid I've ever seen!!! And thats not just b/c I generally think all children are adorable; everything about him was so sweet and cute! He's so full of energy that if it weren't for his scars and peach fuzz hair, you'd never know he's sick (brain tumor)...although the same applies to every other kid I met there. It takes all of five minutes to forget that they have/have had cancer and just see them as normal kids, so I've sorta stopped referring to it as "cancer camp" b/c its really not. Its normal camp...the activities are the same, if not better, as any "regular" camp...for kids who just happen to have been affected by cancer, plus nobody cared/asked why Jack and Shelley only had one leg or why -insert 75% of the kids here- has that big scar on their belly or heads, which definitely would happen at "regular camp."

Since nothing else exciting happens...save the obligatory ridiculous work story...look for more fun camp stories to come. I think I should be able to fill at least a week up with posts about that before people lose interest.