Of life and fairy wings....
Nooooooooooooo<----me in the theater, all whimper-like. So me and a friend trekked our way to the theater dressed all slytherin-y to see the last of the Harry Potter some days ago T_______T My friend was supposed to be a Hagrid, but he's not such a big fan that he'd don a huge overcoat and fake beard in 100 degree weather....BUT he'd wear a black overcoat and green scarf to show his love for Slytherin.....yeah, it makes no sense taha Bitch be stealing my style o____o *smaks him with my ringed out pimp hand* Yeah I wore all my black rings like I was going to a fight or something lmao I was just feeling evil and sad that day I guess -____- And I cried like a baby over Snape and the end of the movie and all that good stuff T_____T Dammit. It was a bittersweet day. It's really the end finally. *shakes fist at the sky* I guess I'll go back to reading Wraeththu and hoping some crackpot will decide it's a good idea to make a movie about gay hermaphrodites who fuck each other to gain caste levels like a video game o__O chaaaching. Okay I shouldn't make fun, because the series is really genius even if it has strange quirks to it taha I'm lost without fandoms to obsess over obviously taha At least after HP, my friend treated me to sushi and we both lamented over Fu-ga -____- But the place we ate at is a good second :D
I'm recovering slowly from a little mishap two days ago. I spent my days off this week retching my guts out and in the ER o_O Me and a friend decided to go do some fine dining and then hit a hole in the wall club we haven't been to yet. We dominated the jukebox and played Nirvana and the red hot chili peppers taha And then I ordered a regular mixed drink, one that I always do. JUST ONE. Some time later the room is spinning and my friend is helping me into the car telling me what a lush I am. I have to down at least six of those mixed drinks to feel a buzz usually x___X But this was one small drink and I'm feeling like I'm high. I remember turning to my friend in his car, smiling, and then ruining his interior. I don't even do this wasted. My friend carries me inside, puts me to bed, and says he'll check in on me in the morning. He comes back around 11 a.m. the next day and I'm crying and hugging the toilet taha I hadn't been able to eat anything, had emptied my entire body of every liquid it had consumed, and I was dehydrating baaadly. So he brings me to the E.R. and they pump me with Phenergan and I.V. fluids. The nurse had to stick me like five times to get one my tiny rolling veins but I merely gritted my teeth and cursed her inwardly. Ten minutes later I don't care anymore anyway because I'm high on Phenergan and feel quite good :D I tried getting out of bed and nearly toppled over with the I.V stand taha They only kept me for a few hours to get liduids inside of me and then sent me home with Phenergan in pill form. I've had to drink clear liquids for the last few days and my stomach is soo sore I can't laugh without hurting T____T I don't know what the fuck was up with the drink, but there had to have been something in it x_____X I'm not going to trust mixed drinks now >___> Humph.
The day before the drink incident, I was feeling down, so what do I do when I'm feeling down besides sit around getting fat and writing? Well, random shit. But yesterday, I put on my wings, painted myself, went down to the beach and frolicked......taha The beach was completely deserted, so I just climbed the broken structures left around from the last hurricane and ran up and down the shoreline wishing my wings were real taha A guy came walking by at some point and just gave me this look --->0______0 wtf. But then he ambled on and left me to my own devices so I took the wings off and went swimming for awhile and washed off my fairy war paint. The oddest things can make me happy. And I'm sure most people would call me crazy for what I do in my free time, but I felt much better as I was going home. Going to the beach on any day is always a big inspiration and I began writing once I got home. It's been so long but I'm doing a special request for a friend....and those are always the hardest, because when I'm writing for someone I get really anal....(in both senses of the word? taha) It has to be perfect o____o<---*psychotic look* If it isn't perfect for them, than I am unworthy *dramatic sigh*
Yet another delivery of random flowers in the background taha They will be dead in a few days o___O I began painting my shoulders and arms in a rainbow of crazy colors before I went frolicking taha
Aaah and speaking of random dressups.....I've decided I'm going to cosplay at this year's oni-con @___@ I'm still deciding what I want to go as, but I've compiled a list. My friend whose going as his favorite character of all time, the mighty chocobo >___> wanted me as his Tifa. He promised he'd let me ride on his back if I would....how very enticing o__O But Tifa has been way overdone in my opinion. I love me some Tifa, that's my girl, but she's in the category of too much is not a good thing. But then hasn't everyone from any of the Final Fantasies been overdone?? I wanted to do a Lightening at one point, and that turned into a Bayonetta, but her costume looks like it's going to be a bitch to construct. Humph. If my boobs weren't so promiment I'd go as one of my favorite dudes. Yeah I've tried taping them down and that just does not work. I used to tell people I wanted to cut them off and grow a penis. Friends usually just stared at me in confusion o___O Sometimes I still wish this tahaha I am really a bisexual man in this body taha
And If I wasn't in a major standoff with my little sister I'd make her go to oni-con as Ciel from Black Butler. (yeah you do what I say, or I'll stick gum in your hair!) Because she looks like a prepubescent emo boy >___> taha Or maybe Ritsuka from Loveless lmao My sister was once my partner in crime when it came to conventions taha I'm still compiling my list of who/what I want to go as. At least I have until October to decide :D
On a more somber note, one of my patients at work is dying. He was put on hospice last week and my heart broke into so many pieces. He's always been a favorite of mine. He's an amazing artist who loves dolphins and the sea, and has a great sense of humor. I remember the first time he came in, after having a major stroke and was paralyzed on one side of his body at only 55. His sister began unpacking his things and taking out beautiful paintings of ocean scenes. As I was helping her put them on his wall, I randomly commented on the paintings, telling her how gorgeous they were and wondering who the artist was. She just smiled while running her hands over the painting in her hand and said "My brother." After she left, I set about my nursing duties. My patient has a trache in his throat, a PEG tube in his stomach, and a whole list of medical problems. I knew he was going to be one of the difficult ones. After I had finished working on him, I tried to make conversation, but he would only look at me with the saddest eyes.
I tried talking to him night after night, until one night while he was sleeping, I drew a funny face on the water cup I used to make sure his trache suctioning worked right. When I came to check on him the next time that night, he pointed to the cup and smiled widely. He tried to sign something but since I only know very little sign language, enough to know someone's basic needs, I gave him his small dry erase board and he wrote in spidery, almost unreadable handwriting "You can't draw well....but nice try." LMAO I laughed and sarcastically told him thanks. So began a great nurse/patient relationship. I left him little drawings on his cups, and came in to find funny comments on his board.
Sometimes I even sat beside his bed and commented on his other paintings but he seemed depressed when I talked about them. He can't draw/paint anymore of course, so usually I tried to steer away from that and maybe turn on cartoon network for him and laugh over the cartoons with him. My aid was amazed he was even communicating with him, and I just told her to talk to him, make jokes and try to make him laugh. She did, and from that point on, when we came into the room bantering, he would roll his eyes and smile. And to think, he would only look at us with sad eyes at one time. Last week, I came to work to find his room empty. The previous nurse gave me report and told me he'd stopped breathing suddenly and was rushed to the ER. He came back the following night and we were told he had been put on hospice and "would only be a matter of time". :/ the worst words to hear about a patient.
For a week I've been dragging my paperwork into his room when I'm done with my rounds and sitting beside his bed charting. I turn on cartoon network and hope he opens his eyes, responds, laughs at the cartoons with me. I draw him funny faces and wait for a response that doesn't come. He lays there with closed eyes, unmoving, the only sign he's still there, the steady rise and fall of his chest. Last night I went through my same routine. I alerted my aide and another nurse where to find me if I was needed, dragged a chair near his bed and sat down to chart. I stopped charting at one point and just sat back, my eyes surveying the room, gaze gliding along the paintings decorating his previously empty, sad little room. I turned the T.v. off and listened to the weary drone of the multiple machines he's hooked up to. The respirator with it's dry buzzing, the nebulizer treatment I have to administer every few hours. The sound is familiar and frightening, but also soothing in a way. It could lull you to sleep if you were used to it like I've always been. When I was a child, I was hooked to the same things and spent weeks in a hospital bed more than once, and then had to sit beside my sister's bed when she was younger and sickly. And now...this is my job, surrounded by these life supporting machines. Comforting....and terrifying, such a juxtaposition. I let my pen loll across the dozens of papers I have scattered over a bedside table and let the sounds run through me.
I look at the paintings and imagine my patient looking at them and wishing he were there on those beautiful ocean scenes, yearning to be lounging on that white sand, painting another masterpiece. It seemed almost cruel to keep these things on the walls, just out of reach, knowing he'd never be able to sit on a beach again, or paint. There were children's paintings squeezed between my patient's paintings with encouraging words like "We love you uncle!" "Get well Uncle, you're coming home soon!" He would die here. I began to cry a little, too deep in thought, imagining the worst scenarios, knowing what the little hands behind the children's paintings didn't know. It is in these particular moments that I hate my job. I'm surrounded by death just as much as I am by recovery. Just because I work in the rehab unit doesn't mean all of my patients rehabilitate and leave for home. Too many of them have left the wrong way. Life is too fucking short. I want to slam my fist against the wall and take my anger out at the unfairness of it all.
As I cry my few silent, familiar tears, I hear shuffling and then a clatter and look up to see my patient holding his dry erase board shakily. It's been awhile since I've even seen him move on his own so I wipe my face clean quickly and stare in surprise. He draws a shaky smiling face on the board and points weakly to it. As if to say "smile". I feel my heart skip a beat and I do smile.....widely. I can't even describe how happy I was that he was awake and teasing again. I draw my own horribly done smiling face next to his and then tell him how glad I am that he's back. I give him my encouraging words in handfuls and he only looks at me as if he knows. He wants to close his eyes and leave, and I understand him, but still, that small part of me is thinking that he'll recover, that he's not giving up, that he's fighting to stay here like all the posters on the wall encourage him to do.
My eye strays to the one blown up picture his sister sat on his dresser the day he came in. It's a picture of a large family and kneeling on the floor in front of the group is a young, good looking teenager with a snarky grin, hair all in his face, throwing the peace sign in bell bottom pants, and horrible 70s striped shirt. It's my patient in his youth. I point to it and give him a thumbs up, and he rolls his eyes in that sarcastic way of his. I sit there and we talk for a while before I'm pulled away to other patients. When I come back in the morning, he's again sleeping soundly, but his board still has our smiling faces on it, and I don't have the heart to erase them, who knows when the time will come when he can't hold the marker to draw a smiling face?
These are the things that make me love and hate my job simultaneously. My job has led me through tough times, and joyous times. I see parts of people they don't want others to see, I work with raw emotions and bareness both emotionally and physically that is usually embarrassing. I have a patient that is so ashamed to be in the state he's in that, he will only let me and my aid shower and dress him because he's so embarrased to let other nurses and aids see him. I hear screaming relatives over the phone, that break down crying and apologizing for their moments of loss of control. Sometimes it's almost too hard to handle, but I have to be the one everyone can lean on. I can break down on my own time, not theirs.
I answered my patient's sister's morning phone call. She calls every morning to know that he's still here, fighting. I told her that he'd communicated with me and she started crying and saying what I already knew to be true. He'd signed to her before he'd stopped breathing that he wanted to die. I talked to her for awhile and comforted her and I hung up with mixed emotions, sadness more than anything. And then up comes my burn patient on the unit, who throws a towel at my head playfully. He's been smoking his lungs away outside, but then he picks up the pill crusher from my cart and starts using it as a weight, showing me his growing strength. He has great news.
His brother found him an apartment and he'll be moving there in a few months. He's being released soon! And this was the man that was brought in two years ago, his skin melted, his arms and legs barely able to move. His eyelids had been surgically reconstructed, his fingers and toes, surgically seperated. He'd been a mess. But as with my stroke patient, he'd joked every day. He would call me different names, because he knew it irritated me,and then would go "I know your name is Ashley...right James?" taha and I would call him something random in return. Now look at him, through vigorous physical therapy, and surgeries, and wound treatments, he was sauntering around the halls showing his newfound strength to all who would look, and flirting after my female patients who told me he was the catch of the place ;D taha For every sad ending there's always a success story, and each impending end, always has some hope attatched to it. I just plan to walk into my patient's room, laughing and joking to get a smile. If I dreaded each end, I would be a basket case. I'm here to help recovery, ease pain, and to close their eyes when they can't fight anymore. I hope I make some sort of difference as they pass through. At least I've always gotten each one to smile. :D
And because I found this on my favorite feel good blog, and looooved it.
I'm recovering slowly from a little mishap two days ago. I spent my days off this week retching my guts out and in the ER o_O Me and a friend decided to go do some fine dining and then hit a hole in the wall club we haven't been to yet. We dominated the jukebox and played Nirvana and the red hot chili peppers taha And then I ordered a regular mixed drink, one that I always do. JUST ONE. Some time later the room is spinning and my friend is helping me into the car telling me what a lush I am. I have to down at least six of those mixed drinks to feel a buzz usually x___X But this was one small drink and I'm feeling like I'm high. I remember turning to my friend in his car, smiling, and then ruining his interior. I don't even do this wasted. My friend carries me inside, puts me to bed, and says he'll check in on me in the morning. He comes back around 11 a.m. the next day and I'm crying and hugging the toilet taha I hadn't been able to eat anything, had emptied my entire body of every liquid it had consumed, and I was dehydrating baaadly. So he brings me to the E.R. and they pump me with Phenergan and I.V. fluids. The nurse had to stick me like five times to get one my tiny rolling veins but I merely gritted my teeth and cursed her inwardly. Ten minutes later I don't care anymore anyway because I'm high on Phenergan and feel quite good :D I tried getting out of bed and nearly toppled over with the I.V stand taha They only kept me for a few hours to get liduids inside of me and then sent me home with Phenergan in pill form. I've had to drink clear liquids for the last few days and my stomach is soo sore I can't laugh without hurting T____T I don't know what the fuck was up with the drink, but there had to have been something in it x_____X I'm not going to trust mixed drinks now >___> Humph.
The day before the drink incident, I was feeling down, so what do I do when I'm feeling down besides sit around getting fat and writing? Well, random shit. But yesterday, I put on my wings, painted myself, went down to the beach and frolicked......taha The beach was completely deserted, so I just climbed the broken structures left around from the last hurricane and ran up and down the shoreline wishing my wings were real taha A guy came walking by at some point and just gave me this look --->0______0 wtf. But then he ambled on and left me to my own devices so I took the wings off and went swimming for awhile and washed off my fairy war paint. The oddest things can make me happy. And I'm sure most people would call me crazy for what I do in my free time, but I felt much better as I was going home. Going to the beach on any day is always a big inspiration and I began writing once I got home. It's been so long but I'm doing a special request for a friend....and those are always the hardest, because when I'm writing for someone I get really anal....(in both senses of the word? taha) It has to be perfect o____o<---*psychotic look* If it isn't perfect for them, than I am unworthy *dramatic sigh*
Yet another delivery of random flowers in the background taha They will be dead in a few days o___O I began painting my shoulders and arms in a rainbow of crazy colors before I went frolicking taha
Aaah and speaking of random dressups.....I've decided I'm going to cosplay at this year's oni-con @___@ I'm still deciding what I want to go as, but I've compiled a list. My friend whose going as his favorite character of all time, the mighty chocobo >___> wanted me as his Tifa. He promised he'd let me ride on his back if I would....how very enticing o__O But Tifa has been way overdone in my opinion. I love me some Tifa, that's my girl, but she's in the category of too much is not a good thing. But then hasn't everyone from any of the Final Fantasies been overdone?? I wanted to do a Lightening at one point, and that turned into a Bayonetta, but her costume looks like it's going to be a bitch to construct. Humph. If my boobs weren't so promiment I'd go as one of my favorite dudes. Yeah I've tried taping them down and that just does not work. I used to tell people I wanted to cut them off and grow a penis. Friends usually just stared at me in confusion o___O Sometimes I still wish this tahaha I am really a bisexual man in this body taha
And If I wasn't in a major standoff with my little sister I'd make her go to oni-con as Ciel from Black Butler. (yeah you do what I say, or I'll stick gum in your hair!) Because she looks like a prepubescent emo boy >___> taha Or maybe Ritsuka from Loveless lmao My sister was once my partner in crime when it came to conventions taha I'm still compiling my list of who/what I want to go as. At least I have until October to decide :D
On a more somber note, one of my patients at work is dying. He was put on hospice last week and my heart broke into so many pieces. He's always been a favorite of mine. He's an amazing artist who loves dolphins and the sea, and has a great sense of humor. I remember the first time he came in, after having a major stroke and was paralyzed on one side of his body at only 55. His sister began unpacking his things and taking out beautiful paintings of ocean scenes. As I was helping her put them on his wall, I randomly commented on the paintings, telling her how gorgeous they were and wondering who the artist was. She just smiled while running her hands over the painting in her hand and said "My brother." After she left, I set about my nursing duties. My patient has a trache in his throat, a PEG tube in his stomach, and a whole list of medical problems. I knew he was going to be one of the difficult ones. After I had finished working on him, I tried to make conversation, but he would only look at me with the saddest eyes.
I tried talking to him night after night, until one night while he was sleeping, I drew a funny face on the water cup I used to make sure his trache suctioning worked right. When I came to check on him the next time that night, he pointed to the cup and smiled widely. He tried to sign something but since I only know very little sign language, enough to know someone's basic needs, I gave him his small dry erase board and he wrote in spidery, almost unreadable handwriting "You can't draw well....but nice try." LMAO I laughed and sarcastically told him thanks. So began a great nurse/patient relationship. I left him little drawings on his cups, and came in to find funny comments on his board.
Sometimes I even sat beside his bed and commented on his other paintings but he seemed depressed when I talked about them. He can't draw/paint anymore of course, so usually I tried to steer away from that and maybe turn on cartoon network for him and laugh over the cartoons with him. My aid was amazed he was even communicating with him, and I just told her to talk to him, make jokes and try to make him laugh. She did, and from that point on, when we came into the room bantering, he would roll his eyes and smile. And to think, he would only look at us with sad eyes at one time. Last week, I came to work to find his room empty. The previous nurse gave me report and told me he'd stopped breathing suddenly and was rushed to the ER. He came back the following night and we were told he had been put on hospice and "would only be a matter of time". :/ the worst words to hear about a patient.
For a week I've been dragging my paperwork into his room when I'm done with my rounds and sitting beside his bed charting. I turn on cartoon network and hope he opens his eyes, responds, laughs at the cartoons with me. I draw him funny faces and wait for a response that doesn't come. He lays there with closed eyes, unmoving, the only sign he's still there, the steady rise and fall of his chest. Last night I went through my same routine. I alerted my aide and another nurse where to find me if I was needed, dragged a chair near his bed and sat down to chart. I stopped charting at one point and just sat back, my eyes surveying the room, gaze gliding along the paintings decorating his previously empty, sad little room. I turned the T.v. off and listened to the weary drone of the multiple machines he's hooked up to. The respirator with it's dry buzzing, the nebulizer treatment I have to administer every few hours. The sound is familiar and frightening, but also soothing in a way. It could lull you to sleep if you were used to it like I've always been. When I was a child, I was hooked to the same things and spent weeks in a hospital bed more than once, and then had to sit beside my sister's bed when she was younger and sickly. And now...this is my job, surrounded by these life supporting machines. Comforting....and terrifying, such a juxtaposition. I let my pen loll across the dozens of papers I have scattered over a bedside table and let the sounds run through me.
I look at the paintings and imagine my patient looking at them and wishing he were there on those beautiful ocean scenes, yearning to be lounging on that white sand, painting another masterpiece. It seemed almost cruel to keep these things on the walls, just out of reach, knowing he'd never be able to sit on a beach again, or paint. There were children's paintings squeezed between my patient's paintings with encouraging words like "We love you uncle!" "Get well Uncle, you're coming home soon!" He would die here. I began to cry a little, too deep in thought, imagining the worst scenarios, knowing what the little hands behind the children's paintings didn't know. It is in these particular moments that I hate my job. I'm surrounded by death just as much as I am by recovery. Just because I work in the rehab unit doesn't mean all of my patients rehabilitate and leave for home. Too many of them have left the wrong way. Life is too fucking short. I want to slam my fist against the wall and take my anger out at the unfairness of it all.
As I cry my few silent, familiar tears, I hear shuffling and then a clatter and look up to see my patient holding his dry erase board shakily. It's been awhile since I've even seen him move on his own so I wipe my face clean quickly and stare in surprise. He draws a shaky smiling face on the board and points weakly to it. As if to say "smile". I feel my heart skip a beat and I do smile.....widely. I can't even describe how happy I was that he was awake and teasing again. I draw my own horribly done smiling face next to his and then tell him how glad I am that he's back. I give him my encouraging words in handfuls and he only looks at me as if he knows. He wants to close his eyes and leave, and I understand him, but still, that small part of me is thinking that he'll recover, that he's not giving up, that he's fighting to stay here like all the posters on the wall encourage him to do.
My eye strays to the one blown up picture his sister sat on his dresser the day he came in. It's a picture of a large family and kneeling on the floor in front of the group is a young, good looking teenager with a snarky grin, hair all in his face, throwing the peace sign in bell bottom pants, and horrible 70s striped shirt. It's my patient in his youth. I point to it and give him a thumbs up, and he rolls his eyes in that sarcastic way of his. I sit there and we talk for a while before I'm pulled away to other patients. When I come back in the morning, he's again sleeping soundly, but his board still has our smiling faces on it, and I don't have the heart to erase them, who knows when the time will come when he can't hold the marker to draw a smiling face?
These are the things that make me love and hate my job simultaneously. My job has led me through tough times, and joyous times. I see parts of people they don't want others to see, I work with raw emotions and bareness both emotionally and physically that is usually embarrassing. I have a patient that is so ashamed to be in the state he's in that, he will only let me and my aid shower and dress him because he's so embarrased to let other nurses and aids see him. I hear screaming relatives over the phone, that break down crying and apologizing for their moments of loss of control. Sometimes it's almost too hard to handle, but I have to be the one everyone can lean on. I can break down on my own time, not theirs.
I answered my patient's sister's morning phone call. She calls every morning to know that he's still here, fighting. I told her that he'd communicated with me and she started crying and saying what I already knew to be true. He'd signed to her before he'd stopped breathing that he wanted to die. I talked to her for awhile and comforted her and I hung up with mixed emotions, sadness more than anything. And then up comes my burn patient on the unit, who throws a towel at my head playfully. He's been smoking his lungs away outside, but then he picks up the pill crusher from my cart and starts using it as a weight, showing me his growing strength. He has great news.
His brother found him an apartment and he'll be moving there in a few months. He's being released soon! And this was the man that was brought in two years ago, his skin melted, his arms and legs barely able to move. His eyelids had been surgically reconstructed, his fingers and toes, surgically seperated. He'd been a mess. But as with my stroke patient, he'd joked every day. He would call me different names, because he knew it irritated me,and then would go "I know your name is Ashley...right James?" taha and I would call him something random in return. Now look at him, through vigorous physical therapy, and surgeries, and wound treatments, he was sauntering around the halls showing his newfound strength to all who would look, and flirting after my female patients who told me he was the catch of the place ;D taha For every sad ending there's always a success story, and each impending end, always has some hope attatched to it. I just plan to walk into my patient's room, laughing and joking to get a smile. If I dreaded each end, I would be a basket case. I'm here to help recovery, ease pain, and to close their eyes when they can't fight anymore. I hope I make some sort of difference as they pass through. At least I've always gotten each one to smile. :D
And because I found this on my favorite feel good blog, and looooved it.