Life in my head...

Memories and questions

I just finished watching The Paper Chase.  I don't recommend it for others in my situation, that situation being failed lawyer.  Not that I failed law school, or failed the Bar, I just didn't make the transition to actually being a lawyer.  Well, technically I am a lawyer, I just don't practice.  It just seems pointless to me.  I know lawyers that embody all that is good and noble in the profession.  And then I see the TV ads for "Did you take the drug x?  Call us and we'll get you money!" and it just makes me ill.  99% of the time, I'm happy with my decision to go back to nursing.  After 10 years, I still often feel that breath of the miraculous when I am the first person to see the head of a newborn.  To know, before they emerge, the color of their hair, and to touch that little head as the mother pushes.  Even at this point in my career, I still get excited in some deliveries.  I wonder sometimes, if I had been a practicing attorney for 4 years now, would I get excited over a contract?  A car accident civil suit?  A divorce?  I doubt it.  I do regret the lack of extra income.  I regret that I am a disappointment to my parents.  I feel a twinge when I run into professors and former classmates and explain what I do for a living now, and that makes me angry with my self.  What I do is worthwhile, it serves the community, and I'm damn good at it.

Back to the movie, though.  I felt actual physical illness while watching it.  When they would discuss a case I remembered, and watching John Houseman's character hammer the students with the exalted Socratic method, ugh, I was right back there in Contracts.  Not that my contracts teacher was at all like Kingsfield, but it was still not a highlight of my law school career.  On the whole, our professors were forgiving and great teachers.  Even the tough ones were good at their jobs.  I remember several of them with great fondness.  There were a couple that I would never care to see again, but I went to a good school and I learned a lot.  The hardest thing for me in law school was the other students.  I'd come from an undergrad career in nursing school, where there are few fanatically competitive students.  As a rule, people go into nursing to serve others, and that spills over into the classroom and in interactions with other students.  Law school, on the other hand, was like going to high school with nothing but the cool kids, and you're not one of them.  I did have friends, and consider them friends still, but law school pits you against everyone else.  Rankings are everything, and sharing your outline may help someone else do better than you.  The Paper Chase did a great job showing the students and their interactions.   I'm glad I watched the movie for one reason.  It makes me more sure that I am telling the truth when I answer the "what are you" question with this answer:  I am a nurse.

Yard work

For the first time in our decade (almost) of marriage, we finally have a yard to really work in.  Since we moved in late last summer, we pretty much just did maintenance yard work.  Today, though, oh today, we really started "our yard".  My cold has finally subsided to simple stuffy nose, my pulled muscle from coughing is just about healed, and I was migraine-free, so we headed to Home Depot.  Of course, being a Southern woman, the first stop was the tomato plants.  I truly do believe the line in Steel Magnolias about that just being what you do, you grow tomatoes.  Heck, I rarely ever eat the things!  But I just feel like I must grow them.  So I spent the afternoon planting tomatoes while wearing a floppy straw sun hat.  I'm such a cliche sometimes.  We also bought a couple of pepper plants and some catnip for the Princess.  Our biggest project was the phlox.  We have a nice cement walk from the front.  Between the walk and the porch, the previous owners planted nice shrubs and several rose bushes.  Lovely, but that is the end of the landscaping, except for the trees.  So we made a small start by buying lovely lavender phlox to outline the walk.  We got 8 of the 20 planted, so tomorrow will probably be a busy day!  As much as I enjoy flowers, I know that anything I plant must be a perennial.  The idea of having to plant something every season is just too daunting.  Maybe this time next year, with some more hard work, I'll have a lovely flowering yard.

ER visit

After missing several days of work, and after a fruitless visit to Urgent Care, I gave in and went to the ED (the name the hospital I work at gives the ER).  I was treated like a princess by the doctor, but I was very, very frustrated with my nurse.  I'm a nurse, so I'm fairly lenient about most things.  If you leave the cap to the IV tubing in my bed, feh, I don't care.  I probably do the same thing at least once a week.  Medical equipment produces an amazing amount of rubbish, and sometimes it doesn't always make it to the garbage.  I was getting Magnesium Sulfate IV, and it was being infused via an IV pump.  It's the same pump we have in our unit, so I know how to use it.  If you have a bag with 100cc in it, you set the pump to infuse 99cc so that air doesn't get in the tube.  Well, Nurse Cheerleader neglected to do this.  I noticed the air, but only after the point where air was air, and the amount didn't matter, so I let it go until the pump alarmed.  And it alarmed, and alarmed, and alarmed, for several minutes.  Normally not a big deal.  If I'm busy in another room with another patient, the same thing might happen to me.  But the big deal with this was that I was in the room closest to the nurses desk, and I could hear her out there talking (she had a very distinctive laugh),  Finally she came in, and was flummoxed by all that air in the tube.  She fiddled around for a bit and then said, "Oh, I'm just awful at getting air out of lines.  Maybe it will work anyway!"  And then she tried to get the pump to infuse.  To infuse a butt load of air into my vein.  Granted, I know how much air it takes to actually kill someone, and we were no where close to that, but my body is flaky without adding tiny emboli to my blood.  So I had to instruct her step by step on how to get the air out, and then I ended up doing it myself.  Tim said afterwards, "I'm proud of you baby, you were so patient with her!"  Well, occasionally I can do something angelic every now and then.  That was my one angelic moment for the year.  I guess I was so patient because they'd pumped me full of Stadol before all this happened.  Heavy-duty narcotics can tame the fiercest of bitches, and they usually tame me (me a bitch?  surely you jest!).  I was content to lay on the table and blather to Tim while he tried to read a book.  Demerol makes me happy just to exist like a lump of fungus, quiet and unoffensive.  Stadol, however, makes me chatty and cheerful.  Tim was also on his best behavior.  He didn't mutter curses at anyone in the waiting room for a nice change.

I'm listening to Iris Dement, from the Songcatcher album (If you love historic ballads, this is a must-hear)
I'm reading Gerald's Game by Stephen King

Today

I hurt today, and that makes me sad.

Good news for a change!

I had the stress test, and it was great!  Woohoo, fertility treatment is now back in my plans.  The cardiologist was quick to tell me that he couldn't guarantee I wouldn't have a DVT or stroke, but he couldn't give that guarantee to an 18 year old aerobics instructor, either.  I do have to continue seeing the cardiologist for the rest of my life, which sucks.  I also have to go on a search for an endocrinologist.  The cardiologist insists that I see an endocrinologist, but the one he sent me to is simply awful.  I hate doctors who do not spend time with patients and don't read charts.  Coming into an exam room and saying, "So how have you been since we last saw you?" when it's my first visit definitely doesn't instill a lot of confidence.  The rest of the visit was all downhill from there.  Yes, I'm overweight, but losing weight is not a "sure way to get pregnant".  I've had the issues I'm dealing with for years, going back to when I weighed 90 pounds and was in my early twenties.

It's now spring in the South, and my migraines are finally coming out of their fall/winter cycle.  I've felt pretty good lately.  Maybe it's the Lortab I've been taking since my oral surgery a week ago!  Probably not, though, since I've pretty much gotten to the stage in healing where Magic Mouthwash will cure the pain.  So maybe (please, God) my migraines will only occur with periods and tornadoes. 

I'm listening to Back in Black, AC/DC
I'm reading Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub