snow in arizona, sun in new york

good afternoon all! hope the beginning of this memorial day weekend finds you well. i am not feeling too well… and haven’t for the last 24-30 hours but i think i might be feeling better. i am getting ready to go into the pediatric office at 1pm and dennis is typing away on the computer working from home for the Dolphins still.

i just got an email from my mom out in flagstaff arizona… the plows are out and they are expecting over 6 inches of snow today!! everyone out here on the east coast looks at me funny when i tell them it snows in arizona, but flagstaff is it’s own little world… at 7,000 feet in the mountains, anything can happen. we’ve had little earthquakes, tornado warnings, snow emergencies, wind advisories, forest fires… but these never end up being anything really threatening… it is a beautiful place that i hope to return to someday. my friend denise garro just posted this pic on her blog from flagstaff… i thought i would just re-post it here so you could see the snow.

in other news… if i can get to feeling better, dennis and i are headed to the hills of vermont this weekend to meet up with some good old friends, meg and caleb. we are wicked excited to see them and to possibly camp out in the Green State.

love yas!!!
g and d

nothin’ finer

i am on the couch… the back door open and it is starting to sprinkle. ah the smell of rain! Dennis is playing the guitar, trying to learn a song by The Decemberists… ah… The Decemberists and the smell of rain. i am so content, so happy.

so check out The Decemberists and breathe in the beauty of the rain!

nothin’ finer.

odds n’ ends

we haven’t posted photos in awhile, and what better time than while i’m supposed to be reading about Resuscitation and Bilirubin in Neonates?!? perfect.

here’s a mishmash of photos from the last couple months… we miss you!

one of my favs… bean playing the guitar.. one thing he’s been able to do a lot here..

the black river… definitely some class 4 rapids.. in the spring it can get up to 50,000 cfs..

bowling with South Jefferson Rescue Squad Ambulance!

just home from mexico and being stranded in atlanta for 3 days….

me, mander and mexican (food that is)!

we didn’t even have margaritas!… just silly girls..

st. patty’s day with an awesome irish band.. BARLEYJUICE

the invitation

THE INVITATION
“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wilderness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul”
— By Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Really Rough Day

I just got home from the hospital… I was in the NICU all morning/early afternoon with the babies…

I know the reasons why I want to go into Emergency Medicine, I want to be there for families when it is their hardest time, do everything I can to ameliorate a crisis, bring sunshine to a gloomy situation…. but also think fast, work fast and know that my skills are strong.

People always say… especially healthcare folks, that they could never do it… what about continuity of care? “I want to get to know my patients,” they say. “I want to be their doctor, but also part of their family.”

I always used to say… “Yeah, that’s true.. that’s the one thing that’s a bummer about Emergency Medicine.” But today after a very sad and intense morning, I realized something. I already know that I invest a lot of emotion into those around me… I CONSTANTLY put my self in their shoes, ALWAYS try to walk their walk and in that way it makes it easy to say and do the right thing for them. I have been doing this for over 10 years, when I first started working in the ER as a tech.

But today… oh today.. a revelation… as I sat there alone in the cafeteria eating my fish sandwich and macaroni and cheese, I just spaced off and thought about how much this morning hurt. So what’s the story?

I just ended my OB rotation last week with a specific doctor… he always let me go in and chat with the mama, get the fundal height, the fetal heart tones and chart it all down. I really connected with a LOT of the women during this time… we were always laughing loud in the rooms, talking about kids and goodness knows what else. Some of the women I became closer to than others. One of these women, who was pregnant with her first child, was supposed to deliver (uneventfully), via c-section this morning. As I entered the NICU at about 730am this morning, I saw her husband standing outside looking in the little window… I knew this wasn’t good.

So now I am on the other side of the pregnancy, the side where our patient is no longer the mama, but the baby… where the tubes and blood pressure cuffs are so tiny, the cries are so weak, and innocence floods every pocket of space. The full term baby was supposed to be a c-section this morning, but somewhere between the room and the OR, the cord prolapsed (came out of the vagina) which is the baby’s lifeline, with this cord out, there is compression on it and unless the baby is delivered in less than 10 minutes, the brain can be severely damaged.

So here I am staring at this intubated tiny baby… so perfect.. she has her daddy’s reddish hair. So innocent… so ready to be loved. As I followed the doctor quietly to the recovery room we walk in the room and I look into the mama’s eyes. There she is, the woman who I laughed with as her baby in the womb would kick the doppler ultrasound as I tried to get a heartbeat.. the woman who carried her baby for 9 months, who grew with her, who felt her moving, who heard her heart beat. Here she was… and as I looked into her exhausted, blank eyes the doctor began to tell her that there was not much hope for her little girl. That at best there would be severe mental retardation… that is if the baby lived. The tall strong husband sat down on the floor and began weeping.

It is a moment in my life I will never forget… and the realization?

For me, personally, maybe it hurts me too, too much to get to know my patients so well… this has hit me harder than any death in the ER over 6 years of being a tech…. because I had such a beautiful relationship with this family. Some docs are ok with this.. but me, maybe… deep down inside, one of the reasons why I chose the ER is because I want to help in a crisis, and feel as though I am great at it… I am understanding of death.. it is something that comes to us all, and when it is our time, it is our time. But in this tragedy today… it felt so much worse… so deep, so hard to understand.

Today… my heart aches so.