Just What I Needed

My cousin Mary recently wrote a blog titled Beautiful. That almost fits, but not quite, not to mention the fact that even though I like the way she thinks, I don't want to steal her work.

Today was a rough day. Thursdays are typically the roughest day at work. We have 2 surgeons working on Thursdays that are both very good and they both have a lot of experience. That means they are very efficient, which translates into the ability to do a lot of surgeries in a short amount of time. If you're working in the recovery room, the buck stops there. Patients need time to recover. That process can be expedited to a degree, but facts are facts. It takes time. It's true. Sometimes people are interested in staying all day to be pampered. (Ever see the video titled "Man Cold" on youtube? Men tend to be the campers in recovery:) When there are only so many beds and only so many nurses, there comes a numbers problem. The surgeons are fast. The patients can only be ushered through so quickly without the nurses being rude or uncaring. As the nurse, I must admit, you sometimes feel forced between a rock and a hard place. Today was made one worse by the fact that one of the small number of nurses was ill and not able to be at work. Ugh! Good morning, aren't you glad tomorrow's Friday? Anyway...you get the picture. I ran my tail off at work. The humidity has not helped. It managed to seep into every nook and cranny of the day, causing all of us at work to find our clothes sticking to us and wishing we could all sit with a personal fan. (hahaha...I thought I left the humidity in Liberia. Rainy season has started again there. Indiana still doesn't compare, but today and tomorrow, if Curtis Smith is right, are going to do their best to compete with West Africa's rainy season. Really...if I'm going to have rainy season, I'd like to be able to see my ladies, go to the market, and eat some monkey fruit!)

You know it's bad when you're working so hard that your patient whose blood pressure was uncomfortably low and was horribly nauseated is apologizing to you. She told me she was sorry that she was causing so much extra work for me, and felt bad that I had to do more charting because of her. When she said it, I apologized thinking maybe I had done something to make her feel like she was a nuisance. She assured me that I had not. She just said that she and her husband had been watching the staff all day and didn't know how we had been able to keep up the pace we were. She noticed that no one really disappeared long enough to have gone for lunch, let alone a coffee break. She was simply voicing her appreciation. It was nice to hear, but I hate the days that you can try all you want, and you still just don't quite achieve the gracefullness to run full tilt and make it look like you're strolling.

By the time I got off work I was starving, tired, hot, ready for a shower, and my legs were just plain aching. My first thought was that pizza or maybe chocolate would make it better. Instead, I went to Pizza Hut and got salad carry-out. Let's be honest. I made the healthy choice, but I was ready to let someone else do the cutting and chopping. (Good deal by the way....a large salad is HUGE and it's only $5.50) I then went home, ate, watched the news, and checked my email. While I would have loved to just sit right there on the couch and be a zombie the rest of the evening, I made myself get up and go for a ride on my new bike I got a few weeks ago. It wasn't all that far, but I rode maybe 5 miles or so, pushing it fairly hard. Finally, I came home, put the lovely Norah Jones in the CD player, showered, and then listened to George Winston while I spent some time working on a Bible study I recently started.
Here's a picture of my bike, a stimulus check at work. Actually, I had saved $ for it a year ago, but then went out of the country, so I put it on hold and got it once the weather started getting nice. Still sure doesn't hurt the economy and is a whole lot cheaper than gas!

Yes, the pizza, diet pepsi, and chocolate would have been lovely. No, a sit on the couch after a grueling day would not have been out of line. By the time I got home from the ride, though, my legs were no longer achy. I felt like I had sweat the stress of the day away. I know that doesn't paint a pretty picture, but you know it helps! I was just in a better frame of mind. Goodness knows time in the Word only improved things. Don't you love how That Thing is truly living and breathing?

Well...that's it. Around 11am, if you would have told me that I'd be sitting here at the computer tonight thinking about what a good day it was, I might have thought about taking a swing. It was good, though. All of my patients lived. (That sounds cold, but sometimes when it's rough, that's the goal. Ask another nurse.) My patients were very appreciative and sweet. All of them. If they had felt like I was rushing them through, they would not have said thank you. As I realized several weeks ago...I've not had a workday yet that has not ended. That was true again today. It's unbelievably muggy today, but when you ride your bike, the faster you go, the stronger the breeze. The salad was DELICIOUS! There are so many truths in what I've read in the Bible in the last few days, that I would have to write a long time to process it all. I'm so glad our God is bigger and more multi-faceted than we are. It started out rough, but it ended up being just what I needed.

Side note...I added a link to MLB, major league baseball. I've been a Tigers fan since I was old enough to know what baseball was. It's painful again this year, being a fan of theirs, but I'm not going to be fickle, just because it's another lean year. Been meaning to add it for a while, and finally got around to it.