This One Speaks For Itself

One of my favorite bands, Keane, just came out with their newest album and I'm beginning to love it just as much as their first. This is the first track on the album Under The Iron Sea. I'm not sure why it is called Atlantic, but then again who am I to question a poet, being one myself. It's a little meloncholy, but that too is something we share in common.

Atlantic

I hope all my days will be lit by your face
I hope all the years will hold tight our promises
I don't want to be old and sleep alone
An empty house is not a home
I don't want to be old and feel afraid

I don't want to be old and sleep alone
An empty house is not a home
I don't want to be old and feel afraid

And if I need anything at all
I need a place that's hidden in the deep
Where lonely angels sing you to your sleep
Though all the world is broken
I need a place where I can make my bed
A lover's lap where I can lay my head
'Cause now the room is spinning
The days beginning

Dear Patti. . . .

I'd be an outright liar if I didn't tell you that the last 2 days have been nothing but hell for me. In the span of 48 hours I've officially become a cesspool for anyone in need, or rather, willing to dump on me. You'd think I went to school to be a certified counselor or something.

Needlesstosay, todays blog will be crammed full of advice for all those folks who felt it necessary to seek my input for their lives. But I must warn you, if you're excepting me to sugar coat it, you should have thought twice before you came to me in the first place.

1. Go see a marriage counselor
2. Put down your beer
3. Sober up
4. Keep your pants on
5. Stay away from that person
6. Don't return that E-mail
7. Don't sit by the phone waiting for him to call - he's not going to call
8. Don't sit by your cell phone waiting for him to call - he's not going to call
9. Don't ask me that question
10. Trim your nails
11. Call the doctor now!
12. Birth control is not the answer to this one
13. Sometimes you have to be mean
14. Put your foot down
15. Get over yourself

Of course there's more where that came from, but really I can only handle so much at once. To sum it all up I'm going to quote someone very dear to me. I apologize though, this is not an exact quote, more like a paraphrase, but the words are no less impacting :

Life is hard enough without being stupid.

Please don't be stupid.

Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus

I never ceases to amaze me. Call it what you like. Perhaps it's just that we're attempting to appease our ever insatible appetite for knowledge. Perhaps it's a little more fundamental than that and we are just being curious. Or maybe if we'd like to be completely honest, it all boils down to pure, sheer, stupidity.

CT scans, MRI's, electroencephalograms. Every year we spend millions of dollars trying to understand the human mind. Any of the afore mentioned tests provide us with the ability to view images of the human brain or even record its many electrical activites. Sure it's intrigueing, but why would I waste my time?

Go into any local bookstore and you'll find stack upon stack of books written by some award winning author, attempting to better help you understand the intricacies of the male/female mind. I'm almost ashamed to admit the presence of one such book on my bedside table, not to mention the fact that I've bookmarked myself as reading as far as chapter 5. Regardless of the fact that I may have learned some male tidbit, I really find the whole process quite futile.

Most women will bear witness that "All men are the same." But you know what? I'm not most women? You may not appreciate my testimony. As corny and cliche as it sounds, we're all different and unique. I find it an insult that society expects me to blindly open wide while they continue to spoonfeed me this garbage about "all men/all women." Since when did ONE man or ONE woman become the authority on what all men/women are thinking?

If you want to understand me as a woman, it's as simple as this - honesty and actions. Of course the unfortunate thing is that not all women are like me so my philosophy is far from universal. But count yourself lucky because how often does a woman willingly open herself up for the benefit of all mankind?

1. Honesty - I say what I mean and I mean what I say. It's that simple. There's little point in lying. It just creates more confusion and complicates things even worse.

2. Actions - They really do speak louder than words. I can tell you something until I'm blue in the face, but unless you see me act on it, it's meaningless.

Truth be told, the whole honesty, actions thing applies to men too. Take for instance the other week when I went to breakfast with The Second and his friend after work. We ordered and waited for the waitress to bring our food. Finally the waitress brought the food but was a little behind with my order. The Second just sat his short stack to the side and waited for my breakfast to come along. He could've told me that he was a gentleman, or that he respected me, or cares about me, but really his actions alone convinced me all the more.

Poetry In Motion

And now, a moment for some poetry:

The Statistics of Defeat

Dusty yellow shirt cuffs
Concede of an apparent passion
For this mundane art,
Contagious even to the variables
As they mock me
From such a dark existance.
Their Greek insults confound my reasoning,
Multiplying confusion exponentially,
And dividing it into
Edible bits of frustration.
Then just when all seems hopeless
I erase,
And begin again.

Plain Jane RN

I'm in the business of healing, which of course is certainly not limited to physical healing. I've cared for many a husband or wife whose spouse was so overcome with grief as they watched their loved one struggle to recover or even face pending and inevitable death. No one ever said my job stopped with the patient in the bed. Yet no one ever assigned them the duty of ministering to the sickness within my own soul.

The other week I admitted a rather ill middle-aged gentleman. I was unexpectedly surprised as transport rolled the stretcher up the hall and stopped in front of room 181. My Kardex had desribed a man in his mid 50's, but it became more and more evident that hardship, whether in the form of physical illness, or just daily toil, had taken its toll on his countenance, making him appear closer to 70 than 55.

I introduced myself as I escorted his wife and daughter into the room and we began to get the patient settled for the night. Once I had completed my total body assessment, I instructed the patient and his family on how to contact me for needs. Before leaving the room to gather the necessary paperwork to be completed, I kneeled at the patient's bedside to raise the siderail. He hadn't said much since his arrival, yet I hadn't expected much from someone so sick. But just as I came to his eye level, he spoke.

"Oh you're pretty," he exclaimed. Slightly embarrassed I smiled sheepishly and thanked him for the compliment.

For the rest of the night I marveled at his insight. It's not that I think I'm ugly. I've just always considered myself to be a Plain Jane. There's really nothing extraordinary about me. If I were a flower, I'd be a daisy. If I were a piece of candy, I'd be a Hershey bar. Plain. Simple.

But really it's not even the compliment itself that impressed me. It's the man. Belonging to a generation whose intricasies I will never fully understand, he just seemed to see things differently, to appreciate the more simple things of this life.

The majority of men I know, expect so much. Or so it seems. Simple is not enough, and certainly not pretty. There has to be more. Always more, never less. But my patients, whether male or female, come from a time when less was more and simplicity was beautiful, even hallowed.

I felt healed that night, filled with a renewed sense of contentment with who I am. Just plain ole' me. Always less, and never more.

Telemetry This

It really comes as no surprise to me that I, Ms-Looking-For-Love, work on a cardiac floor. Hearts are our specialty, and rightly so. We live eat and breathe the many facets of the heart. Of all the organs in the body, it is this one that we are most educated on. And really I wouldn't have it any other way. Being the center of the body, without the workings of that single mass of muscle, our entire being would cease to exist. The brain, the kidneys, the lungs. They're all vitally important. But without the heart, forget about it.

Tuesday night I found myself suffering from one of those completely debilitating headaches, the ones that I always used to boast that I never get. Things were about to pick up again, being that it was going on 3:00 AM, so I decided to catch a break before attempting to push my agony aside and get to work.

Sometimes I just like to listen to my own heart, and for whatever reason this was one of those moments. Perhaps I just wanted some reassurance that I was still alive despite all the pain. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I placed the ends of my stethoscope in my ears and fell hypnotized by the rhythmic lubb dubb of my own heart beat.

Of course this was not the first time that I had done this. But for whatever reason, this time was different. I was overcome with the most powerful sense of awe. Almost a reverence all its own.

I'd never realized how complex the heart was until I studied it in school, and then took the dysrhythmia course at the hospital. Even the slightest electrical glitch could cost you your life. Unfortunately, being a telemetry nurse, we see this all the time. Depending on the occasion the outcome can go either way, and last night was no exception.

The phone rang and I answered with my usual salutation. I'm never surprised when the monitor room calls, and so really this was just another call. The monitor tech informed me that the patient in room 186 had just had a 9 beat run of V-tach. I thanked them for calling, hung up the phone, and spun around in my chair in what seemed like one smooth, continuous movement. Behind me sat Sharon. This was her patient. I relayed the message to which she groaned and hopped up to go and check on the patient. Before leaving the nurse's station she flipped through the patient's chart looking at some previously recorded EKG strips. Apparently the patient had done this sort of thing before, permitting Sharon to simply assess the patient, and inform the doctor in the AM, as opposed to calling him at 2:30 in the morning. Yet she seemed hesitant, and called my attention to the strips. The patient's cardiologist had already evaluated the strips and concluded that in fact it was not V-tach but just some "noise" that the heart monitors pick up from bodily movements. I could only wholehearted agree with the doctor, looking down at the paper covered with erratic scribbles. We were both curious to know if this most recent run of V-tach proved to be only noise as well. I asked Sharon to go get the strip from the monitor for me to take a look at it.

One look and I knew without a doubt. This was definite, textbook V-tach. 9 wide, clean peaks followed by descending waves that climbed into a peak once more, essentially a very neatly drawn zig zag over the horizontal Y axis. Unfortunately this meant that Sharon would have to make that call to the doctor after all. After that I just sat for awhile and stared at the strip, wondering what the patient felt as their heart threw out a signal like that.

EKG's are kind of like snowflakes. No two are alike. You could have two completely different patients, both with a run of V-tach, and still they would be unique in and of themselves. It makes me wonder if somehow a person's character somehow shows through on their EKG. Some patients have perfectly rounded waves while others look jagged and worn.

They can teach you a lot in school. They taught me a lot at Southern. They taught me a lot at the hospital. They both specifically taught me about the heart. But what do I really know? I can tell you about the many components of the heart. But the block stops there. That's all. I can't tell you what's really in the heart.

So tell me this, what does your EKG look like?

Bad Boys

Now that I've started, I'm not sure why I didn't include girls in the title for this blog. Heavens knows that this world has seen her fair share of bad girls, which really sometimes are worse off than even the worst boy. Nevertheless, that was the first thing that came to mind and thus that is what I'll stick with. Besides, once you finish reading this blog my omission will appear a bit clearer.

Someone once told me, "All girls want a bad boy at least once in their lifetime." What she forgot to mention was what exactly differentiates the good from the bad, because as sad as it is, "good" and "bad" are really quite subjective. What is good to one may be absolutely intolerable to another. What's worse is that our society seems to have a mild obsession with the bad boy image. Everywhere you look there is the portrayal of a bad guy, who ironically seems to have it all despite his immoral behavior.

I never really considered this to be a topic of significance until yesterday. While spending the day with a dear friend we browsed the web and of course found ourselves perusing multiple MySpace accounts. One person's site we visited rather quickly, out of jest, boasted some comment about being a "pimp" and since he considered himself to be such, that was justification enough for his promiscuous behavior, not to mention the fact that being such made him the envy of all his friends.

I wasn't at all surprised to read these things. I even had to laugh out loud. I might even be tempted to agree with this person's view of themselves. Yet I cannot understand the fascination and even the pride one finds in association with such riff raff. How often do you meet a prostitute or drug dealer who's openly boastful of his lifestyle choices? Better yet, how often do you meet a mother sporting a bumper sticker that proclaims her son/daughter is a criminal rather than a straight "A" student? It just makes no sense to me.