story of the day...

angie gets a speeding ticket

whatever!!! we had just left the stampin up tour and heading to robert's (provo crafts' local retail store). i had just slowed down to let two dumb girls cross the street and was just starting to go again. and we see the policeman. i look down and i see the speedometer on 41. i'm in a 35 zone. i look in the rear view mirror and see him turn around onto the street. oh great. lights turn on. holy crap!! i'm getting pulled over with my cute mom, traci and mary in the car!!! i was so mad! he gave me a ticket for going 49, which is 14 over the limit. there is no way i could have been going that fast. oh well. it's his word. so i now have to pay a $107 speeding ticket.

what a great experience for the out of towners!!

ugh...

as you may know, i'm a pediatric icu nurse. i love my job. i love helping my patients and their families. having said that, i have decided that i hate being on the flip side of things and i'm a horrible family member/patient. it always makes me a little more conscientious of my interactions with family members of my patients and how i interact with my patients. it also makes me think of the saying "ignorance is bliss" because my mind tends to wander during these times.

my cute neice, sydney, had surgery today. she had to have her gallbladder out at the ripe old age of 13. i can totally feel her pain, as i had to have my gallbladder out 4 years ago. i went with her and her stepmom, and my cute mom, this morning to the hospital to wait with ang (stepmom...i know, funny...we have the same name!) during the surgery. my brother, syd's dad, was out of town for work and couldn't get off work, so we were proxys, if you will. well, we would have gone anyway, i guess. back to my story...so we got to the hospital and got her all checked in. then we had to watch while they tried to draw some blood for labs. they had to stick her 3 times. it was terrible!!! they also had to do an iv, but they were going to let the anesthesiologist start it, especially after having difficulty with the blood draws. i'm glad they did. he gave her some laughing gas to get her all goofy, then tried the iv. he even had a hard time finding a good vein. i'm just glad she doesn't remember it.

while we were out in the waiting room during her surgery, i tried not to think of all the things that i have seen as a result of complications to surgery and think about how well she was doing. after what felt like an eternity (but was really only about an hour), the surgeon came out and told us all went well and that syd was in recovery. i was so relieved. but then again, my mind started to wander as i watched the clock tick by and waited the 40 minutes until we could go back and finally see her. you see, i forget that when i am at work and get a post-op patient, we are the ones doing the recovery and so they skip the whole recovery room. i kind of forgot that and kept thinking of all these things that could be taking so long. and of course, nothing went wrong. they were just doing the normal post-op things. but we finally went back to see her and she was somewhat awake and a little drugged, but doing ok.

after about an hour, they decided she could go home. she was not having any problems with nausea and her pain was not the greatest in control, but she had pain medication on board. well she made it home ok. we sent ang to bed for a nap, since she's been sick with a nasty kidney infection, and my cute mom headed to the store for some prescriptions. so i was in charge of syd for a while. we got her all comfy in the recliner, she had a few crackers and some sprite and was headed to sleep. all of the sudden, she bolts awake, yells for a bowl (which i had no idea where to find one!) and says she not feeling so good. luckily i got her the bowl in time!! i grabbed a cool cloth and went to nurse my cute niece to better comfort. i've decided this sucks. not the taking care of her part...but the part where i can't fix it and make her all better. i've decided i don't like seeing my cute little syd so sick to her stomach and hurting so much. i've been through this surgery and i hate to think that she is feeling as crappy as she is.

now, it's been 15 minutes, i've given her some more phenegran and she is sleeping peacefullly. hopefully she'll stay this way for a while. i just want to scoop her up and make it all go away for her.

update: well it's been 4 hours now and syd hasn't gotten much rest. she's been really sick to her stomach and keeps throwing up. she can't keep anything down, including her pain meds. but ang called the doctor and he assured her that she'll be ok. just try and get her to rest. so hopefully she'll sleep tonight and feel better tomorrow. i'm back to work tomorrow, so i'll be checking in on her during the day. thanks for all your kind words!!!

update #2: well, thursday night i talked to syd and she is doing much better. she sounded better. she got some good sleep, hasn't been as sick to her stomach and has been able to eat! so yeah!!!!

uh, ick. (another doozy of a sick post...)

warning: this post contains a description of being sick...don't continue reading if you are sensitive to that sort of thing...

remember the golfball post from a few days ago? well, i was mistaken. no one lost their golfball. that's not what was in my froat...it's some alien. and he's decided to take up permentent residence and has moved in to my lungs. oh my heck!! (to coin a utah phrase...) seriously. i swear i haven't coughed this much or this hard in a long time. i think i'm working on coughing up enough lung cookies for everyone. and it's not getting any better. so i decided to go to the instacare today, since when i woke up and tried to talk i sounded like man. i tried to tell the doctor that the little alien isn't leaving anytime soon and i needed some anti-alien medicine. he gave me some prednisone instead. thinks we can muscle him out of there. shaaa...as if. it'll just make me crazy!!!

so i call my cute mom and report what the 12 year old doctor (i swear...maybe 13-nice enough fellow but sheesh!) says. so she tells my cute grandma, loving soul that she is, and my grandma gets on the stick. she is sending over a care package. she has pretty nasty asthma and is the queen of dealing with illness and her asthma. she said she knows what to do better than some doctor at preventing this little bug from turning into something nastier like pneumonia, so she's sending over the troops. i love her!!! it's not often she commnds people, so when she does, ya gotta listen!!

an update on my rotten belly...

so i finally got to see the gi doctor today. looks like i get to have a scope shoved down my throat next week. i just want this all to be over!!! he's also going to try a new medicine and see if my labs are off. with the results of those two things (the labs and the scope), hopefully it will be solved. if not, it's more tests.

she's gonna blow...

warning: this post contains a vivid description of being sick...don't continue reading if you are sensitive to that sort of thing...

there are few things i hate worse in this world than being sick. and of the common illnesses that happen throughout the year (cold, cough, fever, vomiting, etc.) the one i hate the worst is puking. here is how my day started...

so i was supposed to work today. my alarm went off around 530am this morning. i got up and felt a little queasy. i shook it off and hopped in the shower. i was standing in the shower and thought to myself that i really wasn't feeling good. my stomach was turning flip flops. i made it through the shower, stepped out and this tidal wave rushed over me. before i knew it, i was praying to the porcelain god and he was saying, "dude, you don't look so good." well, he was right. shortly there after, i gave him a little deposit for his comment. honestly, i gave him a few. so i stood up, dried myself off, and proceeded to get dressed. whatever...my body was obviously having a different plan for me today. so i again made a quick deposit to the lovely white basin (by the way, you don't realize how dirty your toilet is until you are face to face with it!). my favorite part (that was purely sarcastic!) is that now i have nothing left in my stomach except a drop or two of stomach acid. so now it's on to the dry heaves!!

now, i am a nurse and work in an icu. for those of you not familiar with how it works when you need to call in sick, you are supposed to do it by 4:00 or it is considered a no show. this allows plenty of time for them to find a replacement. well, it was now 6:00. i knew that if i went to work, i didn't know that i could make it all the way without either a-puking in my car (which is brand new and i really don't want to do that) or b-pulling over to puke on the side of the road, especially since i have a 40 minute commute. not really my idea of fun. then what good would i be once i got to work? hi, my name is angie, i'm your nurse today...excuse me while i go yak in the garbage can. so i called my beloved charge nurse (hi lori, if you are reading this...) and discussed my options with her. now just a little back ground here...previous to me becoming a nurse, i worked as a stafffer in the staffing office. why is that important here you may ask? cause these are the people you call when you call in sick that find you a replacement. so i know what a pain in the butt it is to have someone call in an hour before their shift is supposed to start. back to lori. so i told her what was going on and asked her what i should do. should i try and come to work or stay home and take up residence on the bathroom floor (which also needs to be cleaned, apparently!) she was very kind and concerned and explained that i just wouldn't be that great of a nurse if i was puking on my patient (of course, she expressed this more eloquently than me). then i commented that it was 6am and that i was concerned about the whole no show rule. and her response is why i love the place i work as much as i do. she said something to the effect of rules are rules, but your body sometimes doesn't understand the concept of time and it doesn't matter if it is 4 am or 6am, it makes you puke when it needs to. and if it's after the 4am golden hour then sometimes we have to not worry about the rules and tells me to go and try feel better and stop throwing up. (again, she probably phrased it better than that...after all, it was 6am and i had just been yaking and now i was crying so i don't remember her exact words!) the message i'm trying to get across here is that she is awesome and i love her!

so back to my story... i hang up the phone, proceed back into the bathroom and heave some more. well by this time, i've made quite a racket, what with me trying to expel the lining of my stomach out and me sobbing cause i'm feeling so perky, that i have woken up my boyfriend. i decide it would be best to maybe get something in me that might help with all the retching (even though the thought of this made me retch even more), so i grab the bottle of pink stuff and take a big ole chug. oh my...it was like waiting for mt vesuvius to blow. i somehow managed to keep it down and dragged my butt back to bed, with a garbage can at the ready. my loving boyfriend asked if i was going to live or did he need to take me to the hospital. i heaved a bit more, then between sobs, told him no i didn't need to go to the hospital cause i'm puking. i managed to roll over, along with the wave of pink stuff in my gut, to see if i could maybe get back to sleep and sleep away the retching in my tummy. well, long story short (oops, too late), here i am, after an hour and a half of laying in bed not sleeping. thankfully, i haven't lost my cookies (or pink stuff, rather), but still have this ongoing cycle of waves of nausea, enough that a fine surfer could probably ride out for the rest of the day. aren't you jealous??

i'm sure that was probably a little more detail and insight into my gi tract than you wanted to know, but if you made it this far after my warning, than i don't feel so bad for you!!!i'm off to find some crackers...and perhaps cozy up to a nice cold basin again.