Good news!

 

Good news!!!! Since I've been awake-ish since 3 today, my partner and I went for coffee at a neat new place in Monett. A very sweet couple in front of us paid for our coffee, which is a huge blessing for the day!

A bit scattered (and depressing) update

 Hi everyone, just wanted to pop in with a quick update. Things got incredibly beserck in end of August-beginning of October. Truthfully, they got a little crazy before, but it all worsened then. School became busier, and there started to be rumors that there were going to be changes at work that would impact me greatly, as well as everyone else. 

  Long story short, we found out that my grandparents had been in the hospital for approximately 3-5 days (Grandma B. went first, then Grandpa followed) for Covid. They remained hospitalized for a few weeks before Grandpa went on comfort care, ironically the week after I learned about it in class. Grandpa passed shortly thereafter; Grandma went comfort care the day fter Grandpa's funeral (Monday) and died the same day. I wish I could say that the hospital they were at took great care of them, and did their best to keep them comfortable in their last days, but sadly I cannot. The family had to pitch fits just to get them pain medication once in a while; normally, with comfort care, the goal is to keep them as painfree and peaceful as possible, but not at this hospital. There were a couple of great nurses that did attempt to do so, but sadly that was the minority, not the overall experience. I might write more about that later; I'm not really sure at this point. 

  Thankfully, my boss was amazing with all of this, as were my classmates and instructor. All three made a point to check on me frequently, and are probably the only reason I did not end up on a 96 hour hold. I was suppose to have a exam over comfort care and cancer the day after Grandma passed, but thankfully my instructor allowed me to push it off until the next Monday. I got a little misty-eyed taking it then, there was no way I was going to make it through it that Wednesday without crying, so I am incredibly thankful for that. 

  The day we first went to their house after they had both passed was a hard one. Family had came in from out of state, and an uncle occasionally lived them, so it did not look like their house. That combined with them not being there hit me hard. Thankfully, the bathroom was open, so I hid in there to a take a moment; I only say this to say that a classmate, a fellow stitcher, had the misfortune of texting me at that time and got stuck having to talk me out of the bathroom, via text. The poor guy was so sweet to do so!

  Unfortunately, that same day, on the way home I found out that I will need to have a second job by the end of December. The board decided to switch the full timers to a 48-96 shift (not safe), and make the 12 hour truck a full time truck (probably needed long before now). While the 12 hour becoming a fully-staffed truck that will run 24/7 is best for the district, it means that all of the PRNers, including myself, will likely not have many, or any, hours once it is staffed with full time personnel. My boss very sweetly did not want to tell me this until after my Grandma's funeral, but a coworker told me when I asked what the meeting they wanted all staff to go (never a good thing) to was about. I also found out that she was going through her own rough time; the board decided that they would not be renewing her contract (we basically rent her from a large hospital/ambulance service in the vicinity). There are a lot of unknowns, and she is required to train her temporary replacement through the end of the year, which I feel is insult to injury, but she is doing amazing with her attitude about it. Fortunately, the way her contract was set up, she still has a job at the company she is from. 

  Things are going a lot better now. I'm still dealing with all of the normal emotions of grief. My Mom is having the hardest time; losing both parents so fast is something I cannot even try to imagine. She appears to be doing a little better now, but prayers for her would be appreciated.

  On a more positive note, while my grades have slipped some, I am not in immediate danger of failing out of nursing school! We have to keep our grades at a 74 or 76%; I forget which. While a bad test score could drop my grade dramatically, it tentatively looks like I just might be in the portion moving on! 

  Sorry this was not a more uplifting update. I had to be up at 3 to come in early for a coworker, so I'm not in a sunshiney mood just yet. I'll try to post something happier soon. To be honest, I knew this would be a harder post to write, which is why I have not updated in a long time. I hope that all of you and your loved ones are doing amazing; please, tell me what you have been up to!

  Happy Stitching,

  Emmy

Nala's Self Image

  This is what Nala thinks she looks like:

And this is what Nala actually looks like:

   She has a very healthy self-image; she is always shocked and angered whenever I pick her up. She's bigger than me and could eat me for an afternoon snack if she wanted to, so it always shocks her whenever I hold in just my hands. :)

Me too, cat, me too

  Perchance, do any of you have a Emmy-sized box? Granted, my problems are not that bad. They're more annoyances that my dramatic brain blows ridiculously out of proportion. Then cue the anxiety! That said, I would appreciate prayers about some work stuff. My boss has been incredible about working with what little availability I can give her, but the board may be making some changes. One of the changes would be making the 12 hour truck into a full time truck. For the district's sake, it needs to be, but it would likely be a full-time crew then. Which would stink for all of PRNers. And would likely mean that I would need to pick up a second job somewhere. Which would totally not be the end of the world, but I don't want to spend the time and hassle of looking, applying, and learning a new job, especially while in school. I'd rather procrastinate on that until I'm a RN and can procastinate no longer! It will likely be a month or two until they decide, so prayers for my sanity would be appreciated. After all, youns know just how much I just  love the unknowns of life. 😒 Oh well, life would be boring without them! 

 

    Poor Ladybug was really feeling the stress yesterday. Mom has been sick since Sunday, and Lady is very much a Marmoo's girl, and has been keeping a close eye on Mom almost 24/7. Plus, my normal state is a sliding scale of stress, and she does her best to keep me grounded. But that poor girl hit her max yesterday! She was freaked out, did not want left alone, and refused to leave my bedroom for almost all of the day. She would peek her head out of the door, get scared, and immediately run and hid in my room. I ended up turning the lights off (when I wasn't in there studying), keeping the doors closed, and turning the sounds on my alarm clock on to the river setting to get her to calm down. Approximately 30 seconds after starting that, she moved from the foot of the bed to the pillow (the brat!), and fell asleep. She stayed like that for a very, very long time and awoke her normal chill self. 

  School has been going good overall. My instructor and classmates are absolutely incredible!!!! I have made friends that I am much closer to than people that I have known for many years! :o  & :) I did fail a pharm test, which was weird, because I don't fail tests. That said, I was super stressed about work, did NOT sleep much that week, and did not study for it much at all. I did do amazing on the Peds HESI that we took that day though. The HESI is an indicator of how likely you are to pass NCLEX (the test that must be passed to become a nurse); doing well on it was nice, but I would have been given a second chance since this was our first time taking a HESI. I shoulda known that I'd choose the wrong test to fail! ;) On the upside, it was a nursing school fail, not a normal fail- for nursing school, it has to be a 75% or higher to pass; I got a 74%. So I'm just a partial idiot at least! 

  I don't really have much else to tell youns. I have no clue when I will stitch again; I am going to have to make time though, my sanity is wearing thin, and I haven't read a book for fun in a long time, so I need to decompress somehow soon. At work on Monday, we were dispatched for a male with dementia "acting crazy" that killed his dog. I really, really did not want to run on him. Fido-murderers are not my favorite. Plus, if he hit the point of killing his own dog, then there is precious little to keep him from wanting to kill me, especially since I am incredibly annoying. (I am told this frequently by patients. And other people.) Thankfully, we were cancelled while staging in the area. I do not know if Fido lived or not. Hopefully, he was not murdered, and it was all a big misunderstanding. 

  That's it, folks! I hope things are going amazing for you. Feel free to tell me all about it! 

  Happy Stitching (please stitch extra on my behalf!)!

  Emmy 

Hello, Friends!

   I truly thought that I would do a much better job of keeping in touch you, but we can see how that has gone. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that none of you are surprised; while we have never met in person that I know of, you seem to understand me better than I understand myself. I'm glad someone does at least!

  School has been busy, but good. My nursing professor is super cool, and my classmates are like a second family. When I got into EMS, everyone talked about how your coworkers are your family- they really aren't. A select few, sure, but not everyone like "they" said. But this class? Very much so. The only time I have felt so safe before is with select family, friends, and youns. Its a weird, but really nice feeling. Like being cuddled in a fuzzy blanket with a cat on your lap while watching it snow outside. I'll try to post occasional updates of random things that I have learned- that counts as studying, right?

  My house is coming along. Dad (bless his heart) has gotten almost all of the electricity ran inside the house, and the plumber finished almost all of hte inside stuff week before last. I'm hoping he shows up this week to finish tying in the water line and sewage (I really can't decide which one of those is more important). If all goes well, I can hopefully hire someone to do the insulation (I'm going with blow-in foam insulation) soon! Between you and me, I seriously hoping that I can move in over Christmas break. I have no idea if that is realistic, but that would be so amazing!!!!!!!

  On a similar note, does anyone know how to find a handyman, or whatever the proper term is nowadays? I am not really  able to help with school, and it isn't fair to ask my Dad to keep working on my house. If I can hire a handyman to take care of the necessitites, that will move up the move in date, and my Dad might actually let himself sleep more than 5 hours. 

  I'm very needy today; I have yet another question for you, my friends. A good friend from my class got married on Saturday. Does anyone know of any affordible embroidery or cross stitch kits for a newly married couple that would be a quick stitch? All suggestions would be appreciated!

  We had an interesting call a little bit ago. A young man was moving trash when he stuck his arm through an old window, resulting in a nice laceration to his R wrist. He had a makeshift tourniquet on, and the officer had placed his tourniquet on. We took the makeshift one off, and placed another one of ours. He ended up getting TXA, and brought to Springfield. A nice bit of excitement for the day!

  Whelp, I guess thats all she wrote! I hope youns have an amazing Labor Day (I forgot that was today until I got to work- time and half, woo hoo!!!!), and I look forward to hearing what you have been up to!

  Happy Stitching!

  Emmy

I'm struggle-bussing it

  I cannot seem to get my act together here lately. Normally, I have routines, so I can just do stuff on autopilot, and get it done. But all of my routines have flown out of the window with school and then dropping to PRN at work. I am in a world of confusion right now. Here are some of the more interesting examples:

  Shift before last, we went to a call with a young lady that had been abused by her boyfriend and drove several hours to get away. 3 police officers were on scene as well as the pt, my partner, and myself. We checked her VS, confirmed that she did not want to go to the hospital repeatedly (I would have felt better if she would have), and then returned to the station. After making it back to the station, I went to use the restroom, where I found out that I likely ran the entire call with a toilet paper tail. And nobody thought to tell me! My partner was adamant that he had not noticed any such thing- he is a man, so I do believe him on that one! 

  The next shift, my truck was dead-dead at the get go. In all of my company's wisdom, we continued to "run" out of it- at least once it was charged enough to start. We did go and run errands then- it was charged enough to drive, but nothing else worked. No headlights, no wee-woos, no obnoxious siren, zip, zilch, nada. Oh well, it worked out. Thankfully the air ride was working by the time we got a pt. They would have been very angry if not!

  Now onto the shift following that! I normally put my food that goes in the fridge in a bag, then put the bag in the fridge. If you feel this is unnecessasry, you are absolutely right, but some jerk kept stealing my cheese sticks, and I don't know who it was, so I never found out who to stab with my trauma shears (putting the trauma in trauma shears, one cheese stick thief at a time!). It was either stab everybody (felt a little excessive...) or try something else. Thankfully, the bag thing worked. Well, that and being very vocal that I would absolutely stab a cheese stick thief, if I ever found out who it was. Like, come on, who steals a girl's cheese stick?!? Take the yogurt or something, but not the cheese, and not my dessert!!!!  Anyway, now that I have had my little tantrum, I grabbed my bag, and headed off to work. After getting to work, I went to put it in the fridge when I realized, to my horror, that I did remember my bag, but I did not remember to put anything in it!!!!!!

  

  My last shift, we got off after 11:30... we were suppose to be off at 9. We were already on a late call when they made us go to a wreck. I felt really dumb because all of these people kept saying my name, and when I answered, they looked at me like I was really stupid. I was starting to wonder if I was having a stroke or something (my BP was absolutely high enough at that point) and just speaking gibberish. At one point, a firefighter said, "Emily is a patient, too." I'm thinking to myself, "No, I'm calm. Why is he saying that?" (We say that whenever someone gets really worked up over something. Some EMTs, Paramedics, etc have literally had heart attacks on the truck during a call from all of the cumulative stress of the job.)  Turns out, my pt and I share the same first name! She was the second one of the day with my name. Usually, I don't share a name with my patients, just classmates.

  As you can see, life has been very, very entertaining of late. Only one thing was embarassing (the TP tail) for about 30 seconds. It is now my favorite story to tell everyone! 

Only in Nursing school....

 Does someone tell you to "go look at that butt" and you rush with everyone else to do exactly that. Kinda weird, right? Exactly what our professor said, and us medic RN students feel like we are drowning with most of the assignments- looking at a rubber butt with an example of a pressure wound is absolutely easy, and something we were eager to do as a result!

 In other news, here is my house:

  It needs painted, another window, and nothing inside is done except for the stairs and the bathroom framing. Still, a ton of progress that the contractor did in a few days!!!!!!! We will be doing the rest (hopefully), so it will be awhile before there is more progress to report. 

  I am super behind on stuff for my RN bridge class, as well as my Old Testament History. For nursing, our instructor is really cool, as are my classmates. Updates will likely be sporadic, but know that I think of you often!!!! 

  Happy Stitching/Studying! 

 Emmy