all that's changed

Maisie has poor night vision, so she didn't recognize me right away after my 5 days in Chicago. Video of our reunion here, courtesy of Uncle John.

Perhaps you can hear me in the video -- "you got fat!" In fact, she gained .8 of a pound - significant digits if you only weigh 16 lbs to start with. So Fatty McTubs is on a rigorous diet and workout plan to get back to her fighting weight. We spent an hour on long-distance fetch in the park this morning; she looks slimmer already.

Posted by em at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments

Now that my niece is old enough to talk back, I'm much more interested in being Auntie Em. Today we went ice skating, fed the ducks, shopped for jeans, did our hair, and ate pasta and ice cream. Next up: Owl and the Pussycat for bedtime. That kid is wiped.

Let me tell you something about Auntie Em -- she will play, pretend, read, hang out, and put on Barbie shoes with you til the cows come home. But at the dinner table and bedtime, she stands no nonsense. Rational backtalk is one thing. Six trips out of bed for

1)another drink of water
2)turn the mini Christmas tree on
3)potty
4)turn the mini Christmas tree off
5)reconfigure angle of door
6)hide from the urchins (I swear to God she came up with this)

is quite another. Grandmas may fall for that, but Aunties do not.

I thought the sign at the ice rink concessions offering "Pop in 3 sizes" was an interesting linguistic quirk worth blogging about, but I couldn't possibly top these people.

Posted by em at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments

Having spent two weeks now working with the elderly, I have a few early New Year's Resolutions to pass along.

These all go directly -- I said directly -- to staving off Alzheimer's, dementia and stroke.

1. Keep your head active, throughout your life. Don't just do the same-old. Master new skills, learn new things and burn new neural pathways to keep your brain limber. Examples I've heard from friends recently - take up crossword puzzles, figure out new software, start a new craft, learn to dance a new step. It doesn't need to be anything complicated; just new to you.

2. If you're not eating fish 4-5 times a week, take fish oil supplements, particularly Omega-Three and Omega-Six fatty acids, daily. These are micronutrients that benefit your head and your heart. Flaxseed oil and Evening Primrose oil contain these acids.

3. While you're at it, take your multivitamins and girls, your calcium, every day. If a good diet represents the bricks of nutrition, then vitamins and minerals are the mortar. You need vitamins and minerals to make good use of the food you eat.

These go directly to cardiovascular & stroke issues.

4. Exercise aerobically for your heart. Do weight-bearing exercise for your bones. Yoga or whatever for continued joint flexibility and balance. You have to do all three.

5. Don't get fat, if you can help it. If you're overweight, it's much more difficult for the staff to care for you. It takes twice the staff to transfer an overweight patient from wheelchair to bed (which represents about a 75% work slowdown, which some people are not kind about). It's hard to move and keep clean everywhere you need to keep clean.

I could walk you around a convalescent home and point out case studies. Most of us become forgetful as we age. I'd say 40-50% of the residents have dementia to the point that it's difficult/impossible to understand their basic needs. They can't communicate at all, and everything is done for them. Everything. You don't want this.

There are also cases of the "extreme elderly" - 80+ - who are absolute delights. They're totally mobile, they know what's going on, they participate in activities and run their own schedule, they assist in their own care, they're fresh as new pennies and always have a smile on their faces. More about my favorite residents to come...

Posted by em at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments

Wait for the breakdown.

Sent to me by an ex, naturally.

Posted by em at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments

If you're going to be a pop star, be Gwen Stefani. Have a solid starter career in "ska" band. Acquire cute grunge-pop British husband who plays professional-level tennis. Wear show-stopping pink Galliano gown to marry said husband. Have adorable baby, and seem genuinely thrilled about it. Carefully and gradually mold your image changes so that they're believable and buyable. Launch a clothing line that reflects your image, but don't sell too very hard. Be multi-culti and interesting. Along with being kinda punky, kinda cholo, kinda retro-kooky, be, y'know, classy.

Think about the things Gwen *hasn't* done:

1. Although securing British husband, hasn't acquired hokey British accent, nor fondness for America-bashing.

2. When husband has 18-yr-old lovechild scandal erupt, keeps media hoo-hah to a minimum by simply not speaking publicly about it. Gee. What a concept.

3. Attempt acting career, and be dignified when most of first role ends up on cutting room floor.

and perhaps most importantly:

4. No ladyparts in public.

Above all, make reasonably ambitious pop music and put on a great live show. This is where I'm troubled.

I haven't heard the whole of "The Sweet Escape" yet. Mostly because the first track, which I saw on SNL this week, was really quite awful. Sampling "The Lonely Goatherd"? Creative, I'll give you that. But her performance was just plain stilted as was her Gucciesque jumpsuit. I didn't stay tuned for her second number.

Other than her outfit, I like her new look, especially her hair, and the styling of her backup dancers.

I've been with you for awhile, Gwen. Long enough to hang on a bit longer. But where you goin with this?

Posted by em at 8:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

I started clinicals at the convalescent home this week, and I landed in the middle of it. "It."

I was put on the hospice wing. A woman was just checked in with Stage 5 cancer. Age 54. She has a daughter, younger than me, who is there night and day. She keeps coming into the hallway and laying the side of her head against the wall, staring at nothing. There's nothing she wants, nothing I can do. Her mother is dying.

Her mother is really and truly my responsibility now, at least for the 6 hours I am there every day. The doctors are gone. The R.N. only need look in once or twice a shift. I do what's left to be done. I reposition her mother every two hours, bathe her, change her linens, keep up with her catheters and hydration. It's hard for the daughter to watch me do these things for her mother, who was strong and competent and raised her on her own. The daughter sees me coming and she cries.

I don't know how to be. I can't be Nurse Sunshine, who the hell wants that, and I can't cry, because that's not fair to them. I try to be gentle and strong and accessible. I try to be competent and sympathetic. I don't know if any of that is working. I know after this is over, the daughter will never want to see my face again.

It doesn't feel right to keep intruding on the daughter, who is sick and sad and miles away, to offer help. I try to catch her gaze and hold it, to open the way for her to speak if she wants to. She does, she has. Her mother can't speak any more. Her mother's name is Sherry.

That first day, I cried on the way home. In fact I wailed. Then I called my mother, who understood. Then I called Skott, who met me for late-night pho and a long silent embrace on the sidewalk in the rain. Then I found I could go home and sleep.

Posted by em at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments

Matt sent me this hilarious photo of his most recent Aikido test. That's him getting tossed by a 5'2" woman. Who is also a black belt you would not want to meet in a dark alley.

He attends Aikido class (seriously?) 5-6 days a week. Yet all I know about Aikido is that it's a Japanese martial art, it means "the way of harmony," and you don't throw punches, you try to use your attacker's own momentum or aggression or whatever to defeat him/hes. Somebody looks fairly defeated here, no? He says he was demonstrating how to roll out of a fall. Suuuuuure.

Posted by em at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments

while finishing up the last of your problem sets, you encounter this:

"Use the Arrhenius equation..."

and you have no. bloody. idea what that is.

Ohhhhhhh. Apparently what I've been doing for the last 6 weeks is Arrhenius equations, I just didn't know the name, apparently having become one of those numbers-rather-than-words people.

Okay. Back to regularly-scheduled Nose-In-Booksville (with study break to go xmas shopping with Monsieur Morin)

Posted by em at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments

Finals start today, and hooboy, I'm already exhausted. My night class takes up so much of my day, I've fallen behind in chemistry. I have to leave by 2 to miss traffic, and I get home at 10:30 - 11. I'm too wired to sleep, and have only been able to crack my chem book once and actually get anything done at that hour. Theoretically all our chem problem sets are due 2 1/2 hours from now -- thaaaaaat's not happening. Thank god for the grace period. I'm missing the last 3, and I have a sneaking suspicion I have more done than anyone else.

Fortunately the really late hours end next week; much more humane. FunFacts from C.N.A. class:

* how to make hospital corners. Martha Stewart's instructions here, but she neglects leaving the critical toe pleat.

Realistically, who makes a bed without a fitted sheet? Mattresses are so deep that to get a flat sheet to fit around one, you'd have to buy flat sheets one size up. It is super nice and tidy though.

* 1 oz - 33 cc

* How to take a BP. Unfortunately, I suck at this, because it requires sharp hearing.

* Rectal temperature is 1 degree higher than oral temperature.

Posted by em at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments

A benign otherwordly presence is hanging out here at ATC HQ. We're hopeful it's benign, anyway. The facts:

1. Last night I was home alone (well, with 3 dogs as I was babysitting Skout) doing chemistry, eating Chile-and-Lime Cashews, drinking Pellegrino and doing more chemistry. All that mineral water, eventually you have to hit the loo. On my last trip, I'd equipped it with a new roll of T.P. After I'd torn off the little bit of paper I required, the roll kept spinning and unraveling on the floor, rather rapidly. I reached out to touch the roll to pause it, figuring it was off balance somehow. But the minute I took my hand off, whoosh, it started unraveling furiously again. I stopped it again. As soon as I took my hand off, it started again. I just sat there and watched an almost-full roll drape in cascades to the floor until it was all gone.

2. This morning, my roommate went out our kitchen door to the laundry room, while I was sitting in my bedroom reading. 5 minutes passed, and she called out to me. I hopped up and went to the kitchen, calling "where are you?" "You locked me out back," she answered in a puzzled tone. Sure enough, the back door was locked, so I let her in. But I hadn't locked it. I hadn't moved from my bedroom. She didn't lock it from the outside -- we don't even know where the keys are to that door. We only ever bolt it from the inside.

We laughed and said oh, we must have a ghost and chatted for a moment about it. She hypothesized that maybe the upstairs neighbor had an exorcism and the ghost just shifted down a floor.

I didn't bring it up, but there's also Fact 3 - her father died 8 days ago.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Posted by em at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments

I started my C.N.A. (Certified Nursing Assistant) night class this week, and although I'm totally knackered, it's a great experience. CNA's assist convalescing patients with the so-called Activities of Daily Living. That means washing, toileting, dressing, eating, getting to activities, along with basic healthcare stuff. It's not as boring as it sounds - there's a trick to getting someone's weight when they're in a wheelchair, and learning to move a stroke patient around while you change linens takes skill. And it's definetly gratifying -- these are the things everybody needs to do every day for both health and dignity. Plus, we're simply there as a primary caregiver for elderly patients, many of whom are awfully lonely. That feels good. Exactly the feeling I was hoping for when I left Corporate America.

I signed up to be a CNA because it was the cheapest, fastest way I could get some kind of healthcare certification that would allow me to do hands-on patient care, which is required for the master's programs in healthcare I'm applying to. I figure I can work a couple of night shifts a week while I'm in class during the day to rack up some patient care hours, but my primary support will still be writing. I knew the kind of thing I was in for with C.N.A. work, as my mom was a director of nursing at a home when I was growing up.

The class that suited me best is in Vallejo, and as it turns out, I'm the only white person enrolled. In fact, I'm the only non-Filipino in my class, including the instructor. I've been the only white girl in a class before, but not one where everyone else was the same nationality. My classmates do a good job of not slipping into Tagalog too often when I'm around, and they ask polite questions about my knitting. We practiced taking heights yesterday, and they were all astounded at my 5'9" -- I was equally astounded at one girl's 4'10" (we took a photo together). I love the fact that my classmates address the teacher with a polite British "yes mum," and joke-telling is high on the list of priorities. When we were learning the Heimlich yesterday, the teacher quickly dismissed her demo student with "you're too chubby!" as she couldn't get her arms around. Gales of laughter and no mortification whatsoever followed.

The people in my class (9 women, 2 men) are all good students. We're a little daunted by the gnarlier tasks ahead of us, but nobody's backing down. Most of my classmates are becoming C.N.A.s as a way to support themselves en route to another healthcare degree, often nursing or P.T. Some have nursing training from the Philippines that doesn't qualify here; one is even a dentist. Many of the older students (I'm probably just about average age) are supporting families both here and back in the Philippines, including providing law school tuition for a younger brother, Catholic school tuition for kids, and another is pretty sure she and her husband will be able to swing a mortgage once she's certified.

There are also 3 young girls, freshmen in community college, who are there trying to get into nursing programs. I love working with them, because they fall apart laughing at the slightest provocation. (1 of them outscored me on the first test, too.) At the first raucous gigglefest, white girl looked around nervously, worried that the girls would be chided for being unprofessional. But the teacher was smiling kindly, as was everyone else.

It's going to be a long two months -- I have late nights until the end of January -- but at least I'm laughing. Ooh - and I can't wait to get to the resident home and help out with Poker and Bingo nights. I live for that shit.

Posted by em at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments