Day one. Winter Solstice 2014. The day began cloudy, and is still cloudy. At 3:30pm, it is about 40 degrees F. Happy solstice, everyone! It is a good day to begin a new project!
222-3-60
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Monday, June 30, 2014
Prayer Books, Meditations, and Devotionals
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| June Sunset in Ohio |
I've kept them all over the years, even the ones I never thought I'd read. Prayer and meditation books of all kinds, from pagan, to New Age, to Christian. Yesterday someone posted on Facebook that this month was Ramadan. I get other-than-Christian religious holidays confused, especially Jewish and Muslim ones. I grew up a Christian, after all, and although I have tried to educate myself over time, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan are interchangeable enough that I still have to look them up to remember what they are about.
Fasting is a bad idea for a nurse who works 12-hour shifts, especially night shifts during middle age of a woman. The body is going through all sorts of subtle metabolic and hormonal changes in which the lack of any certain kind of food can unexpectedly throw one of them into overdrive. I recently found this out, profoundly, the hard way. But there is a quiet pull to honor a holiday that is not mine, somehow. If I am going to sacrifice something, or even to observe something, I like doing it for short periods of times. Lent is about six weeks long. Ramadan is a month long. I haven't been making it to Quaker meeting often lately. For personal reasons, some of my usual venues for personal fulfillment have some blocks in the road. What to do, what to do. It occurred to me that I might try a small devotion, or meditation each day of Ramadan.
Most, if not all of them, are on my bookshelf. My daughter put them there when she unpacked the boxes after we moved here, and my nieces rearranged them when they helped me clean. I found the small prayer and meditation booklets of like size in a row together. The most appealing is "Celtic Prayers," by Alexander Carmichael, spiritually, personally, and aesthetically. I have long forgotten who gave this one to me, or whether I bought it myself. I don't know who the author is. I Googled him, and he became even more appealing - a Celtic folklorist and scholar. I'll begin with that one.
In the same little pile is "Wings of Prayer, Baha'i Prayers for Women," "A Selection of Baha'i Prayers, Holy Writings," and "The Hidden Words, selected writings of Bah'u'llah," given to me by the sister of a former significant other. There is "A Little Journal of Devotions out of Quaker Worship, An experiment with 104 entries across two thousand miles," by Francis D Hole and Ellie Shacter, and "Expectant Listening, Finding God's Thread of Guidance," by Michael Wajda. I haven't looked these people up yet, but the 104 entries sounds interesting. Then there is "Bible Puzzles, Quizzes and Games," by Helen Pettigrew, that I've been carrying around without actually using since I was a teenager. There are a lot more, but these are the ones that jumped out at me today.
The problem with me and a meditation time is that my schedule is so upended, and energy levels so unpredictable, that personal commitments, especially those geared for self-support and self-healing, generally work for only a few days. It is pretty predictable, however, that I will get on Facebook every day, since that has become my primary means of communication and self-expression. So why not type out an entry every day in a post? Then I will actually read it. I am going to give it a try.
Friday, April 04, 2014
Where the Butterflies Lay Their Eggs: A story of Immigration, Scotland, Germany, Quakers, and Native Americans
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| The view of the cluster of residences of my husband's family, past some milkweed in the field. |
It is the site overlooking an ancient Indian settlement. It is the top of a ravine called Whiskey Run, where moonshiners took barrels down to the river for delivery. It is the hay meadow. It is the Indian path to spy on the settlers on Wheeling Island. It is a Revolutionary War land grant in the 7 Ranges. It is a pre-Civil War general's dream farm. It is near where my husband ran for help as his grandfather died of a heart attack. It is near where my husband's tractor rolled over on him and permanently deformed his clavicle. It is where coyotes chew on toy dolls they stole from someone's barn or yard. It is where the turkeys and deer feed. It is where my husband has found numerous flint and stone tools. It is a spiritual Native American ground. I am likely the very first Quaker to live here. I often feel somewhat misplaced. I also feel honored; abandoned; discontent, and some sort of content all at the same time.
My husband, Bruce, has worked this farm for most of his life, from childhood, minus about 20 years. During the time away, he was a hippie, traveling with friends, hitchhiking, helping his brother round up and brand cows in Colorado, walking barefoot in California, being a vegetarian. For most of his life, he was here, in Ohio, two high ridges in from the Ohio River; two high ridges over from Wheeling, WV.
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| Wheeling Island from Kirkwood Heights before 9/11, taken by me. |
If one drives along this ridge until it descends into the river valley, one eventually comes to this view, looking up the river, at Wheeling Island, Martins Ferry on this side, and Wheeling, WV on the other. Bridgeport and National Road (Route 40, where it crosses the Island) is directly below. I grew up with panoramic scenes like this each morning, going to school in Bellaire, which is further south from this view. In the autumn, the river is shrouded with fog in the mornings, and the hilltops look like a wonderland above marshmallows.
The little clip of the flat to the right is near where the Wheeling Slave Auction Block sat. The hilltop to the right of the river is likely near the vicinity of Fort Henry, the first settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains. The other side of the that hilltop is the steep cliff where McCulloch's horse took a great leap down into the Wheeling Creek valley when he had arrived to Fort Henry, and was fleeing from the Indians. He and his horse survived the leap; one of the great Ohio Valley legends. This was Lewis Wetzel's favorite stomping grounds.
I travel down this hill to Riesbecks to go grocery shopping, or when I want to go up the river to the Pittsburgh airport, or to Wheeling.
The Allegheny's are the eastern "Great Divide," where the water runs into the Mississipi and to the Gulf of Mexico, instead of into the Atlantic Ocean. The lip you see here along the West Virginia side of the Ohio River is the trail where settlers traveled south from Pittsburgh before the Revolutionary War. Now it is the path of WV Route 2. Ohio's lip houses OH Route 7.
This picture is the setting for several books: Zane Grey's trilogy, "The Spirit of the Border," "Betty Zane," and "The Last Trail;" Allan W. Eckert's "That Dark and Bloody River;" Alan Fitzpatrick's "Wilderness War on the Ohio," John S. Cochran's "Bonnie Belmont," and Susan G. Hall's "Appalachian Ohio and the Civil War, 1862-1863." All of these books are in my library, and I've read all but the last cover-to-cover. Hall's book details the religious sects that settled this area. I have an early American family tree consisting of mostly pre-Revolutionary War families; the Quakers on my mother's side, and the Presbyterian Scots-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch German Lutherans on my father's side. I am all of this. So I belong here, whether or not I feel like I belong. I embrace it all, in its entirety - its violence; its inhumanity; its refuge for those who refused to participate in the inhumanity; what it means for the past, the present; and the future. And I don't belong. I am not a Native American; yet I live where they made their tools probably for a thousand or more years before my people arrived.
How incredibly relevant that the seeds pictured above will grow plants that feed a butterfly species, pictured below, that will likely migrate to Mexico.
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| Monarch Butterfly on Scottish Thistle, with a Praying Mantis |
"Ohio" by Patty Griffin
Sunday, March 09, 2014
Working Night Shift, Lip Reading, Spanish, and Crackers
I have worked night shift before, but never in this capacity. The past two years have been a career roller coaster ride. I finished my Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) last June of 2013, and the roller coaster only accelerated. I've been a registered nurse (RN) since completing an Associate's Degree program (ADN) in 1997. I thought the BSN might improve my career. At least, it was supposed to insure employment stability.
Some obscure time soon many RN's in the U.S. will have to have a BSN to keep the jobs they already have. The American Nurses Association (ANA) would like to phase out all but four year training programs. The literature supporting this move says there are better patient outcomes for people cared for by BSN graduates. All registered nurses (RNs) take the same board exam whether they finished a two year (ADN), three year (Diploma), or four year (BSN) program. Amazingly some BSN nurses still think they take a different test. The NCLEX is the NCLEX no matter what program completed to qualify to sit for it.
To be fair, some of the career issues are self-induced. That is for another post. For now, I am here, where I ended up, and have hopefully exited the ride. Not sure I'm up for another.
On December 31st, I began my current position, bringing in the new year. I hope to stay here for a long time. I am a direct care nurse on a vent unit in a sub-acute care facility. I like it here. I am still sort of catching my breath. I am working straight night shift, and my schedule rotates regularly every two weeks, alternating with the other primary night shift nurse working on the same unit. This covers 6 shifts per week. Another nurse works the 7th night. Unless one of us needs a certain night off, the schedule does not change; nor does my assignment.
In the past two years I have been a cardiac nurse, have pulled femoral artery sheaths, the tube they put in your groin during a heart cath, (and trained others to do so), been a nurse supervisor in a nursing home, and have done MDS's (minimum data sets, or assessments of care provided in nursing homes for insurance billing) while writing a power point on Ohio's "Nursing Home Bill." I have worked as a travel nurse in a city hospital where I helped care for a large Somolian population, as well as numerous other nationalities and sub-nationalities I had never heard of. I also worked alongside 1st generation Somolian-Americans. I have floated to neuro, orthopedic, ICU, and step-down units. I have used five electronic medical record systems, Veriscan bar coding, finger print computer sign on pads, unit wireless telephones, overhead paging, and the Vocera wearable intercom system. I've had several parking passes, and have learned and formed numerous passcodes. I have used 4 different kinds of IV pumps. I have taken CPR and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) from profoundly different teachers through different instruction models, including from a bored instructor who skipped most of the class material, gave answers to the CPR test and gave out cards, as well as from an award-winning ACLS instructor from a prominent medical system. What a contrast!
What is not new:
being a nurse
drawing blood from central lines
venipunctures
IV pumps
Advanced Cardiac Life Support
making pills more palatable for people who are sick of taking them
putting in Foley catheters
people coming down off of a high becoming psychotic
people wanting more pain medication than they need/an amount that would be lethal to me
trying to keep disoriented or sedated people from falling and hurting themselves
old women in a lot of pain refusing tylenol
What is a blast from the past:
signing initials in a book for every pill I administer
identifying confused patients by asking coworkers who they are
clocking in and out without a fingerprint
some of my coworkers (one used the same sitter during nursing school 15 years ago)
keeping track of refrigerator temperatures
What is new:
trouble-shooting ventilator problems
learning lip-reading
a regular, routine work schedule
feeling tired all of the time on my days off (more tired than before)
being awake all night on my days off
the people who are online when I'm awake
using a walkie-talkie in a health care setting
I browsed the internet last month, looking for tips on adjusting to a changing circadian rhythm, and on existing on a different schedule than most of the rest of the world. I found a few helpful websites. Mostly I found articles about weight gain and long-term health issues for those who work nights.
What I miss:
discussing monitor strips and cardiac medications with doctors
acing cardiac monitor tests
alone time in hotel rooms
fixing dinner for/shopping with hosts
finding interesting shops in the city, like neat ethnic markets, and The Raisin Rack
transient, eclectic friendships with fascinating people
a mixed culture
cars pounding with rap music at traffic lights
What I like:
being at home, with my family
participating in my daughter's homeschooling
working with people who know me and still like me
a regular, routine work schedule
getting to know patients for longer than a few days
learning lip reading
A word about lip-reading. It is far more useful than I ever anticipated; and it is an art. I am teaching myself Spanish right now also, after visiting the U.S. Mexico border last fall. Lip-reading is every bit as much of a foreign language as Spanish or American Sign Language, and ever more useful for a nurse than many skills I have learned. When that dying patient was mouthing words that I wished I had understood; if only I had known this then. Most long-term ventilator patients are completely lucid. They can take the time to write what they want to say, if they are able. Some only retain some facial movement. On night shift, they want to talk. And they do not want to write it all down. All these years, I have learned to look away when listening, to focus on what someone was saying. This job has forced me to look AT people. More specifically, it has forced me to look at their mouth, and their jaw movements, and to focus on what each part was doing. Are the teeth coming together to form an "s," or is the tongue behind them to form a "th?" Does the jaw drop for the "ah" sound, or is it only half dropped for the "eh" sound?
Spanish is helping me learn to communicate with people of another ethnicity. Lip reading is helping me learn to communicate with my own family members; even my pets, as I "hear" an array of communication I was never able to hear before.
One thing about tiredness is that habits limit what you do with your time. We don't get cable TV, so that is out. I've grown weary of Facebook. When everyone is asleep, and you don't feel like cleaning, what do you do? I have started a family recipe book that is nearly finished. I have started watching the Netflix videos I order, but on my computer. The internet here is limited, so I get them in the mail. I work more in my office on papers that have piled up. I have done a little sewing. I do Spanish exercises. I read news articles, and blog. But the one thing I don't mind doing at night, when I'm feeling tired, is cooking. Last night, I made three kinds of crackers.
I have not made crackers for years. The first batch did not call for enough water, and ended up being mostly crumbles. The second batch turned out okay. The third batch was best. A box of Wheat Thins costs between $3 and $4. The ingredients for a cookie sheet full of crackers, about the same quantity, costs a fraction of that. What's more, you can put whatever you want in them. I have a lot of old spices in my cupboard that need used up. I have 3 containers of caraway seed. I have a 50 lb sack of rye flour in the freezer that I thought at one time I might make sourdough bread with. It turns out the rye with caraway crackers tasted the best. Where have I been all these years?
There is an old Quaker belief, that when something is from God, it will be affirmed somehow. For instance, when someone speaks in meeting, and you feel it is a message for you, but you aren't sure, something will happen to let you know that it is, for sure. Someone else will speak also, and what they say will affirm what the first person said in a way that is only relevant to you. Or someone will come to you after meeting and say something that affirms it. Or an event will tell you so. Such a thing happened to me this past week. After so many changes, I wonder if there will be another change, or whether this is where I am supposed to be. This past week I received a summons for jury duty, for the summer months. I was chosen for a jury years ago. I was working in the same facility. Of all the incredibly odd things to happen.
Some obscure time soon many RN's in the U.S. will have to have a BSN to keep the jobs they already have. The American Nurses Association (ANA) would like to phase out all but four year training programs. The literature supporting this move says there are better patient outcomes for people cared for by BSN graduates. All registered nurses (RNs) take the same board exam whether they finished a two year (ADN), three year (Diploma), or four year (BSN) program. Amazingly some BSN nurses still think they take a different test. The NCLEX is the NCLEX no matter what program completed to qualify to sit for it.
To be fair, some of the career issues are self-induced. That is for another post. For now, I am here, where I ended up, and have hopefully exited the ride. Not sure I'm up for another.
On December 31st, I began my current position, bringing in the new year. I hope to stay here for a long time. I am a direct care nurse on a vent unit in a sub-acute care facility. I like it here. I am still sort of catching my breath. I am working straight night shift, and my schedule rotates regularly every two weeks, alternating with the other primary night shift nurse working on the same unit. This covers 6 shifts per week. Another nurse works the 7th night. Unless one of us needs a certain night off, the schedule does not change; nor does my assignment.
In the past two years I have been a cardiac nurse, have pulled femoral artery sheaths, the tube they put in your groin during a heart cath, (and trained others to do so), been a nurse supervisor in a nursing home, and have done MDS's (minimum data sets, or assessments of care provided in nursing homes for insurance billing) while writing a power point on Ohio's "Nursing Home Bill." I have worked as a travel nurse in a city hospital where I helped care for a large Somolian population, as well as numerous other nationalities and sub-nationalities I had never heard of. I also worked alongside 1st generation Somolian-Americans. I have floated to neuro, orthopedic, ICU, and step-down units. I have used five electronic medical record systems, Veriscan bar coding, finger print computer sign on pads, unit wireless telephones, overhead paging, and the Vocera wearable intercom system. I've had several parking passes, and have learned and formed numerous passcodes. I have used 4 different kinds of IV pumps. I have taken CPR and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) from profoundly different teachers through different instruction models, including from a bored instructor who skipped most of the class material, gave answers to the CPR test and gave out cards, as well as from an award-winning ACLS instructor from a prominent medical system. What a contrast!
What is not new:
being a nurse
drawing blood from central lines
venipunctures
IV pumps
Advanced Cardiac Life Support
making pills more palatable for people who are sick of taking them
putting in Foley catheters
people coming down off of a high becoming psychotic
people wanting more pain medication than they need/an amount that would be lethal to me
trying to keep disoriented or sedated people from falling and hurting themselves
old women in a lot of pain refusing tylenol
What is a blast from the past:
signing initials in a book for every pill I administer
identifying confused patients by asking coworkers who they are
clocking in and out without a fingerprint
some of my coworkers (one used the same sitter during nursing school 15 years ago)
keeping track of refrigerator temperatures
What is new:
trouble-shooting ventilator problems
learning lip-reading
a regular, routine work schedule
feeling tired all of the time on my days off (more tired than before)
being awake all night on my days off
the people who are online when I'm awake
using a walkie-talkie in a health care setting
I browsed the internet last month, looking for tips on adjusting to a changing circadian rhythm, and on existing on a different schedule than most of the rest of the world. I found a few helpful websites. Mostly I found articles about weight gain and long-term health issues for those who work nights.
What I miss:
discussing monitor strips and cardiac medications with doctors
acing cardiac monitor tests
alone time in hotel rooms
fixing dinner for/shopping with hosts
finding interesting shops in the city, like neat ethnic markets, and The Raisin Rack
transient, eclectic friendships with fascinating people
a mixed culture
cars pounding with rap music at traffic lights
What I like:
being at home, with my family
participating in my daughter's homeschooling
working with people who know me and still like me
a regular, routine work schedule
getting to know patients for longer than a few days
learning lip reading
A word about lip-reading. It is far more useful than I ever anticipated; and it is an art. I am teaching myself Spanish right now also, after visiting the U.S. Mexico border last fall. Lip-reading is every bit as much of a foreign language as Spanish or American Sign Language, and ever more useful for a nurse than many skills I have learned. When that dying patient was mouthing words that I wished I had understood; if only I had known this then. Most long-term ventilator patients are completely lucid. They can take the time to write what they want to say, if they are able. Some only retain some facial movement. On night shift, they want to talk. And they do not want to write it all down. All these years, I have learned to look away when listening, to focus on what someone was saying. This job has forced me to look AT people. More specifically, it has forced me to look at their mouth, and their jaw movements, and to focus on what each part was doing. Are the teeth coming together to form an "s," or is the tongue behind them to form a "th?" Does the jaw drop for the "ah" sound, or is it only half dropped for the "eh" sound?
Spanish is helping me learn to communicate with people of another ethnicity. Lip reading is helping me learn to communicate with my own family members; even my pets, as I "hear" an array of communication I was never able to hear before.
One thing about tiredness is that habits limit what you do with your time. We don't get cable TV, so that is out. I've grown weary of Facebook. When everyone is asleep, and you don't feel like cleaning, what do you do? I have started a family recipe book that is nearly finished. I have started watching the Netflix videos I order, but on my computer. The internet here is limited, so I get them in the mail. I work more in my office on papers that have piled up. I have done a little sewing. I do Spanish exercises. I read news articles, and blog. But the one thing I don't mind doing at night, when I'm feeling tired, is cooking. Last night, I made three kinds of crackers.
I have not made crackers for years. The first batch did not call for enough water, and ended up being mostly crumbles. The second batch turned out okay. The third batch was best. A box of Wheat Thins costs between $3 and $4. The ingredients for a cookie sheet full of crackers, about the same quantity, costs a fraction of that. What's more, you can put whatever you want in them. I have a lot of old spices in my cupboard that need used up. I have 3 containers of caraway seed. I have a 50 lb sack of rye flour in the freezer that I thought at one time I might make sourdough bread with. It turns out the rye with caraway crackers tasted the best. Where have I been all these years?
There is an old Quaker belief, that when something is from God, it will be affirmed somehow. For instance, when someone speaks in meeting, and you feel it is a message for you, but you aren't sure, something will happen to let you know that it is, for sure. Someone else will speak also, and what they say will affirm what the first person said in a way that is only relevant to you. Or someone will come to you after meeting and say something that affirms it. Or an event will tell you so. Such a thing happened to me this past week. After so many changes, I wonder if there will be another change, or whether this is where I am supposed to be. This past week I received a summons for jury duty, for the summer months. I was chosen for a jury years ago. I was working in the same facility. Of all the incredibly odd things to happen.
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