" HUH! What did you say #2"

This is a re-do because the 2012 class in pharmacology had some amazing answers to the abbreviation quiz that not only made me laugh they also would have gotten very good grades...IF this was a creative writing class...not pharmacology...See the new entries to this post below:

Today was the first exam for my Pharmacology class.  I graded the exams and began to think about all the things we can no longer do or say in class...teachers and students.  When I taught a second grade after school drama class, I clearly remember hugging and wiping tears from one young thespian who could not remember her lines...today...that hug could be beyond the boundaries set, by the child, her parents, or the school district.

It's a shame the way we are restricted and I must admit I sometimes go beyond the invisible line in the sand.
I find it hard to talk about the creation of another person, when I teach Maternal-Child Health and not sometimes mention...OH No...God, Heavenly Father, Jehovah...the big guy in the sky.  Now I'm not preaching or giving a sermon but my goodness it is hard to look upon a new born baby that was created in nine months from the DNA of two different people and not think it's a miracle beyond our understanding.  And that a greater being than a mere human had a lot to do with it.

From time to time I have a student ask ,"What do you think about abortion or pregnancy termination."  I remind them of the timeline of physical and neuro-conscious development and ask when they consider a life begins?  It is quite clear when I make that statement what I believe without putting it into words (which could come back and bite me).  But I let them figure out the answer for themselves, knowing that today the climate is very different from when I was in school.  Over 40 years ago when I first worked in Labor and Delivery, one of the things we were allowed to do as nurses was declare our feelings on the issue of pregnancy termination and we were not required to participate in the procedure.  Fancy that one happening today.

All this leads me to some interesting and very 21'st century answers on the medical abbreviation quiz.  We list medical abbreviations such as PRN (whenever necessary) or TPR (temperature, pulse, respiration) and expect the student to fill in the blank with the appropriate meaning of the abbreviation.

Since nursing and medicine in general has it's own language, knowing these abbreviated terms is a critical part of a student's knowledge and an important part of communication between professionals.

Some of the answers were very creative and others gave me insight as to how much the world has changed.


               Medical Meaning                         Student Answer
ADL      activities of daily living          active dance life
           (watching dancing with the stars last night?)
ac          before meals                        electric plug
           (electrition husband?)
bid         twice a day                   what you do at an auction
           (watches antique roadshow?)
CHF      congestive heart failure      crummy reaction found
      (I think I'm having a crummy reaction to these answers)
Derm     Dermatological                    like a germ only nicer
          (what were you thinking?)
DNR     do not resuscitate                 Do Not Run!
          (good if you work at the pool)
HA         headache                   hard ass, holding account
          (has a nasty boss...see previous blog entry of 2/22)
HDL      High Density Lipoprotein      honey do list           
          (must have been one of the male students)
INR     International Normalized ratio      ingestion required
          (not bad try)
ER          Extended Release               Erection returning
          (used the little blue pill recently)
GTT       Glucose tolerance test       Gut toughness test
          (another creative try)
MED     minimal effective dose   medical emergency Do over
          (AND don't tell anyone this happened)
NPO     Nothing by mouth                Not pleasant odor
          (code brown)
optha   ophthalmic      opthamolicalology, orthomydiacal,   
           (if I use enough letters maybe I will be right)               
 SR        sustained release               sometimes rancid
           (the NPO was SR?)
SubQ   sub cutaneous                     sub-courteously
           (is this a spelling error?)
SL        sub lingual                         standing lateral
           (Or sitting posterior?)
OT       occupational therapy         over there
           (over there...where?)
SOB      shortness of breath           someone obnoxious
           (Watch out! SOB-OT)
LR        Lactated Ringers               lactating regularly
           (can male patients do this?)
RTU     ready to use                      regular time uncertain,
                                                    religious talk underway
            (Oh my! is this test over yet?)
PVC  premature ventricular contraction      plastic pipe
            (husband is a plumber?)
Tx        treatment                       Texas
            (How long ago did you move to Calif?)
Tab      tablet                         totally awsome babe,
                                                   taboo
              (Ot is a Tab who is LR....try that one)
pc         after meals                    politically correct
            (Really?)

HUH, what did you say?

"Look for the Good, You'll find it, Even in Nasty Meanies", maybe

With a new class of students on the horizon and a new hospital to take them to; I have my nasty people worries welling up within me.  Will the mean old man doctor be there?  The one who gets mad if you sit in his chair (never saw his name on it) or the one that is so tall he can’t help but look down his nose at everyone and scare any intelligent answer right out the window. 

And then there is the eerie green reflection of the monitors in the DOU unit (Definitive observation Unit) into the glasses of the secretary ward clerk who has had her big butt in the same seat for 20 years and treats everyone as if she was the Queen of England.  She even talks to everyone about herself in the third person…  Beverly wants you to know “If you can’t get the monitor on correctly, then don’t try!”  The first time she reprimanded my nursing students who have more education in their toes than she has in all lobes of her cranium; I thought, “Who is this Beverly? Some doctor…cardiologist, or who?…guess what? That Beverly was HER!  Imagine, I expected her to begin the royal wave!”

As a nursing student…and their professor, you get very thick skin.  Or at least you try to.  (I got practice as a school board member) Somehow most of the health care workers treat students like the door mats of the hospital, and expect them to bow and scrape.  I have to tell the students to remember how it feels and in 20 years when they are in charge, "be kind to the students." 

It has been said that Nurses eat their young, but these days there is very little left to much-upon after the health care populace gets at them. 

I try to prepare my kids, (they are really young and mostly inocent I become a protective tiger mom while I have them in my class.)  One particularly difficult day as we sat discussing our patients before we left the hospital for the day(behind closed doors). Several were concerned about the cool reception and mean comments made by the staff.  I said, “Don’t think if someone acts nasty or mean it’s you.  It could be something has gone wrong in their life.  Like the doctor who has a wife who just left him, or the nurse who has a sick cat, or maybe even, I don’t know something like her dog died the night before.  If it’s you or something you did, I’ll let you know, and try to help, so don’t worry about the crusty looks you’ve been getting. 

About a week later one of the more shy girls pulled me aside and said, “I know what’s wrong with that one really mean nurse.”  “Oh, you do?” I said, thinking she had some special insight.  “Yes,” she said with a sly smile.  “I figure she owns a kennel, and has lots of dogs, and every night one dies.” She turned away with a special spring in her step.  And I thought, “Ya know, maybe she’s right.”

Mean people suck!  I know that’s not a nice word, but the truth hurts…and sometimes people deserve to hear the truth.  Pollyanna is my middle name, and if something goes wrong, I figure the odds are that something soon will turn out right…like the saying…there is so much horse #$@# in this pile, if you dig deep enough you’ll find a pony.  I know some folks see everything with cracked glasses, or have the chemical thing going that puts them on a downer.  I’ve been lucky in that for the most part I can find something decent about a bad situation.  I don't think anyone has the right to take out their bad day, or bad life on those around them...the unfortunate thing as one bad apple can turn the entire basket rotten, which often happens in the work place.  You...and I should be the ones to stop the spread of being mean! 

On one vacation we had so many car problems I lost weight running down the road to the service station looking for parts to repair our trusty (or untrusted) station wagon.  So when I usually gain weight in a vacation, this is one of the few where I lost weight.  And beside that at the end of the trip we were towed backwards through the Mojave Desert while all seven of us were still sitting in the car….the older kids wanted to put paper bags on their heads they were so embarrassed, but they all admit we saw the most amazing sunset, which we would never have seen if we were driving and all facing in the other direction.  I have found, it depends on your point of view, or where or how you view a situation that will determine if you find it positive or negative.  So if all seems lost and you are full of despair, get up and change how you look at what you have lost, and you may discover it’s not so bad…easy for me to say.

One day soon I’ll talk about my seven years of badbadbad luck…or more accurately, no luck at all.

"Happy Valentines Day, I just opened my Christmas Cards!"

This is a huge confession…sad but true, I just read my Christmas cards and those lovely, yet sometimes long winded notes and missives.   You know one would think at my age…and the age of most of my friends.  The overdone messages should be forgotten, suffice it to say, “Hey! I’m alive, my spouse is too…or not, and my kids are not in drug rehab.  The grandkids haven’t started to drive yet so you are safe on the roads for another year…and leave it to that!  I must admit I run a lot of ink on a montage of photos…mostly sent to folks who wonder who the squinty eyed people are but who sort-of recognize one or two on the page.  Oh well maybe I’ll do better next year…but I doubt it.  My busy notch has been at the top for several weeks now and I see no rest in sight.  Between the play, I mostly wrote in just a few days, and now the contract with Cedar Fort, I am the run around person extraordinaire.   

And on top of that one have I told you yet my hubby has decided to re-do the ceiling in every room…yes you can imagine the mess. Take down the cottage cheese and then put up a new knock down something ceiling he expects me to paint…Ya! Right! And considering how long it took to do the doors. 

Oops the last one needs painting. (my job) and is not done yet.  And when it is all done we put the house for sale and move…yes out of Calif. unless we get some huge influx of cash. (One can always hope as I lovelove the beach)  Enough to pay for the welfare of about 5.3 people who are here illegally including health care and the TB they bring in.  Hey! What ever happened to Ellis Island where my relatives landed where they lifted your eyelid with a button hook and sent you back home if your sclera looked red…or maybe even a little pink!  No coughing was allowed either.  

When I was a nursing student we treated the TB patients at Olive View hospital who lived in bungalows and handed them huge cups of pills to consume until the organism was encapsulated and they were no longer communicable.  Now if you even mention someone looks sick you are told to shut up or you will be labeled racist. 

I say, not racist…just wary of new organisms and junk brought in by unsuspecting folks.  And if they went through proper procedure, they would be treated before they could bring such stuff into our country.  Okay enough of that rant!  I’ve just seen the county clinics loaded down with entire families of 16 or 17 coming in for medication.  Medication I am paying for and the cost is driving many out of the state they have lived in for all, or most of their life.  NOT FAIR Governor Brown.

We did go to the beach for our anniversary, relaxed and saw some old friends...it will make me very sad to move away.  Every time we go to Hollywood beach we see something different like these little critters who wash up on the beach then run away to the sand!

Future Farmers Beauty Contest? OH BOY!

Ali, one of my first grand children has been an outdoor girl since she was a bouncing baby.  She travelled on her mom's back up in a forest above Cedar City.  You see Megan's first job after she graduated from college was a survey on Cedar Mountain.  Meg timed Ali's birth to arrive the Christmas break before she graduated and so this little girl was watching leaves and the sky and critters from a very young age.  She was never much into fluffy pink things much like her mother who you had to hog tie to wear a dress to church. 
At a very young age Ali would carry around caterpillars and bugs in her pockets, then moved on to lizards and small animals.  Now at 14 she is a horse whisperer, and has several horses she has trained from colts.  For her first vehicle, (she can already drive a tractor) she is fixing up an old truck her Uncle Bruce used to haul water out to the cows.  She will get this rusty piece of junk running long before she can drive it legally on the streets. 
She has entered the county fair and been active in Future Farmer of America for several years showing her prize sheep.  One would think, Okay, a farm girl, and a bit, well, you know on the hokey side.  NOT SO, She is an extremely attractive young lady, quite bright (wants to be a veterinarian, but will most likely get a track scholarship to help with the cost.) and with the added bonus she can get covered in grease or other farm stuff, and still look attractive and feminine enough that her dad is considering setting up an electric fence around their house.

We were surprised a bit when Megan called to tell us Alie had entered in a beauty contest.  Yet not surprised to hear she had won the local contest once we got the full explanation that it was a FFA Beauty contest which consisted of a rope pull, driving a tractor and moving manure from one side of a barn to another, and then the topper was a timed gutting of a fish.

"Oh, no wonder she won."  "And then she had to answer questions," Meg told us.  "Questions on what cut of beef is the most expensive and what grain was selling for the highest price."  Saturday as she moved on to the regional competition she had to change a tractor tire (no problemo) and do several other farm type activities.  Tomorrow will be the portion where she will walk around in a prom dress.  That may be tough as she is much more comfortable in cowboy boots than high heels.  We are waiting to hear how that went...film at 11:00.

"I'm A Bag Lady'

    So here I am…!      Judy Phan took my picture for the back of the book cover for Cedar Fort…She erased some of my wrinkles I think...thank's Judy, Judy Judy (sorry couldn't resist) I am discovering without an agent maneuvering through contracts and lists of things they want at the publisher (*Cedar Fort Inc.)  is a bit of a maze for a novice like me.  At my age I should be sitting and knitting and crocheting.

 Ha! Fat chance for that one…I’m too nervous.  I just read an article they are doing away with lots of the OCD, Attention Deficit Diagnosis… (Which I always thought was a lack of running around and stuff to do, like milk the cows, or plough the south 40 kind of stuff.)

So anyway  I can sit for about 10 min every evening before I begin my pop up routine, do other stuff and then forget what I was doing in the first place, It’s just that when I sit down, then I remember what I need to do and try to get some other chores done. Also Remember I’m a bit OCD and have to keep moving. EXAMPLE:  I drove to Oceanside to see a “lady doctor” to care for my lady issues.  (They keep changing their office…soon it will be in Mexico I think.)  Before it was in Palm Springs, then I went to a guy in Chandler AZ…Palm Springs was a fast drive and if I wanted my brother Tim has a house down there I could stay in If I was too tired to drive back…BUT now the drive down the I-5 it is a bear so on the way home I began to fall asleep.  I stopped to walk around, when I said I was tired and had a bit of a drive one of the ladies near said I should go to Starbucks next door…I didn’t, but It was tempting…then I thought of how much their drinks cost…and the thought was gone. I stoppd at a mall of course…found nice stuff for my husband, but not for me well...too much…although I tried on a bunch…that alone will wear  you out, so by the time I got home I was pooped.(mostly from calculating the percentage of money off I should get at the sales!)

Did I mention this is a replacement blog entry for a previous entry…that I accidently erased due to the changes in the blog site?  Please Please quit doing that whoever is in charge of this blog site!

That reminds me of my sons, who every time they are here change prgrams on our computer.  I think they forget that we with OLD minds do not do well with change.  So if the blog-spot wants to keep us more matur4e writers, they should not keep changing stuff…it takes long enough to learn one program, much less two…or three or more...and even then it is hard to remember what we did to get the site the way we want it…never mind that I keep changing things…that’s so I don’t get bored of looking at the same things. ANYWAY>>>

In the previous message to myself, and I say this because I am still not convinced enough people read this to make it worthwhile…however, I will continue as I believe it may be in some ways soothing to write stuff down.  So I will tell the story again…back to bags…"I am a bag lady."

I have bags for each class I teach Sunday School, nursing classes, and also for a Play I am directing as well as other kinds of church stuff, sewing, knitting, embroidery projects etc.  I even put up a big coat hanger in the room where I have all my projects and have every hook full of a bag…  It keeps we a little organized.  But woe to me If I pick up the wrong bag when I am rushed and going out the door in a hurry.  I have to be very careful as I wouldn’t want books on cardiology for a class I’m teaching on the Bible.  Or to take my crochet bag to my Pharmacology class. 

The other day the phone rang.  Silence.  Then breathing, and"Ah, u-m, so Grammy, We got your package with the purse/bag for mom."  “That’s nice honey, thanks for the call”  "So um Grammy, Ali and Brooke got one for Christmas and now my mom has one…ah um…so…Silence.  So Honey, Beth, you would like one too.” Yep”, she says.  “Well I could make you one if you like.”   “Yep,…sigh” was the answer and then

she hung up.

Oh foolish me, I should have known she would want one since everyone around her has one, so now I have another project on its way and another bag hanging down the hall in my project room.  Hopefully I don't confuse that bag with my Sunday School class bag.