Getting a little ahead of myself

Unfortunately my language studies aren't coming along quite fast enough.
Yesterday I was working at the hospital and one of my patients was an old Italian lady. I came into her room, "Buongiorno!"
"Buongiorno, bella." she greeted me.
"I havva day peells for you." I said to her in my best Italian accent.
"How many of them?" She asked (actually she asked in Italian but I don't remember how to say it.)
"Quattro," I answered.
I fed them to her one by one, interspersed with a few words I did know: "Adesso ... (now....), Bene! (good!), Aspetto (wait), Mille Grazie (thank you very much)" and a few other words I made up that sounded Italian and she seemed to understand, like "d'agua" (water), and "One-ah more-ah peella".
When I left I said "Buona notte" and she kissed my hand and said "buona fortuna" (good luck). I wondered why she was wishing me good luck, was it an omen of things to come?
Today I was walking down the street and a young man stopped me to ask directions, map in hand. His command of English was limited and I guessed at his nationality and put on my best Spanish accent, just like the sultry Mexican girl in "The three amigos."
"Where do you come from?"
"Mexico." He answered.
"Ah, Mexico! Habla espanol?"
"Si! Si!"
"Yo tambien." I said confidently (me too), and then suddenly my mind blanked and I couldn't really remember any more Spanish. (Hey, I haven't spoken it since high school.)
He began to speak excitedly in Spanish and I finally understood that he was asking where I had learned spanish from.
"Mi madre habla espanol", I answered, and then lapsing into spanglish, "I leerned eet from her. I no speak bien, but eef you speak, I understand."
My brother and I gave him directions to where he was going, and as he left I waved goodbye and I said "Ciao!" and Austin said "Hola!"
We looked at each other and laughed. Whatever was missing in our grasp of the language we could make up for in heart.
That's kind of my philosophy when it comes to speaking a foreign language. If you just jump in with both feet ("Of course I speak German!"), put on your best fake accent and make all your English sound a little German or French or whatever, use your arms a lot, nine times out of ten you'll be understood. And if you're not understood, at least people will have a good laugh.
Maybe that's why my old Italian patient wished me good luck.

Sigh

A long, sad sigh is pretty much the only way to sum up my night at the hospital this week. It was my first time working at this particular hospital and I was a little apprehensive, and not really looking forwards to working. Occasionally I have great days nursing, but this was not one of them.
I arrived at the hospital and parked and went in and forgot to key in the combo at the door and set an alarm off. Someone came to rescue me after a minute and turn it off. I walked down the hall and to the nursing station and it was a dreary place with pale yellow walls and floors of a non-descript greenish colour.
"Hi, I'm Heather and I'm from the agency, here to work this evening."
The nurses were pleasant and we went into the med room to start report. The director of nursing care had been doing rounds and she stopped in to talk to us. One of the patients had a foot ulcer that was necrotic and very painful, and the director had a bee under her bonnet about it.
"Her foot is red and swollen and very painful. It's a mixed-vascular injury, which is very difficult to treat."
She went on and on and I have to admit I tuned right out. Suddenly I was snapped back to attention when I realized she was asking us a question.
"What would indicate that the foot is necrotic and not an ordinary infection?"
There was silence. She turned to me with a piercing look. I should have just looked away or kept my face as still as marble or slowly started to say an answer, slow enough that someone else could jump in and save me, but instead I gave a very cheery grin. Her glare could have frozen blood.
"It was cold! A necrotic ulcer is cold!"
Duh, of course. I suppose I should have known that.
A few minutes later she was still ranting, but this time about the stupid agency nurses who don't do a good job at assessing and who never sign charts properly, etc. etc. I could feel my ears burning and I tried to look like I was busy signing charts. Lord, get me out of this place.
After report I wheeled my medication cart into the hallway to start giving out pills. I had put the keys in the top drawer and then shut it for safekeeping. I heard something click and then realized that the whole cart was locked, my keys inside. Slightly sheepish, I cornered one of the nice nurses and asked for the spare keys. We found the spare keys and tried them, but the lock had jammed shut and wouldn't turn. I could see the nursing director come striding my way. She took the key with a huge frustrated sigh and tried to open the lock.
"Why did you lock it?" She demanded.
I tried to stammer an excuse (why do people normally lock things?) but after a second I thought, what's the point?
"I'm really sorry." I said. "I didn't realize I shouldn't lock it."
She gave another sigh and strode off.

The cart was well and truly broken. One of the nurses called maintenance to come and they had a backlog of things to do and said they'd be there in a while. There was nothing for me to do in the meantime, so I sat down at the nursing station and waited, fidgeting while looking at the clock and knowing the longer it took, the later I would be at finishing my med distribution, and I would be behind schedule... One of the nice nurses kept going by and ever time she'd say, "Don't worry, just relax! It'll be okay, it wasn't your fault!" But I could just imagine the nursing director sitting in her office, muttering about the stupid agency nurses who just sat in the nursing station instead of working.
The guy from maintenance finally came. He set down his toolbox and stuck the spare key in and strong-armed it open within 5 minutes. "There you go, it's fixed!"
Need I defend myself? I didn't say anything except 'thank you so much', but as he went past me to leave he laughed and said, "Now I bet it makes you really mad that a guy could open your cart and you couldn't!"
I could've hit him with my metal pill crusher. That would've made me feel better, but I'm pretty darn sure that the nursing director would file a report about abusive agency staff and that would be it for me. Instead I just sighed. A long, sad sigh.

Some days nursing are great. Occasionally. But most days I have to fight for joy. I always thought that if someone didn't like their job, they should either get another one or learn to like it. But now that I'm in the midst of my own object lesson it's not as easy. Someday I will have another job. But for the meantime, I am struggling to find joy and meaning in it. It is there, I know it is. I've already discovered other good things like humility, after all.

Hooray!

I heard the greatest racist joke the other day. There was this Italian, this Frenchman and this Kenyan....
Just kidding. The only thing those three have in common is that they all speak a language that I want to speak fluently. I've been working on French for about 5 years now, and Italian and Swahili for a much shorter time, but my goal is that by this time next year I'll be able to communicate proficiently in all three.
Funny thing is, when I started learning French I had no intention of ever visiting a French-speaking country. In fact, I had no idea where or when I was going to use it, but I just knew that it would burn a hole in my heart if I didn't learn it. God knew, because in the last three years I've visited Burundi, Belgium and France and had to speak French in all three places.
And now the exciting news is that I'm leaving for the Caribbean in a few weeks! i can hardly believe it is actually going to happen! (Well, you never know with this hurricane. I hope it doesn't wipe out the medical school, not to mention the whole Island.)
Apparently they speak English in Antigua, and French, but I'm kind of hoping for some Italian and Kenyan classmates to, as this medical school specializes in training lots of international students.
Because I'm already a nurse I've been accepted into an accelerated program that takes 3-3.5 years, and the first 1.5 years are distance based, meaning I get to travel between here and Antigua and the U.S. doing a mixture of virtual and real classes and practicums. (Actually I'm pretty sure the practicums will be real.)
After all my basic sciences are done, I get to do clinical rotations- with perhaps- and here is the super exciting part- a 9 month stint in a rural area working side-by-side with another physician. I'm praying about and pushing for Uganda, but we'll see where God leads.
Actually I can't believe I'm going to be a doctor. I know 100% for sure that God has led me in this direction and has opened up and closed all the right doors; not so that I'll have a perfect life, but that I'll get to know Jesus and treasure him and give him the most glory. If I had a perfect life I'd already be able to speak Swahili and Italian fluently.
So I'm leaving in about 3 weeks and then I'll be back again in about 7 or 8 weeks, but you may not see a lot of me as I'll have my nose buried in my books. I'm hoping to keep this blog updated with exciting and extremely gross medical entries, so keep your fingers crossed.
In the meantime feel free to call me Heather or Zaza, you don't need to address me as Dr.. Especially if I'm going to continue to climb trees and make stupid bets involving push-ups or other athletic activities I think I can do.

A brush with death

I sort of had a brush with death yesterday. The only thing is, I completely imagined the death part.
I was driving home late at night from Kamloops, outside of which I'd been camping with family and friends for a couple of weeks. It was really wonderful, but exhausting too as we played a lot of sports, a lot of sudoku and a lot of scrabble. One's brain can only take so much. Also, my mind is pretty full with thoughts of school right now- how I'm going to afford to pay for it, am I ready to be a doctor, can I do it?
Just inside of Chilliwack I couldn't take it any more. The road was weaving in front of me and other cars were just a blur of light. I was clenching and unclenching my jaw to handle the cold, because I'd turned the air conditioning on full blast to keep from falling asleep. (The air conditioning only really works when its already cold outside, go figure.)
I pulled off the highway and into a truck stop that had potholes the size of my car. In the pitch black it was hard to see them but I wove through them and found a place to park. I scrunched up a pillow under my head, and curling up in a ball in the front seat, I drifted into la-la land. A five minute catnap, just perfect.
I didn't even realize I'd fallen asleep, because despite the fatigue my mind was whirling. But I awoke suddenly to a loud screeching noise and I looked out my window and there was a massive semi-truck coming straight for my little car. (Okay, my sister's car.) It was so close that I could see the features of the driver's face in the dark and the squeal of his brakes as he turned sharply past us. I shouted something (I don't really remember what it was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't that edifying) and frantically tried to slam my horn with my fist. With a great whoosh of air he skidded by us and I shouted at my fellow passengers, "That guy didn't even see us! I was sure he was going to hit us!"
"Actually, there was lots of room." Christoph interjected. "He saw us and turned. You must have just woken up suddenly and thought it was closer than it was."
Of course Christoph was right. In my sleepy-dreamy state, I'd been startled by the noise of the truck and woken a bit disoriented, and opened my eyes to see a massive semi almost right on top of us. But really there was lots of room. (Actually, it's known that guys have better depth perception than girls.)
Aside from that brief weird incident, the rest of our journey was relatively uneventful, not including our stop at Tim Hortons to make up for a month without donuts. We spent lots of time singing and playing silly games to waste time and stay awake, and in the midst of it I was struck by a deep spiritual parallel. Because I recognized the danger of falling asleep at the wheel, I did whatever it took to stay awake. I chewed gum. I kept the AC on. I slapped myself and Christoph helpfully obliged by pinching me. I opened and closed the windows and when it was really really tough I took a nap.
How committed are we as Christians to staying awake? To standing firm and being on our guard? Would we do whatever it takes? (Including risking a semi collision?)