Being sick

Sometimes I forget to post on my blog because I think, nothing interesting has happened in my life, why would people want to read it?
Well, trust me, I'm not posting today because I have interesting things to say- it's just because I'm so darn bored.
My husband and I are sick, possibly with the H1N1 virus, and he got sick first (several days ago) which is a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. From his perspective, of course, it's pretty crummy, but from my point of view, it has prepared him (who has many fine qualities of which sympathy is not one) to be caring towards me. His attitude, of course, is 'Poor sweetheart, I know just how it feels to feel so awful!'.
Actually Robin's lack of sympathy towards me in general is a very constructive thing. I am a natural whiner and yes, I will whine as much as I can get away with and then some. I can also tend towards slight hypochondrism (being convinced there is something deathly wrong with me when I just have a bruise or a split nail). God himself is a perfect mix of mercy and justice and the beauty of my marriage to Robin is that as we grow closer, we are being pulled away from the polar extremes of the spectrum and finding a home somewhere in the middle.
I would make a terrible judge or a police officer, I commented to a friend once, because as soon as I saw a crocodile tear I'd let everyone off the hook.
Robin, on the other hand, would probably be an excellent soldier or police officer (or a high school teacher) because he sees past all the fluff.
That all being said, being sick is an exercise in mutual compromise, because we have to take turns caring for each other, or sucking it up, whatever the situation requires and whoever is feeling more able at the time.
In the larger picture, being Christians is being members of the body of Christ and as such, we're all joined together and have a responsibility to care for each other as we are able. I read this morning in the Dr's office about a girl in Chile (Daniela Garcia) who lost all four limbs in a tragic train accident. She persevered against all odds to become the world's first quadrilateral amputee physician, married her boyfriend, and is very involved making other people's lives better. She does not feel sorry for herself: she is overflowing with compassion towards other people.
All that being said, being sick right now still sucks.

We're all in the same boat

Last night at work I asked the other woman working with me who would be coming in at 11 to fill the night shift. Usually there are two of us at night- a nurse, and a detox worker, who does bed checks and cleaning and helps me out dealing with problem patients. She told me the name of the girl and I remembered her as having just been hired- maybe this was her third day on the job?
She was 21 but looked 16; very pretty, very shy, very young. I couldn't believe that she had been hired to help look after dozens of big, rough-around-the-edges drug addicts in the middle of the night. Were they crazy? She looked like she would have trouble managing the vacuum let alone having to stand down someone being aggressive and threatening. She looked the very definition of naivety.
I thought I should give her the benefit of the doubt, though, and I said to the other girl, "well, I guess I'm pretty young too." "No, Heather, she said, you don't seem like that at all; you have life experience."
Life experience, how did I get that? I remembered my first day nursing in the hospital as a nursing student. I was 17, 5'3" (I'm still 5'3", unfortunately) and much much more terrified of my patient than she was of me. I stood in the nursing station with my instructor and a couple of other students and felt like walking down the hallway to meet my first patient would be like walking to the guillotine. I don't know if it showed on my face but my instructor looked at me, then took my hand, and put it in the hand of another student, and older lady named Shannon.
"Shannon, you are going to walk with Heather to room 503, and then meet me in 516, okay?"
So we walked down the hall together, hand in hand, and looking back at that moment I wish there was some way I could tell Shannon how much it meant to me. My patient was an older lady with dementia and I don't even think she knew I was there anyway.
Fast forward 8 years and I've navigated nursing and chemistry and medicine and several jobs and countries and relationships and adventures. The funny thing is, I still feel like that 17-year-old sometimes, I still have to swallow my nervousness and go and meet that person anyway, dive in with the awkward questions, have the courage to speak the truth. I don't think any amount of life experience can eliminate that queasiness all the time.
Last night sure enough I had a really difficult patient in the middle of the night and finally I'd had it with niceness. He had been going on and on about his anger and how he wanted to kill someone and all his life problems and how his Dad had abused him and how he hated the other guys here and he didn't want to watch tv with them because it made him want to kill them, and everything hurt so much and I just didn't understand and I should feel sorry for him and blah blah blah. What he was really saying was, I'm a victim, I deserve to get everything I want, and I'm angry at you because you aren't taking away my pain.
"Why are you here?" I asked Kris.
He stopped for a second and then said, "I want to stop using these @#%$%&* drugs, and I'm paying good money for you guys to fix me, and you're not giving me what I want!"
"Kris, it's not my job to fix you. I can't do that, that's your job. I am just here to facilitate it. You need to make up your mind that this is what you want, and then I'll help you."
"You don't understand!" He whined. "Everything hurts so much. Have you ever tried to come off 90mg of Oxy's?" (A pretty high dose of opiates similar in effect to heroin).
"Kris, you are the one that needs to take responsibility. I can help you, but I can't do it for you."
I gave him some suggestions that might help with his middle-of-the-night freak-out.
He swore at me, exasperated. "You sound just like my MOM!!!"
As he stomped away I thought, she's probably one cool lady.
I've written lots in my blogs about the pain that underlies addictions- how these people I work with are easing the abyss of suffering in their lives by dulling it with drugs or alcohol. But in case you get a lopsided view of addictions, in most cases, I have become convinced that there is some degree of choice involved. No matter what crap I get dealt in life, it's still my choice how I respond to it. That's what free will is, that's part of what makes us human. I don't doubt that some of my patients here are truly victims and have got to a point where it is impossible for them to help themselves. But for others, not taking responsibility and not accepting accountability for their actions has become a habit that has become a lifestyle.
So I guess that's an example of life experience, because before I worked here I had a narrow and inexperienced view of addictions- it was something so far removed from my life, it belonged to the people who lived on the streets on Vancouver who were nameless and faceless. Now I realize that we are in exactly the same boat. Perhaps I don't know what it's like to come off of 90mg of Oxy's, but I do know what it is like to suffer pain and make the choice to persevere.
And maybe I'm not as shy as the young detox worker last night, but I do know what it is like to be terrified of your patients and I think actually she's doing a great job.

Baker's anonymous

I’ve considered starting a support group for bakers like myself.
Hi, I’m Heather, and I don’t follow recipes.
This week Robin tried to convince me that Bob (our pastor) had asked to have a talk with me about my issues with cooking (i.e. not following recipes). For a second I felt as if I had been caught with my hand in the cookie jar and then I realized, of course he’s joking. It is not a sin to improvise with recipes.
Did Christopher Columbus use a map, I ask you? He MADE the map! Recipes, as I see them, are merely guideposts that suggest one plausible method of cooking the dish amongst myriads of creative possibilities. It is the cook’s prerogative, like the artist’s, to create, to experiment, to explore uncharted territory and through the lens of adventure to create masterpieces.
A friend gave me a postcard once of a black and white photo of a woman holding a cake. It said ‘if I can bake a cake, I can build a bomb.’
The problem is, I did my time studying chemistry and yes, I learned how to build bombs, but it doesn’t appear to have helped me in the kitchen.
Kim gave me some decorative (inedible?) gourds from her garden two weeks ago. Whoever heard of a gourd that was inedible, I thought, so I cut it up, boiled it, and baked it into pumpkin pie. Or if you prefer, inedible gourd pie. We ate it and I think it was quite good.
My crockpot meatballs last night were not that great. I didn’t have all the ingredients to start with, so I had to improvise a bit, but the meatballs came out looking fine and I FOLLOWED the RECIPE instead of my instinct and put them in the crockpot for 5 hours on high in a sauce. (Well, I did have to improvise the sauce a bit by putting in apricot jam and teriyaki sauce instead of cranberry sauce and sugar).
You can imagine my shock when I came home from work and discovered 5 hours on high had evaporated all the sauce and left sticky gooey blackish meatballs covered in a sickly sweet sauce. We choked them down with rice.
I made steak for the first time last night. Robin likes it rare but I sort of forgot it was on the BBQ, so by the time I got to it, rare was the last thing you could’ve called it. He made a show of trying to chew it but I think he liked it, after all, overcooked steak is better than no steak.
I could regale you with tales of failed meals or of successful meals. I’m actually having fun learning how to cook things and planning meals, I realize it’s an art and if you wanted to classify me as a type of artist I probably wouldn’t be one of the ones who designs advertisements or paints perfect scenery or sculpts matching wax heads for museums. I would probably be more in league with the huge piece of canvas you see in a hotel lobby that looks like someone walked up, threw seven different paint cans at the wall, walked away and said, world, if you don’t like it, you can stuff it. And strangely they get paid big money for their acrylic temper tantrums and in some lights it looks beautiful and sometimes people cry over it.
Yes, some people cry over my meals, too, I’m sure. As I type I have an apple pie in the oven and I’m convinced it’s going to be amazing, especially because I made up the recipe myself.

Those Crazy French

So the latest and greatest adventure I’m on: teaching French. It’s probably a combination of the economic recession, living in a smaller town, and the time of year, but I haven’t been able to find much nursing work here in Kelowna. In fact, not much work at all. My own call shifts for detox nursing are about one a week, but I’m lucky I didn’t get laid off like some others there. I am remembering being in Marseille, South France, where the unemployment rate is 40% and aimless youth wander around creating trouble. Or in Antigua, where a day’s wage buys 2 cans of coke. Or Africa, where people trade things for food that should never be traded, like sex, or their children, or their faith.
That all being said, I do have a part-time job, and I just got another, but in a totally different field. It’s not really so far off the charts, though. I’ve always been passionate about languages- in fact, as much or more than medicine, and I have had experience teaching piano, guitar, ESL, and chemistry over the years.
The only difference is that I taught myself French and I wouldn’t consider myself fluent- yes, I can speak it, but no, it’s nowhere close to perfect. Of course I’m not one to let something silly like that get me down, so I applied for a job as a French immersion tutor for high-school chemistry. The day I got the job I rode my bike over to Yvette’s house and said in a panic, I think I’ve got myself into a bit of a pickle. I have a job teaching a language I can’t speak.
Yvette reassured me and I thought, this is okay, I have two days to prepare, I’ll be okay. My first day was on Thursday and on Tuesday afternoon I was talking with Robin when my phone rang.
“Are you on your way?” My new boss asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “It’s not Thursday.”
“You were supposed to start Tuesday.” She said.
I opened my email account and stared in disbelief at the email. Tuesday. How had I misread it?
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I told her.
Traffic on the highway… I recited French words to myself and roared into the school parking lot in my red pickup. My students were waiting.
The first girl was not too bad, her French was terrible and we spent the hour pronouncing numbers. The second girl, however, was fluent in French and I had to stare at her mouth and ask her to repeat herself so I could understand.
She was asking for help with math. I didn’t even know what grade she was in, I hadn’t had time to read her chart and anyway, I haven’t done math for years. She showed me her worksheet and suddenly I felt my eyes go blurry. French math was not like English math. They use different symbols, those crazy people. Commas instead of decimal points. I had to look at it for a few minutes before I understood what the question was asking. But then how do I explain it to a teenager who can’t understand me?
“Tu utilize une calculatrice dans la classe?” I asked her. (Do you use a calculator in class?)
What are they teaching kids these days, anyway. Why can’t they just use calculators? No one does long division on paper or multiplies complex fractions. I tried to explain to her how to do the calculations. I didn’t know the French words for multiply, times, divide, subtract, add, plus, reduce, denominator, numerator, or anything that would’ve been useful, so I just put on my best sexy French accent and guessed what they were.
The hour went by painfully slow. I felt like the world’s biggest idiot and I wondered if I wouldn’t get fired if I went home and read my French dictionary cover to cover before the next class.
“Are you fluent in French?” My student asked me.
“No!” I answered, strangely relieved. “I understand and read it well, but I can’t speak very well.”
“Really? Well, I thought you were fluent. You speak better than any of my other French teachers.”
I stared at her in disbelief.
“Really?”
She packed up her books.
“Bonne chance avec ton examen.” I told her (Good luck with your exam.) Thank heavens I knew how to say that.
I read a quote today by Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t- you are right”.
I think I can teach French. I think I can teach chemistry in French. Maybe some day this job will lead me to bigger and better things, and maybe it won’t, but in the meantime it is a challenge and it is a change and it is pretty fun.