Thursday, September 25, 2008

Stupid me!

There are times when I can be really jerky and idiotic. I was that way this past week. I was impatient and blind and insulting with someone who I really need to be able to work with. Now I am in self-flagellation mode because I was so stupid and careless with this co-worker. I just want to hide my head in the sand and make it disappear. Unfortunately, I cannot do that. I have to find a way to make this work. I am trying to be more patient, but it does not come easily. We work completely differently. I am a little anal and like things a certain way. She is not nearly as organized (it appears to me.) She moves a little slower, and she has different priorities. Some of her priorities are dictated by her position, but they conflict with my priorities at times. I am afraid I also got a little cocky. Not good. I am still new in comparison to many of the people I work with. I think the events of the past week have opened my eyes to a lot of things I was doing wrong. That is good, I think. Now I can accept them and deal with them. Hopefully I will be able to get over this without too much trouble. I hate feeling like an idiot and stupid, though.

Friday, September 19, 2008

In-Laws this weekend!

Hubby and I are going out of town this weekend to visit his parents. Hubby's grandmother is turning 80, so we are celebrating her birthday. We are giving her a breadbasket filled with my made from scratch butter milk biscuits. No one in her family makes biscuits from scratch, so I thought I would make some for her birthday. We are boarding the dogs this weekend at a kennel. I think this is sort of a dry run for vacation. Hopefully it will work.

Speaking of vacation, our vacation is causing us to delay IUI #1. My period started this past Monday. When I went in for my injection class on Tuesday, the nurse and I looked at the dates, and we discovered that November will be the first chance I have at trying a cycle. I think the waiting will kill me. On the bright side, I will be able to drink on vacation. That is something, at least.

Work about killed me this week. Wednesday we had two robot cases with slow and difficult surgeons. I also had a weak circulator with me. The scary thing was, the second circulator was my clinical team leader. She needs to be a resource and a leader, but I have not found her to be very helpful to me since I have been on the service. Robot cases need two circulators. If a robot case goes bad, it can go bad quickly. Also, it helps to have two people there to troubleshoot the robot and get any other equipment needed. My second circulator kept leaving. She even tried to re-assign herself to another room. I was really mad. If she does not want to do that part of the job, she should just admit it and find a way around it. It is not fair to the patient, or the rest of the surgical team, to be in a room and do a half-assed job. Robot surgery is technical and involved. I do not have a lot of patience for people who act like they cannot do the job. I was scheduled 12 hours that day, so I knew I would be in that room the entire day. It still makes me mad just thinking about it now two days after the fact. I had to run that damn room all by myself. I talked with my managers the next day, they told me that they would talk with my clinical team leader, but I do not know if that will do any good. On the bright side, they promised me that I would learn to scrub robot cases. I may not end up scrubbing a whole lot of the robot cases, but at least I will know how the robot really works. I hopefully will be able to troubleshoot the robot better if I have gotten the chance to play with it. That is the piece I am missing. I think they will like it because I will be able to do lunch reliefs and things like that. One more person who can stay late and finish a long robot case.

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Long Days...

Robot case this morning, then I stayed late to finish the room. I think I can be a pushover sometimes. But I am not on call, so I got to have a lovely glass of wine (well, two glasses, really) when I got home.

Tomorrow is another long day, but for different reasons. I have another robot case tomorrow morning, so I have to be at work early. But I have my injection class tomorrow after work! Yay! One step closer to actually doing something. Unfortunately, my period chooses a stupid time to start. Yep, my period started yesterday. Bummer. That means this cycle is likely going to be another waiting cycle. I totally thought my cycle would be longer, because it usually is. I hate it. Why does it have to pick now to be inpredictable? Stoopid period. Just holding off a week would have been fine. But no, my body decided to have a four week cycle instead of the five week cycle I usually have. I wish something would work out for me, and my body will cooperate. My body is not helping with this infertility stuff!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Sept 11

Today is Sept 11, the Anniversary of the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York, and the Pentagon in DC. The day it happened, I was at a temp job in Christiansburg, VA with no radio, and no way to get the news. I did not believe it at the time. I cannot remember how I finally realized that it had happened, but it eventually registered that something really bad had happened. My immediate family was living in the Northern VA at the time, so I called all of them and made sure that they were all right.

What was interesting for me about 9/11 is that traumatic events like that can really shake up your life. One effect of the events for me is that my grandmother and I had another falling out. After this event, I finally decided that I had had enough of this relationship as it was. My grandmother and I were constantly butting heads. My husband thinks it is because we are so much alike. I do not know about that, but I did know that my grandmother and I could not get along. It would not take much for either one of us to start an argument with the other. After 9/11, I started seeing a counselor to work out the relationship with my grandmother. We get along better now, but we still do not like to show the other our weaknesses. I had to let go of my ideas about my relationship with her in order to get along with her.

The other thing which came out of my counseling sessions was nursing. In looking at my life, where I was, and where I was going, I decided that I wanted to go to nursing school. It was a decision I never regretted. I love being a nurse! I always wanted to have a cool job, and now I have one. I am an OR nurse. Sure, the hours are long, and the job is demanding, but I love it. I would not want to be anywhere else.

The emotional fallout from 9/11 affected me more than anything else. It was a national traumatic event which definitely affected the entire nation. The EMS and firefighters who were there for the attacks are truly heroic.

Nights and Weekends

I have to get used to staying up late the next few nights. I have a couple of evening shifts coming up this weekend. I am hoping they will be calm, but I am not expecting it. With the weekend comes alcohol, and with the alcohol sometimes comes trauma. I am praying that it will be shifts full of lap choles and lap appys, maybe even a stable ectopic. (Unstable ectopics are really scary.)

One website I have discovered is Pandora. We listen to music in the OR, and often we leave the music on all day. You can get any kind of music, and it does not repeat a whole lot. You can ban songs for a month if you think that they are being played too often. The account is free, and you can customize stations just for you. If you put in an artist, it will play similar music. (It is way better than A.O.L. Radio, just sayin'.)

The counseling appointment was a no-go. I do not know if we got the date of the appointment wrong, or the counselor forgot, but no one was there. If it is our fault, I think we could reschedule. If it is their fault, I think we should go elsewhere. Just my feeling. I hate having my time wasted. I missed an agility class to go to that appointment because I thought our marriage was more important. Hubby will call today and see what happened. Hopefully he will make an appointment somewhere for us. Just not on a Tuesday.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Ketchup

Catching up today. Hubby and I spent the weekend painting our living room. It was a huge job, because our living room is huge, but it had to be done. The previous owners painted the room this poopy brown color. I hated it. It made the whole room look cave-like, and it sort of felt like the walls were closing in on me. Why they would want to make the room look smaller is beyond me.

So we went from this...




To this...







All the furniture is in the exact same place as before, but the room looks and feels a whole lot larger and airier. It really feels more open. Yellow is my favorite color, and this yellow is soft and buttery, and should be easy to live with. The color is from Lo.we's Nat.ional Trust colors. It is Home.stead Resort Tea Ro.om Cream. I love Lo.we's Nat.ional Trust colors. They are usually a good bet.

I had the day off today, which was really nice. I did have a productive day and got caught up on things I had been putting off. Hubby and I have our intake eval tomorrow with the counseling center. I have an eval coming up at work. Hmm, I sense a trend...

Next week I have my appointment for the injection class. We decided to try IUI with injectables using Hubby's guys. I think we are planning on trying this for at least three cycles. If that does not work , the we will move toward donor insemination. If my period arrives as expected, my TWW for this first IUI with injectable cycle will likely be during my vacation. Hopefully that will take away some of the anxiety. We will see.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Robot Thursday

The surgeon I was with had two robot cases today, and they both went well. (Both done by 2 PM. I was impressed. ) Overall, a nice day at work, and I got to leave early. Even better.

Hubby made the appointment for couples counseling. We go next Tuesday for our intake interview. We will see what happens from there. Hopefully I will have my schedule for the next month, so we can make the appointment for the next one. I think the counseling will be worth doing. I think there are things we can work through. (Such as IF, moving to across the state, communication.)

Other than that, there is not a lot else going on. I am waiting for the injection class in a couple of weeks. That will allow us to try the IUI with trigger next cycle. Until then, I am trying to be patient.