Just Keep Smiling

I have to tell myself this often some days at work, and others not so much. I have been told many times by my colleagues that I always seem to be smiling. They ask me how can that be...it has been such a terrible day, and I often answer, I might as well smile, because if not I might just cry.  We all have bad days, and unfortunately for me working in the ER, there have been quite a lot recently. So here are some of the reasons that I just keep smiling:

If I can just keep smiling I can keep having faith that the day will turn around, that things will get better.

If I just keep smiling I am received so much better by my patients at triage when they have been waiting over an hour to just see me.

If I just keep smiling, I can help reassure my patient and their family that are tucked away in a corner in the hallway that we do care about them and are doing everything we can to give their loved one the best care possible in a bad situation.

If I just keep smiling I will better handle the angry patient that feels neglected in the busy and congested ER.

If I just keep smiling I can help to encourage my colleagues to believe that we make a difference in our patients lives.

If I just keep smiling I can forget for a while that I haven't had a break in almost 8 hours, nor have I had time to pee.

And most of all, if I just keep smiling, I can show people that I do love my job and am so blessed by God to have the privilege of working with my amazing colleagues in a career that I am truly passionate about.

So when you are having a bad day, try and remember to just keep smiling...you will be amazed how far a smile will go.

Congestion

Bursting at the seams. Overflowing, overcrowded, and congested. That is how one would describe my work environment during the past few months. Working as an emergency nurse is a stressful, fast paced, and often thankless job. But in normal emergency settings, I love my job! But trying to do this job with the overcrowding and congestion we are faced with on a daily basis is nearly impossible. We are drowning. My hospital is not unique to this problem. It is happening everywhere. The sad part is there is no end in site.

It is frustrating, overwhelming, and maddening to work in this environment day in and day out. It also leaves me and my coworkers with a lot of moral distress when we are not able to provide the level of care and dignity to our patients that we feel is needed. We are trying to care for your loved ones in cramped hallways with inadequate lighting, privacy, and supplies. But we do it. And we do it all day, every day.

I wish I had an easy solution. There isn't one. But there are solutions, hard ones, but no one seems to listen to those of us who are in the trenches dealing with the issues constantly. But we also have to be careful what we say. We can lose our jobs if we "speak out" and if we become the "whistle blower" in our job site. That is not what this post is about. This post is about expressing the frustration of working in a health care system that is failing and wishing I could fix things. My employer is not to blame. There is no one place to lay blame, and we need to stop pointing fingers and start fixing things.

We will continue to provide our patients with the best care that we can even in these terrible times of congestion because we care, we truly do.  And please know, that we are as upset and frustrated as you are about the conditions, and if we could change it, we would.

Laryngitis

I have experienced Laryngitis for the first time this past week. This was difficult for me as I LOVE to talk, and I talk a lot with my boyfriend and friends on a daily basis. Not being able to do this for several days was less than fun for me. Sure I have had the old scratchy/nasally voice that would probably make me a pretty penny as a phone sex operator or something equally as savory and the sore throat that tends to go along with it, but I have never completely lost my voice.

The symptoms started suddenly at the beginning of my set back to work with a scratchy voice and slight dry cough. It then progressed into a squeaky voice that would come and go intermittently as it pleased. This made it very interesting trying to deal with my patients in a busy and loud Emergency Room for the duration of my shift. I was also teased relentlessly by my co-workers, that is how they show their love and concern. I then awoke after a good night's sleep the day of my first night shift and soon discovered that I had no voice. I was barely able to squeak out a syllable. This did not bode well for my ability to work that night. I decided to wait it out a few hours, drink a bunch of warm water with lemon and honey and just rest my voice. No dice. The only improvement to my voice was my ability to now squeak out every 5th word of a sentence. Now I had to call into my work and somehow tell them that I couldn't work that night due to my lack of voice. But that was the problem....how do you call in sick with no voice? It was tricky. It took several minutes for the charge nurse to figure out who I was and what I was saying. Then she began to laugh. Yup, full on laugh at me. She told me I sounded awful, and asked if I was on my death bed. I assured her, voicelessly, that no, I felt fine, but I merely had laryngitis and could not talk. She told me to get better and not to worry about calling in sick, I was in no way able to work with no voice. So I missed 2 shifts because of this case of Laryngitis, and had many people laugh at me and my weird sounding voice as I progressed through the stages of Laryngitis.

I am pleased to announce, much to my boyfriends chagrin (he greatly enjoyed laughing at me in my time of anguish and utter distress, as he put it), that my voice is on the mend. I can now speak whole sentences with only the smallest of squeaks. The only good thing about Laryngitis, or at least the version I got, was that I felt fine and was able to still go about my day, but I just couldn't talk. So here's hoping my voice continues to improve and returns to 100% asap, if not, I guess I can look into a new night job in a certain phone industry :)

Awkward Runner

I feel like one of those awkward runners. I have bee thinking a lot about running recently, and about running in a race. I want so badly to just put on my running shoes, turn on my iPOD and just go, just run. But my body disagrees with this. Since injuring my left knee this past summer and my chronic flare up of my bursitis in my left hip I feel like my body is against me. I am trying to find the balance between pushing my body when there is pain, and not hurting myself further, or permanently. How do you find balance? This is also causing me to feel unmotivated because I know it is going to hurt, and then I get frustrated and feel defeated. 

This has got me to thinking about running in a different race as well.  As Christians, we have a race to be run. 

Hebrews 12:1

 ¹ Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

1 Corinthians 9:24

 ²⁴ Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.

Galatians 5:7

 ⁷ You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?

So am I running in a race with perseverance, and in such a way to get the prize? There are so many parallels for me with physically being able to go for a run, and being able to run the race set out before me in my Christian life. I feel awkward and frustrated by my earthly body not allowing me to run the race like I would like to, and I often get frustrated by myself and my mind for getting so easily "entangled in the sin that hinders".

I need to persevere and not allow myself to get frustrated. I am only human, and I am a sinner, but I need to just keep running the good race. As Christians we need to keep running the race, even when there is pain. We are told that the race will not be easy, and there will be trials and pain along the road, but the prize is worth every bit of pain, and Jesus runs along the whole way, right beside us, and may even carry us on his back at some points along the way when the pain from the race feels like too much for us to handle. Isn't that an amazing gift? The gift of Grace, that Jesus will carry us, undeserving, sinners like me when the race gets too tough. I need to remember this gift of Grace, and just persevere in my earthly racing goals, and in my heavenly ones as well. 

New Year

Well, it is a new year, and therefore time for new years resolutions. I am not big on making New Years resolutions, when they seem to be easily forgotten and abandoned once February hits. But I have been thinking recently about making some important changes in my life.

One of them is to blog more. I have not written a blog post in over a year. I hadn't realized it had been that long. But what I did realize was that blogging about my life etc was an important outlet for me to be able to process my thoughts, share my experiences and struggles in my daily life and also share snippets of my experiences from my job.

So because it is the new year, I am going to blog more and hopefully regain my outlet for "processing" and sharing about my life.

I have also been thinking a lot about contentment recently. I think it is one of the life lessons God is trying to teach me. Along with having patience, being content in my life has been a struggle for me. I am always looking to the next thing instead of enjoying what I have and living in the moment. So I hope to share about my journey as I continue to learn patience and contentment.

And finally, I want to reclaim my ability to run. My body has been fighting me on this during the past year and I am working to over come this. I have been experiencing hip pain and residual effects in my left knee after an injury in which I tore the lateral meniscus last summer. It healed well, so I thought, but it has been causing me some pain over the past few months. Both my hip and my knee have severely hindered my ability to run, and have made me feel discouraged. So I am resolving to push through and over come this. I long to be able to run another 10k race, and will be training once again to hopefully complete the Sun Run this May.

So there you have it folks, my "resolutions" as such for 2012. I think it is going to be a great year, and I can't wait to see what God has in store for me this year!!

Goodbye Nana

My Nana on her wedding day

Dancing with Papa at their wedding

On their honey moon

Papa, Nana, me (age 3), Kimberly

Nana with Kimberly and I

July 30th 2010 at 8:21pm is when the phone call came that rocked me to my core. "Stacey, are you sitting down? Nana has died". These words from my sobbing mother will never be forgotten. What do you mean Nana died!? My heart was breaking, the tears were flowing, and my mind just could not grasp this information.

My very much independent, active and vivacious 78 year old Nana tucked herself into bed and died peacefully in her sleep. This news was absolutely SHOCKING. There really are no words. Especially because my mom and I had plans to visit her in a mere 7 days from then. How can she be dead? The news wouldn't compute.

But Nana is dead. And even though we had her funeral this past Friday, I am still expecting to wake up and have this all be a bad dream. But it's not. My entire family wanders around with the same sentiment. "I just can't believe this has happened.....Is she really gone??.....I can't believe she's died".

This past week I have been in Trail with my entire family living on auto pilot. Going through the motions of planning her funeral and watching my mom and her sisters and brother deal with this terrible loss. It has been a time of many tears, and yet many laughs as well. So many good memories have surfaced.

My cousin and I were put in charge of making the memorial slide show for my Nana. That was a heart-wrenching task. Sorting through hundreds of pictures of our Nana and Papa and relieving memories from long ago. The slide show turned out beautiful and made me sob every time I watched it.

So now it is time to move on and grieve our loss of our beloved Nana, and Papa who left us a short 21 months ago. That is the only comfort in this time. That Nana is finally reunited in eternity with the love of her life and husband of 50+ years, my Papa.

You will always be missed Nana, your sudden death has left a huge void in all who have had the privilege of knowing and loving you.

Here is a poem that was written on the back of my Nana's memorial book. It is very appropriate for her.

If tears could build a stairway,

And memories were a lane,

I would walk right up to Heaven

To bring you home again.

No farewell's were spoken,

No time for goodbye,

You were gone before I knew it,

And only God knows why.

My heart still aches in sadness,

And secret tears will flow,

What is meant to me to lose you,

No one will ever know.


Author Unknown

Race Day

The morning began, after a mostly sleepless night due to my nerves and excitement, as a rather dreary looking day. I went about getting ready for the run, eating some breakfast, doing my hair, stretching my legs, lacing up my running shoes.

I pinned my race bib, #631 to my t-shirt. Made sure my iPOD was fully charged. Drank some water. I taped up my foot so as to prevent any blisters from forming. I put on my running shoes and laced them up. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like I was ready to run a race! So weird.

After 13 weeks of hard training going from not being able to run at all to heading out the door to run my first 10k I have come a long way!

Once I got to the race start area, I signed in, picked up my running chip to time my run and began to feel REALLY nervous. I saw two of the girls who I knew would be running with me and walked over to them and we began to chat about the race and how excited/nervous we all were. We were a mere 15 minutes away from the race start time. Then the rainy looking sky parted way and the sun began to shine through. What a beautiful day for a run!

Then my darling dearest Darla, my cheer leader, my best friend, and running coercer arrived. Camera in hand, she was ready to cheer us all on and take many, many, many pictures of our achievement.

We were lead in a group stretching exercise, and then all gathered near the starting line to await the starting horn.

HOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNKKKKK!

We were off, and I could feel the adrenalin coursing through my veins. I began to run, keeping at my pace and ignoring the people around me passing me like there was no tomorrow! :) I ran to my music, keeping my breathing in check. Then after only a few minutes of running, I hear my name being called, shrieked really, and I turn and look and it is Darla, driving in her car, hanging out the window shouting and waving at me, taking pictures. Yup, the paparazzi had arrived. She found me on a couple of occasions during the 10k route and took pictures. I will never forget however, when she found me at just past the 1/2 way mark after I had just run up a very loooooooong, granted gradual hill, and shouted at me from her car. She yelled, "Stacey!! I am so proud of you...so so proud!" That is when I realized that she was totally bawling! That's my girl. I continued to run, but found enough extra breath to tell her that I was dying. She smiled at me and encouraged me to keep running, that I was doing amazing! She is such an encouragement to me. So I did, I kept running.

Finally, as I had turned onto the last street and could see the finish line off in the distance, I saw Darla and another runner from the race, Laura jogging towards me. They met me when I was feeling like I wanted to die, I wanted to stop, I wanted to lay down in middle of the road and sleep. They ran beside me the last few meters, encouraging me the whole way. I also remember slowing my pace and wanting to walk for a few seconds and having Darla look at me and yell "KEEP RUNNING!! THERE IS NO WAY YOU ARE WALKING ACROSS THAT FINISH LINE!!" Lol, way to keep me running. And so I did. I kept running and ran across that finish line signaling the completion to my first 10k race. The finish line time read 1hr39mins34secs as I ran across.

After crossing the finish line Darla began bawling again and we stood there, in the finishing chute, crying, sobbing, and hugging. I was given my medal for finishing the race. What an accomplishment!! I, Stacey, just ran a 10k race. Wow! I felt great! Tired, exhausted, sore, but great!!

So there you have it folks! I have now run a 10k race. And I will be running more of them, so stay tuned!