So what ...

So what is going on with me?

Every once in a while I get a comment on my Facebook page or an email telling me that the writer misses my blog. My response is always, "So do I."

It isn't that I haven't had anything to write about. Good Lord, I've had a whole litter of puppies, (well Lindy Loo and Swede William did) and now there's a new litter in Minnesoooooota. Swede William is the dad, and Lindy Loo's litter sister Simmer is the mom and they are Laurie's first ever litter and they are beyond adorable.

Simmer and Swedish Seven

And we've had some HUGE BIG wins in shows. HUGE BIG. Once in a lifetime - for me, anyway - kinds of wins.

Swede William and Lindy Loo's daughter Alison was Best Puppy in Specialty

More excitement, I was asked to judge at the Continental Whippet Association National in Wisconsin. It was like old home week for me. I got to see people that I love and haven't seen in years. Lindy Loo and Swede William and little Jabberwonkus got to run after the lure and woo-hoooooo they loved it! And I ran smack into the fact that I miss doing performance stuff with my dogs. I miss it way down deep in my center.

And there's work. I can't write about work, because of HIPAA laws and my patients' rights for privacy. There is so much to write, but legally I can't - and don't - even talk about it with Bill. I see stuff. I feel stuff. Heart warming stuff, horrifying stuff. Mostly I'm beyond exhausted. Day before yesterday was one of the worst days yet. By 9:30 in the morning I was fighting tears, mad at myself because using energy to fight tears means my energy and attention are being wasted, and I need every ounce I can muster. I feel so old and foolish.

The ballast to days like that is the little medicaid patient with terrible health problems who is a multiple hospital frequent flier. She introduced me to her family as "the best nurse I've ever had." Why? Not because I was in fact the best nurse she had ever had. No. Believe me there are much, MUCH better nurses out there than I am. I still have to ask my co-workers and charge nurses questions and questions and stoooopid questions ad nauseatum. I'm still looking up every other drug I give before I give it because there are all these new meds with four different names each and I can't remember what I looked up yesterday because I'm so damn old. (I miss my brain.)

So what made me "the best nurse" on one day and a sniveling idiot on another? The very same thing. I try to treat every patient, no matter what, the way I would like my mother or my husband to be treated. Period. On the days when I have too many patients who are too sick and have too many meds too many dressing changes too many orders too many admissions too many discharges too many doctor calls too many infusions too many transfusions too many lab results too many stool samples too many need to pee need to poop peed the bed pooped myself too many pain meds too many re-assess too many care plans too much charting not enough me ... on those days I can't treat my patients the way I would want my mother or my husband to be treated and it makes me cry.

On those days I tell my Bill, "there has got to be a better way." On those days I long for a home looking out over a distant row of mountains. With some mares whunkering at me when I walk into the barn in the morning, and their foals, folded up in the straw, turn to me with their soft curly whiskers. With a field where I host whippet races and folks come for the weekend and we have a blast with our dogs and with our friends.

On those days I am off in my imaginary motor home, with Bill and the old dogs along, not left back in Paducah. We are going someplace fun together. Just imagine that! Going someplace together.

I gave up the American Whippet Club Board. I gave up being President of the Paducah Kennel Club. I am still on two city boards which take up a lot of time and energy and brain space.

And I sit at my (imaginary) blog and my murdered muse sneers at me. "You want inspiration?" she asks. "From me? You kill me. Literally. With your thirteen hour shifts and your four hour board meetings twice a month and your committee meetings. You want to write funny things. You want to finish that dumb book you started. Yes? Well something has to give and you CHOSE me. Didn't you? You fed everything else and let me die of neglect. So bite me."

She's a mean muse. I guess we all are when we're starving...

hug your hounds and feed your muses