Central Service

Every day on the way to work I pass a billboard for a hospital that features a new person every month. This month they are featuring a person that works in Central Service. (where all supplies for the hospital are kept) In quotes is the person saying "Everyone in the hospital is integral" I would agree with this wholeheartedly. Sometimes I wonder if the physicians realize how much goes into carrying out their orders. It might seem like the nurses just snap their fingers and its done, but it often takes a combined effort from a variety of people to carry out the order to completion.

Even the people I have never met, help me care for my patients. For example, Diane* in Central Service. I have never met her, but there is something that gets me super excited and relieved when I call down to central service for something (espeially when I'm not sure what it is exactly called) and I hear Diane 's raspy, most-likely a smoker voice answer. Our conversation always starts out the same.

"Central service, this is Diana, how may I help you"

I say "Hi, its Angi from 48. I need the thingee for the thingamajig that goes on the end of the whatchyamacalit. I'm not sure what it's called"

"you mean the..."

"yes, that's it"

"what room, hon?"

"4806 bed 1"

99% of the time, she knows exactly what I am talking about. If I don't realize something comes in multiple sizes, she knows exactly what sizes are available.

One of these days, I need to go down and introduce myself to Diane so I can see how accurate the picture in my head is.

*name has been changed

It's the Season

Signs of warm weather are all around. Last night, I turned on the air conditioner for the first time this season. Today Nathan showed me doves that have taken residence under our patio roof. Then, we went to our neighbor's garage sale and passed several garage sale/moving sale signs in the neighborhood. We also drove through our neighborhood and saw a group of teenagers out in the yard taking pictures before heading off to the prom. Then, this afternoon, the air and sky filled with smoke as we could smell a fire that was nearby. One of the pictures is ash that had fallen onto our concrete patio. I haven't seen the doves this afteroon and I hope the fire didn't drive them away forever.

Multitastking

I'm not really sure why I always share my silly moments with people, but when I'm still chuckling at myself the next day, it's worth telling.

Yesterday at work I had 3 patients. They were stable patients, but between the 3 of them, I had 4 procedures. These always take a lot of coordination to get everyone together at the right time, prepare for sedation and give sedation,etc. Anyway, there was about an hour left in my shift and I was told to give up one of my patients so I could admit a very sick little girl. We needed to move another one of my patients out of the room they were in to make room for this one girl. So, hurrying along, we moved my patient to another room and realized the phone in the new room didn't work. So I went to get the phone from the old room. As I walked into the room, the phone rang. I figured it was the father of my patient I just moved, so I answered the phone to give him the new number. Now... multitasking is not always the best choice, especially when just as you answer the phone and start to explain that the patient has moved to a new room, you start to do what you origianally went into the room to do and you reach over and unplug the phone from the wall cutting off the person on the other end. Oops!

April 11

A Happy Birthday goes out to my sister Karlene today!

Backyard...Again

I realize that a majority of my posting is revolving around the backyard these days, but this is very exciting. Note the pictures in my previous post before the grass was planted. It was very brown, dark and depressing. Over the weekend and especially this morning, the grass has just popped up and while looking out my patio window, it really is starting to look green. There are some patches where we are hoping it is just behind due to lack of sunshine. There is also a patch that we knew would be a problem where the sprinklers don't quite reach. There are also a few patches where there isn't much growth, but that's where we always found the birds eating the seed. I cannot wait until a few weeks from now when it keeps growing and needs to be mown? mowed? Whatever the proper word is.

Backyard

Yeah! We finally have grass planted in the backyard. We have spent many hours the last few weeks preparing the backyard to have grass planted and we just spent the entire weekend finishing it. The pictures are kind of backward. The bottom one shows the rough shape the yard was in when we started. We had to rake all of the debris and junk off the surface. Then, we leveled it out. Then we laid compost. There is a picture of the mound of compost. Nathan put in the garden planter last weekend and it looks fantastic. I will be sure to show you once we have green grass growing. I am super excited to have grass back there finally. However, I won't be as excited when the next water bill arrives.