You're it.

Several things have changed this week, and I can finally talk about before. It's been about a month and a half since I've done any nursing work. I've transitioned out of the PICU. It takes a special person to work there, and I'm just not it. 


I couldn't talk about it for a while, because it felt like failure. I couldn't get any vitality from the PICU. I couldn't learn to cope with those kids. I used to hear people say, "I could never do that" about various things. And I always thought they were being silly. Of course you could. But I'm there now. I could never do that without losing myself. I wouldn't be I anymore.


When I was out and about and I saw a little one, my heart would be crushed. It was too easy to think about how he or she could be in the PICU in a blink. It was too easy to sense their vitality and remember where it's not. It was too easy to know exactly what that little one would look like in the PICU.  


Sometimes staying happy is a battle. Depression is the enemy, and canons of isolation and accusations are densely packed. It's been that way for me lately. I've gotten some ammo of my own, though. 

• Always have something planned for Monday morning. A walk with another woman is a good option. 
• Be bold about helping people. Don't think. Just do it.
• Meet with people. My Beth Moore Bible Study Group has been my salvation.
• Don't go to bed sad. 

I just landed a new job this week. On Monday, I start working in an adult oncology department. It takes a special person to work in oncology - only this time, I think I'm it. 

and another thing....

 
A little girl went to Home Depot a couple of weeks ago. She walked in the door, walked to her left and lifted her chin high as she scanned All of the signs. You know someone is lost when they are reading the signs. A tall man walked toward her, and, sensing her lostness, asked, "What can I help you with?"
"I need wood," she said apologetically. 
"What kind of wood?"
"I'm building a box," as if she'd already started.
"Oh, so you need wood-wood." 

So I brought home my cut pieces of wood-wood and began sanding. I wasn't sure how this box was going to assemble. I had some Elmer's wood glue, tack nails, and considered that my box might need more love. I carefully glued the first two pieces - a bottom, and one side. My dad had warned me that my box might be more trouble than it was worth. But the glue set up quickly, and I didn't need to let the first pieces dry before gluing the rest. I put the whole thing together in twenty minutes, to my surprise, adjusting the points of contact as each piece melded to the others. I placed exactly one tack nail before I discovered that more would not be necessary.

I'm currently putting the finishing touches on before painting. The cuts weren't perfect, so I'm sanding down a few edges, carefully filling spaces with glue, sanding every surface to perfection.

I have never done anything like this before, and I find it very satisfying to take time to create something well. It's going to be a great box. It's purpose is to be beautiful while containing the ugly, necessary things on a shelf in our living room. The visionary in me finds it possible that there will many more such boxes to come. I've had quite a fetish with boxes and baskets lately. The creative side in me is considering putting a panel of weaving on its face. The practical side of me wants to create a lid to keep dust out. I've got big plans for this box.

"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good..." Genesis 1:31

Only a Year Between Five and Nine

I went to a nice dentist today. He said, "Do you eat? Because you have the teeth of a nine-year-old," which made me feel very pretty indeed.

I'm listening to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in my car. The man who reads it is great. He does all the voices just right. He makes me wish I was British.

My dentist said that several years down the road, I may need my real tooth to be replaced with an implanted one. "We always try very hard to keep your own teeth intact as long as possible, because we can never make something better than what God already gave you." He was very nice.

I went out for supper with some more friendly people tonight. One of them is a nurse in the NICU. She says she hated her job for the first year, too. *Sigh of relief* because it gets better. Only a year, right? Only a year.

My dentist and I talked about the midwest and how people wave. And how people are rude here.

I introduced myself to a neighbor today, and he said, "Hi," without offering his name. There are probably a hundred people living in this apt complex, and I know the names of two of them. Bree, and her mom Trina. They live next door to me. Trina listens to loud hip-hop music. Bree is about five years old. I hope we can be friends one day.

Mistakes

I made a mistake this morning at work. It didn't cause my patient harm, but it could have if someone else would not have caught it. I feel terrible about it. And I feel anxious about it still, even though it's over. I'm ready for a day off.

I hear my preceptor's voice in my head about everything. I hear her explaining how to make the decision to give this med, to hold another med, to reposition, to wean oxygen, and most recently, when to change lanes in traffic. Her voice is very calm and she has a Dutch accent. She's great. I'm glad I don't have my friend's preceptor. Her voice is a few octaves higher and several decibels louder. Having her voice in my head might incite a new anxiety prescription.

I've been told a lot lately that I need to ask more questions and ask them sooner. I think it's this thing deep inside of me that needs to be reprogrammed. I can fix things. I've been pretty good at it, actually. At Curves, I would just wander around until I found something broken, and I'd fix it. It's instinct. For now, I need to take my fix-it hat off and put on my inquisitive hat. I need to ask before I fix things.

This is my biggest struggle in the PICU right now. Emotionally, I've been pretty stable, actually. I think it's our patient load. Many of our patients have been awake. And maybe I'm growing some thicker skin, too.

It's time for bed. Goodnight.

New in Town

So in case I haven't mentioned it enough, I've been recently married. Two months today, actually. I know this, because I received an email from TheNest.com, a sequel to TheKnot.com. Their emailing intention was to help me with all of the things with which I must be struggling at two month of marriage. I can browse easy recipes, get tips about battling the post-wedding blues especially the ones related to wedding debt, and even buy The Name Change Kit for $29.95. I admit to you: their help isn't really relevant to me. I don't need their recipes. Our wedding is paid for, and my name is successfully Katie Banley for all major government and financial institutions.

People talk a lot about marriage being a difficult thing. Right now, I feel that there are a lot of hard things going on in my life, but marriage is not really one of them. My marriage is pretty much an escape from all of the hard things.

The most difficult thing between us was uncovered by a recent conversation in the kitchen. Generally, I have been feeling that there is no food in our house. Generally, Thomas has been feeling as though we have too much food in our house. Bread is an example of this. I have been buying bread, English muffins and a loaf of whole wheat bread here and there. Thomas sees this bread and feels pressure to eat it so that we can start fresh and obtain something new. "We have so much bread, so I'd better eat it all up." I don't understand this mentality. Neither do I understand how the bread could be gone every time I turn around. Conversely, Thomas doesn't understand how we could possibly have a continuous supply of the thing he's working so hard to deplete. I'm buying; he's depleting. I'm gathering; he's preparing for the hunt. Our efforts are thwarted by the other.

This is the extent of the difficulty between us so far. I can't discount anyone who says that marriage is difficult, though, because I can see how things outside of a marriage could easily become things between two married people. There are plenty of difficult things outside of us. At some point, they will probably come between us, and we'll have to work hard to resolve them.

Thomas and I get along very well. This is a blessing from God. Many people are married to someone with whom they don't get along. My brother says that marriage is something in your life that God has given to you to manage. For us, God has managed the getting along part already. We just do.

What I am trying to say is that everybody gets their own things to manage. I don't know how he decides, and I don't know that his methods measure up to our idea of fair. I saw a homeless woman asking for money on a busy Baltimore street the other day. I've seen a lot of homeless men on the Baltimore streets, and coming from the Midwest, I am moved every time. But seeing a woman in her thirties on the streets makes me wonder what's really happening. It makes me wonder what I'm doing with all of my time. We all need to be somewhere. We're like hamsters on steroids around here, peddling away on our impersonal wheels.

It's the strangest thing for me - feeling like I'm overstepping social norms to introduce myself to my neighbor. Have you seen New in Town? Maybe you should, because then you'd understand that in my heart, I'm just Blanche, the lady with the clipboard who brings over tapioca and asks:

"Have you found Jesus?" -Blanche

"I didn’t know he was missing" -Lucy

I am a new PICU nurse.

I am a new nurse in the PICU, and that means that my schedule often leaves me wondering what day it is, what time it is, and what to call the meal I'm eating. It's very disorienting coming home in the dark morning and seeing people fresh from showers getting into their cars for work or to see kids waiting for the school bus. It feels like night, and I am ready for bed, but it is really morning. Do you say, "Goodnight," before you go to bed at 8:30am?

I am a nurse, so I pretend to be confident, to have things together. But sometimes I feel as though I am walking in circles. Sometimes I really am. Parking... There are several parking garages, several randomly closed streets, and a mountain of traffic. Navigating... After I park in the correct parking garage and find the correct exit, there are several tunnels connecting buildings. I must find my unit in a matrix of unmarked hallways and dungeonous-looking corridors. I function mostly by intuition, and this makes navigation hard. Once I come to a fork in the path, I first try the hallway that just "looks right" or "feels right". One of my classmates recently decided that she should invent a GPS for inside buildings. I have sarcastic feelings about that. Things like, "Then we can really rely on technology instead of our brains." and "Then nobody ever has to know where they're going just like we never know people's telephone numbers." and "I think they already did that. It's called a map." Stuff like that. But the other part of me is honest with myself and thinks it's brilliant. Storing my lunch... I must say that this is a relatively easy task, and I think that I can confidently say that I have mastered it. Finding a bathroom... Very few toilets service all of our nurses and visitors. It's incredible, really.

I am a rookie, and that means that I make everyone else feel smarter. There are new orientees coming through every three months. So right now, we're the rookies, but in a month, we won't be. The rookies who just graduated from rookieship helped me fill out a piece of paper the other day. Then they looked at each other and started laughing, because somebody is finally dumber than they are. It's a good feeling.

I am a new nurse in the PICU, and that means that I am in shock. In nursing school, our patients were mostly alive. Usually, we could have conversations with them, take them for a walk, ask them about meals. Now, my patients are mostly dead. I might've already said this, but I used to think sick meant throwing up, pooping your guts out, etc. Now I realize that "sick" can mean unresponsive, deformed, brain dead. When I first got here, I wanted to wander around the unit in spare moments and see what else was going on. Right now, I am having trouble. When I walk around, I hate what I see. It catches me off guard and I am pricked at the unnatural body positions, unnatural facial expressions, unnatural portion of death among the living. Sometimes I come home, and I just lay on top of my husband and cry.

"Are you wiping your snot on my shirt?"

"Yes."

"Man, now I have to change shirts this week."

He says other things, too, that help me breathe and function. Simple things like, "Why does it have to be your goal for them to get better?" And it's profound, because some of them are not getting better and are not ever going to get better. If my goal is for them to get better, I fail. If I can change my goal to just love the poor, suddenly, my work is meaningful. Suddenly, I am doing something that matters deeply to my Savior. "Jesus said you'll always have the poor."

I am a new PICU nurse, and it means I'm functioning. It means I'm wondering if nursing is really the right career for me. It means I'm crying more than usual. It means I'm tired. It means I'm leaning on my people even more than usual. It means I'm hearing beeping in my sleep. It means I'm learning to take care of the sickest kids in the hospital. It means something, and that means everything.

Till we have faces, I don't see.

I went to church on Sunday, and it was a long awaited relief. This East Coast thing is very...different. I have not met my neighbors even though I've got two doors six inches from mine. I don't really expect to know their names unless I get really ambitious and introduce myself. Anonymity is the norm.

The people at church were warm, but not fake. We sat by an oncology nurse practitioner who began her career at my facility. Her husband is a techie and musician. They and their children are hoping to be missionaries in the Middle East by the end of the year. They invited us for bagels with their family after church. They've adopted a kid from Guatamala and have three of their own. They also invited us into their small group. I'm itching to be a part of it.

Anyway, church. The pastor's laying the groundwork for a series related to life's big question: Why? He's speaking about the question with words that relay that he's asked the question before like the rest of us. Simple words weren't enough for him either. He needed more like the rest of us.

It's a tough thing for a pastor to address. It would be so much easier to preach a sermon on prosperity or to get people all hyped up about God being alive and everything else. But he's taken it down a notch and pricked every heart. He's treading carefully, thoughtfully.

He advises us all to draw a closed shape like a circle or a square. It represents God's wisdom and knowledge. He asks us to shade in our portion of wisdom and knowledge. "Do you have a dot on your paper? Can you even see it? Maybe some of the answers to the why's lie within God's wisdom and outside yours."

I'm glad it's not the end of the series; it would be a real bummer. But it lays the groundwork. Why deformed bodies? Why beatings? Why brain death? Why trauma? We wouldn't be asking if we understood. But perhaps there is an answer. Maybe we don't have access to it.

Haven't you heard so many people say, "When I get to heaven, I'm going to ask..."? I stole this idea from this sermon. It was stolen for the sermon from some writer (CS Lewis?). Maybe when we get there, our knowledge and wisdom will brighten and all we'll say is, "Oh, I see."

"Now we see through a glass dimly, but then, face to face." It's my hope, and I'm hanging on.