Friday, August 29, 2008

3 Things

List 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions/collections, 3 random surprising facts about yourself. Tag 3 people at the end of your post by leaving their names.



3 Joys


1. Cuddling. I love to cuddle. This mostly refers to cuddling my husband, Spencer. But I also love to cuddle dogs, especially mine. I also love to cuddle with my family. My brother-in-laws refer to me and my sisters as cats. When we lived together when we were younger, we often would all cuddle together on the couch. Yep. All of us. It was like a pile of kittens. You know, when they all lay together and are all tangled up. That was my favorite. Cuddling is especially nice when you are sick, tired, sad, cold, or high from drugs after surgery. It is especially nice on a Sunday afternoon.












2. Riding horses. There is nothing in the whole world like it. It is truly something that I was meant to do. I especially love it when I am outside alone. There is something magical about you and a horse moving together as one in beautiful fluid motion. It is a spiritual experience. Something like man bonding with nature...






3. Comfort foods. This includes things like bean burritos, tuna noodle casserole, chicken divan, and of course, Coke. These things are especially nice when I am not the one making them. They are best when they are made by my mom and at my parent's house. I can't explain it, but you all know what I am talking about. And the food is even better when you are sad or sick or something like that.


3 Fears

1. Suffocation/Drowning. I am afraid of gasping for air. If you have ever tried to hold your breath for a long time, you have experienced the body's strong will to live. You will take a breath even when you tell yourself not to. There are receptors in your body that know when you are short in oxygen and high in carbon dioxide and it tells you to breathe. When people are drowning they attempt to breathe under water and breathe in water. How scary would that be. This is why am I also scared of the open ocean. Imagine flying over the ocean in a plane and crashing. You miraculously survive the crash, but now you are out in the middle of the ocean. You can only swim so long. And then you will wear out and then drown. People think of sharks and stuff in the open ocean. Usually they are not an issue because they aren't out that far in the ocean. I'm talking about the experience of knowing that you are going to die and not being able to do anything about it. I read a statistic that something like 62% of deaths are some sort of suffocation. When it be strangling or drowning or carbon monoxide poisoning, etc. I bet that it is even higher than that. In nursing, we have a set of priorities in life threatening events. It is called the ABC's. Airway, Breathing, Circulation. This represents what you need to do first. Airway is the most important thing and then breathing. A lot of people think that it is most important to do chest compressions and get the heart pumping first. This is false. Without oxygen there is no point. That is why the heart and blood are so important. They transport oxygen. If you don't have oxygen, you die. I have seen many people die. When we withdraw support, they usually die because we took out the tube that was breathing for them. I watch them gasp for air. And they literally drown in their own sputum. Oxygen hunger is very disturbing to watch. So I think that most people die of some sort of suffocation. And I am scared of it. I'm not really scared of dying, but I am scared of that feeling of the absolute need for oxygen. I cannot even imagine how horrifying that feeling would be. And the fear is not even created by your thoughts, it is actually a fear that your body has.

2. Being in an accident and having my family keep me alive even though I have major brain injury. I'm afraid of being completely non-functional and mentally disabled and not even knowing it. I am afraid of being in a nursing home, all curled up in a ball from posturing, and getting nasty pressure ulcers. Then I get all septic and go in and out of the hospital forever. The nurses all feel so bad for me and know that I would be better off dead. My family not even visiting me because I wouldn't know if they were there or not anyways. Costing my family all of this money to keep me alive when I would so much rather be dead. And wasting time and resources and being in so much pain. Please don't keep me alive to a life like that. Let me go on to the next life. (I am also afraid of waking up in my old trauma ICU. I used to have nightmares about it. I would dream about my co-workers making fun of my anatomy. Of my co-workers putting things in my bum and cleaning up my stinky poo, because all trauma patients get super stinky poo and BO. It was horrible! I haven't had those nightmares about my new unit yet. And actually, there aren't as many males in this unit, so I think that it would be less embarrassing somehow.) I am also scared of liver failure. Seriously, just let me die if I get bad liver failure. I do NOT want to try to live through a transplant.

3. Mirrors in the dark freak me out, too. I copied my sister Nat on this one. Although, I think that it was her that made me scared of them. When we were little, we used to watch Unsolved Mysteries and tell ghost stories to get scared. I guess that being scared was somehow fun. I remember her or one of her friends telling scary stories about mirrors. Something about devil worshipping and freaking things that happened to people that they actually knew. I have been kinda scared of them ever since. Especially if there is a light reflecting in it at night. Freaky!


3 Goals

1. To make lots of new good friends here in Buffalo, New York.

2. To find an outdoor adult soccer league and lacrosse league.

3. To blog more


3 Current obsessions/collections



1. Dog hair. We have samoyeds. They have a lot of hair. Ergo we collect white hair. It collects on everything. It is amazing to me the places that I find it. Right now, Mia is shedding and there is huge chunks of hair all over. You can tell where we have been outside because she leaves a little trail of hair.

2. Sudoku. I love it. And I get obsessed with finishing a puzzle once I have started it.

3. Shaving. When I shave my legs or my patient's face, I am completely OCD about getting every single last hair. It drives me nuts. I sometimes nick my patient's face or give them razor burn because I HAVE to get that one, last hair.


3 Random Surprising Things

1. I will miss working nights a little bit. It isn't as busy. Families and doctors don't get in your way. You have more time to sit and talk with your co-workers. You get more fresh traumas at night. There is nothing like working a Saturday night. Night workers aren't as mean or nasty. There seems to be a better bond with night workers.

2. I was really picky about food when I was little. Things that I hated as a kid, I now love. I never thought that that would happen.

3. I sometimes wish that I had chosen a different profession. I would love to do something outside, I think. I would really love to be a photographer. How cool would it be to take pictures of animals all over the world?! I also used to want to be a lightning photographer. I saw a special on it once and I was completely interested.


Tag 3 people

1. Ashley

2. Lexi Poo

3. Liz

I hate tagging, so you don't have to feel obligated to do it. And some of you may have already done it and I just don't remember.

3 comments:

Nat said...

Hey BJ! Thanks for doing my tag. I'm not a huge tag fan, because sometimes I feel like that's all I blog about, but when it's been a while, I'm good with it.

I'm totally obsessed with Sudoku, too. Have you ever gone to samuraisudoku.com? It's like 5 sudoku puzzles all connected, and you have to use the other ones to help with each sudoku. It's crazy, and way fun. The same rules apply.

And I loved cuddling like kittens when we were younger. I love to cuddle!

I had forgotten why I was scared of mirrors at night! There were these kids at school in, like, 4th grade, and they would tell me that this chick would say some kind of chant in a mirror and Satan's "wife" would appear to her. Something really creepy like that. I was never around when she did it, but just hearing about it was creepy enough for me.

Kar said...

Okay. Now I'm totally creeped out about mirrors at night. Thanks guys!! :) I never even thought about that before! Dude...

Jenny said...

your posts are making me hungry. i would love anything from taco bandido or a taco time deep fried bean burrito right now. sigh.