saw this guy as i turned onto my block the other morning. always fun to get moose sightings. i never tire of it. how could i leave my beloved moose!! 
i think he was trying to hide behind this tree, but i spottted him anyway. nice try moose! 4 nights of work behind me. worked out to be a nice week. i hear people complain around me at times, but life is mostly attitude and at this stage mine seems pretty good. occasionally, i get worked up. generally over stuff that people who never touch a patient or have any understanding of what it means to be a patient, do to make my life more complicated and help nobody. i fear more and more hospitals are being managed and run by people who have no medical training or connection at all. sadly, that means thier lack of knowledge makes my life at work annoying and ridiculous really. our new computer program worked great the way it was designed. it wasn't perfect, but no system will be. unfortunately, they came up with a great idea to re-work it and it's horrible!! eventually, they will figure it out and we'll have to adapt to whatever they decide to put money into next week. 
monday walks are mostly tanya, lena and i. the numbers are dwindling. soon we will cease for the season and return in the late fall. summers just get crazy and people head off in different directions to get every ounce of sunlight they can find. also the bear population in the area we walk in the winters will soon be waking up. i keep expecting to see footprints, it's been so warm. we were joking today that they are waking a bit more buried in snow than usual. mama bear is chastising papa bear for not getting up a few times mid winter and keeping the walkway clear to the den! 
boddhi and manny out romping and enjoying the warm weather we are having. it's hit 40's a few times this week. melt is fast!! streets are clearing and even the sidewalks are starting to show up, they are a mess...worked with lena last night and we were both on a roll. those teenagers can be fun to goof off with. a perk of peds is everyone loves when you can make the hospitalized kids lives a bit more happy. i can be goofy and strange and if it brings on a smile, awesome. my one patient and his mother told me i was thier favorite nurse, and that was after only a few minutes. i got him with an april fools day catch. convinced him that his story was on the anchorage daily news... his buddies were teasing him for where his accident happened...on the bunny slope. smooth sailing all night there. my other kid has a rough gig. lena and i had him smiling all night. he was really stressed about a proceedure he was having today...life keeps getting more challenging for him so this was just a sign of his future. it felt really good to be able to make him smile. they can't pay you enough for that satisfaction. "sleep like an egyptian" was a favorite and boys like poop jokes, what can i say...i got a million of em!!! i pull off crappy accents and play like i have a multiple personality disorder so that all these crazy personalities can just appear. you just never know.
one of my personalities is svetlana, who used to be a russian spy but was made a nurse to cover my spying days. anyway, i guess one time a family wrote a note of appreciation for this mystery nurse, svetlana. management was confused, they had no nurse named svetlana. eventually, it was brought to thier attention that this might be me.
being hospitalized bites, if i can be efficient with your care and make your day a bit easier to deal with then i've done well. 
was super lucky my first night. i got an on call. got to watch the latest "big bang" episode and play a bit of pool before the phone rang. getting called in at 8pm means overtime all night. no matter what they throw your way, that makes it all a bit easier to take. i helped with a few admits before getting my own. horrible bed sores. ignorance can lead to neglect. we have to document all the sores people come in with so that it's known the sores didn't come from us. i contacted social services. if this was a kid, we would have had cops and social workers everywhere. pretty sad that our elderly population doesn't get much notice when they come in with what i would call neglect. just felt badly for the old guy. i really don't think his family purposely was trying to cause harm, but how could you not think there is a problem. frustrating. a few days later they withdrew care. he passed. we all knew that was the most probable scenario so it may just be social services figured they would be punished enough by the loss and thier own guilt over not checking on the situation more frequently.
rooms in hospitals are small and they get even smaller with all the machines and monitors we need. i felt i was doing some major yoga moves all night for a few nights as the visitors in one patients room were well over 400#. nice enough, but that large of a body just takes up alot of space in a room and there were two that size, plus other family. i was a bit of a contortionist in there trying to get all my work done. always sad to see people who really aren't very old these enormous sizes. life expectancy with those numbers just is not good. the rumors through the hospital grapevine were that the emergency room attempted to code and lost a youngish person who was well over 400 #. i love that song by the hawaiian artist, "somewhere over the rainbow". iz...anyway. his voice was just amazing but he lost his life at a young age no doubt due to his huge size. such a waste. 
hit the dogpark a few times this weekend and walked up patterson street. will have to avoid the dog park and anyplace with lakes/water. the thin ice just makes me nervous with blossom. she doesn't notice the difference and i don't want any accidental incidents. it happens every year.
i know this dog should be cross tied, but he did look pretty cute back there. not sure that we have a cross tie law. alaskan's tend to not want to be told what to do through laws. years ago i worked in an emergency animal hospital in los angeles and i saw repeatedly how poorly dogs fared in these situations. they didn't always do well cross tied either. dog chews through line, line snaps, dog has horrible degloving/dragging injuries. after i bought my truck i was waiting for the topper to arrive so i cross tied huey in the back. he was a puppy. he chewed through the line and fell out and went bounce, bounce a few times. luckily, we had just driven onto a ranch road where he'd been born and were going super slowly on the dirt road. his shoulder was sore, but nothing worse happened. i learned my lesson. i thought i was being safe. of course, my dogs don't wear seatbelts and that could go very badly for them too. 
a few moose at the dog park. 
the barista who was kidnapped from a drive up coffee place has been found. divers went into a lake and pulled out a body. they must feel pretty confident it was her, the autopsy is pending. she was taken over a month ago. not sure how they knew to look in that lake. they have a guy in custody that was found spending money on her credit card i think in texas. texas sent him on up to us. always horrible when young lives are lost so tragicly. what a waste. thoughts to her family, i'm sure they are sad by this outcome, but it must at least be a relief to know what happened to her. not knowing would just be the worst. 
it may have been too hot for rio and her coat of many colours, but she looks so dang cute in it!!
these are a few from rovers to homestead the other day. 
got in some 40-50 lengths today on my swim. felt good. gotta go hang up my suit to dry. had to skip monday hot cocoa as i had a little competency fair thing at the hospital for the adult unit. better hit the sack. not much sleep. i tend to only sleep 4-5 hours between shifts and then today got only over 3 hours as i woke for the walk. did catch maybe 20-30 min nap when i got home tonight. sleepy though, that is the point! 
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