I went back to work this past week.  I'm only working on the floor for two hours, which is 3000 steps approximately, and then I go into film library to make confirmations calls to patients for upcoming appointments.  My foot is bearing up, still a little sore, but not bad.  What amazes me though is how much less tired I am at the end of the day when I'm not on my feet all day.  It's quite shocking.  I don't feel like a bag of shit at the end of the day and still have energy to make supper and enjoy my evening.  Who knew?  I've been a nurse my whole life.  I didn't know how much less tiring desk work was.

Calling patients doesn't sound like the most interesting job, and it's not, but yesterday I talked to a new patient for half an hour.  She is younger than me and she was diagnosed with lung cancer a month ago.  I listened for a long time and gave her as much information as I could about how things work, what we need prior to treatment starting and also told her that her life is not over.  Yes, she has cancer, yes, it's awful, yes, it sucks, but her life is not over and when she comes to the Cross, she will discover a whole lot of people with cancer, living their lives.    

On Friday morning when we were just driving into the Cross, I noticed a Canada goose laying in the gutter in front of the hospital, which some feathers on the road.  I went back to check on the goose and it had been hit by a car but wasn't dead.  I did have some blood in it's mouth and seemed dazed.  I managed to convince it to get up on the sidewalk, out of the traffic.  Canada geese are military grade birds, large and dangerous.  This poor bird was so dazed that it let me touch it as I helped it get out of the way.

I started calling places to see if someone could take care of an injured goose and in the middle of that, the goose decided to start wandering across the road again to be with it's partner who was still waiting for it.  So now I was on the phone, herding an injured goose across a four lane road with cars who wanted to whizz by.  I did end up yelling at some people to, "Just fucking stop!", and they did thankfully.  The goose was feeling more itself because it hissed at the car.

The goose made it safely across the road and I don't know what happened after that.  It either survived or it died.  What really pisses me off is that whoever hit that bird, knew what happened.  You can't hit a Canada goose and not notice.  They weigh around ten pounds and this time of the year they're everywhere with their gooslings.  They also get right of way on the roads.

Gracie has been a pain in the ass this week, but I'm not going to go into it.  Jack is with us until tomorrow morning and he's happy.  He's been helping me in the garden and this morning he watered Big Red, the name I gave the maple tree that I planted in the back yard.  I've always wanted a maple tree and this year I did it.

I was also outside planting some wild lupins in pots to start them and transplanted my tomatoes into bigger pots.  Jack enjoys helping me in the garden.  Last night Jack and I went for a walk after supper and he held my hand all the way to the park.  On the way home I pretended I was a sportscaster narrating the race he was having with me.  He seemed to enjoy that and I had a lot of fun.

Wednesday was a bad day but my girlfriend and I went to a garden centre and the world was a better place.  Her and I talked and enjoyed the flowers.  We also both had hard cries.  She has cancer and her husband died suddenly in February.  I have Gracie.  Sigh.

Right now the dogs, my hubby and Jack are all napping.  It's quiet and peaceful.  I'm thankful.