The big guy and I were supposed to drive to Jasper yesterday but got stuck in snow and traffic and never made it out of town.  We decided it wasn't worth it, turned around and headed home.  Turned out to be a lovely day at home.  We have a bird feeder on the back deck and the chickadees were flitting about so much I thought why not set up the camera.

So I got to take pictures, not of the mountains but of the birds.  We also had a dark eyed junco visit the feeder and a downy woodpecker.  And no, I don't really know much about birds but google sure does and I'm always curious.

We had a code at work on Tuesday which upset me.  The patient didn't die thank goodness, turns out he was severely dehydrated from diarrhea, but the whole thing was a shit show and once again I felt unsupported as a nurse working in diagnostic imaging so I will have to bring that up with my manager.  I emailed both managers with my concerns and was told, "we're always here" which is really a nice sentiment but not very helpful when you're up to your ass in alligators.  So there's that.

A couple of weeks ago I had a youngish woman as a patient.  She is forty-two I think and was with us to have a central line inserted.  She was upset and couldn't stop crying.  Turns out her boyfriend had kicked her and her twin daughters out on the weekend and told her , "I can't wait for you to die".  There is so much pain and suffering in the world and I am always humbled by what people live through.  Turns out her boyfriend is an alcoholic and naturally he told her all of this while he was drunk.  I told her, "I'm sorry to say this, but your boyfriend is an asshole."  She was convinced that he was right and that this was all her fault.  I told her that this was on him.  Just before we started the line insertion she said, "I've never felt loved in my whole life.  All I want is to feel loved.", at which point I started crying too.  It's really want we all want, isn't it?  To feel loved.

We got the line in, the doc who normally is kind of a dick was kind to her, I hooked her up with a social worker and I hugged her.  She wondered if she should move her and her kids back to Ontario so that she would have family support.  I told her I thought that was a good idea.  She will need more help shortly and her children will need a guardian who cares about them when she dies.

And so it goes.  New patients.  Old patients.  Dying patients.  Patients on surveillance.  I carry a lot of grief around with me but I wouldn't want to change who I am.  I prefer this to not feeling.  And there is always suffering in life.  It's something we don't talk about in our society, we don't teach our children this either, in fact we try to shelter them from this knowledge but it's a disservice to them.  There will always be suffering in life.  We are human.  We can't avoid it.

There is suffering but there is love as well.  Hugs from the big guy.  A new grandbaby on the way.  Friends to talk to.  Birds to photograph.  A lovely little dog to walk with in the snow.  Good books to read.  Stories to tell.  It seems to balance out somehow.

The big guy and I moved Miss Katie last weekend.  She seems to be doing well.  Some furniture arrived on the Friday and we moved the rest of her stuff on Saturday so it looked like a home by the time were done on Saturday.  When I picked her up from her old home she was happy to be going for a car ride and seems to like riding in the front seat.  Her new staff greeted her at her new home with balloons which she loves.  Katie was happy to meet new people, she loves people generally and was also the centre of attention, which she also loves.

Saturday afternoon as I was finishing up putting her things away, she told me she wanted to go home which broke my heart a little.  I told her that this house was her new home and she seemed okay with that but I know she had a hard time falling asleep and she was pretty tired on Sunday morning when we picked her up to go for a walk and lunch.

I can't imagine just being moved and having no say in the whole thing.  She's a strong young woman.  We had lunch at a mall in the southeast corner of town.  There is a large East Indian community there, mostly Sikh I think.  Katie loves the older men with their long white beards and their turbans.  She goes to this mall a lot and a surprising number of people knew her but what surprised me most was when she signed Namaskar to one of the gentlemen which is the traditional Indian greeting or gesture of respect, made by bringing the palms together before the face or chest and bowing.  My daughter continues to amaze me.

But now I am tired, worn out, over wrought, done.  I kept crying at work yesterday, just the end of a stressful time with Katie.  I know she's safe now and well cared for.  She has already picked a favorite caregiver, Sanjesh.  He seems like a kind, gentle man and Katie knows people.  As for me, I'm pretty good in a crisis but tend to collapse in a heap afterwards.  This is my heap for now.

I'm off today which will be good for me; puttering around the house and the yard, the last of the leaves to pick up, chili to make, a dog to walk and a chance to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air before winter sets in for good.

What I really wanted to write about.

I didn't really want to write about my week, or concussions or side effects or the weather.  I don't know why I did.  I thought I should,  I feel remiss when I don't write.  Like I'm letting people down.  And I forgot that the real reason I write is to sort shit out.

When thoughts come out of my head and they are transformed into words, somehow it helps me to sort through things.  The why and the what of things.  But I've forgotten that lately.

I went to work on Monday morning, feeling crappy.  My life is not crappy.  I have a good life.  I have a job I love.  I have friends who love me and whom I love in return.  I have a wonderful husband who loves me, protects me and doesn't let me pull shit on him.  And yet Monday morning I was grumpy and tired.

Some side effects no doubt but other stuff too.  Stuff that swirls around the bottom of the glass and is hard to dislodge.  Sometimes I don't even know it's there except I feel grumpy and like a child who is tired or hungry, I get grumpy and act out.

When I was growing up my father was always angry.  His anger shaped my life and held sway in our home.  Everything was about not making my father angry.  He had his reasons, I understand that now.  Alcoholic mother.  Depression.  Poverty.  The war.  But as a child all I knew was the fear I felt when my father would turn white with rage, ball up his fists and shout and storm around the house until he left in a hail of gravel.  Until the day he died I was afraid of my father, a man who never once hit me.

I learned that anger is big and scary and uncontrollable.  I learned that anger keeps people away so you feel safer, except you're not really safer, you're just alone.  I learned that anger is a bad thing, never a good thing.

So I grew up watching anger give my father power over others.  I incorporated that knowledge into my small body as a child and I became an angry woman.  I did not want to be angry.  I did everything I knew not to be angry.  I read, I took courses, I meditated, I wrote, I saw counselors and still the anger sat there.

When my ex-husband and I sold our house and he "cleaned" it and I went back to get the last few things there, only to find it still dirty, I snapped.  I started angry cleaning, mad at him, mad at the whole world, mad at the dirty floors.  And as I washed the floor, anger seeping out of me, I realized I wasn't really angry, I was sad, beyond sad really, and I had been my whole life.  Maybe my dad was too.  My anger covers up my sadness for me.

My anger scares me.  I don't feel safe with it.  I understand in my head that anger has it's uses, it can protect me in a time of danger for instance but mostly it just feels like an uncontrollable beast that thrashes around inside my head, wanting to be let loose on the world.

So I'm at work on Monday talking to my girlfriend about feeling grumpy and I realize I think of myself as I bad person.  She told me that I wasn't a bad person and I asked her if she thought she was a good person.

My friend has bipolar disorder, both of her parents were alcoholics and her mother abused her and let her be abused.  My friend has every reason to be angry with the world and she is not and neither is she a bad person.  She has a big heart and she loves and she forgives.  And both of us think we're bad people.

How is that?  Who convinced us that we're bad people?  And why did we believe them?

And most of all, how do I love myself as I am?  Sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes lonely, sometimes a mess.  I only want to be good.  I want my dad to be proud of me and I never felt that and still that hurts to this day.  I feel like a disappointment to him.  So there is that sadness, overlaid by anger and then further covered up with humor.  So I guess it's the sadness I really need to deal with, not the anger so much.

The big guy and I met with the new agency today to go through stuff and sign papers.  The people that we've dealt with have all been kind, compassionate, enthusiastic and knowledgeable.  It's such a change.  After that meeting we drove to the south side to inspect the house that has been rented for Katie.  It's nice.  It's really nice.

After that we drove to Ikea to buy stuff for Katie's place.  She had a fully furnished apartment eight years ago when she was first cared for by the agency that is now evicting her.  When I asked what had happened to her stuff I was told by the owner that her "stuff" had been discarded and he didn't have time to argue with me.  So now Katie needs everything again.  I'm keeping all the receipts for her stuff and plan on doing something when she's out of the home she's in now.  Perhaps small claims court, something, maybe social services.  I don't know but you don't mess with my daughter.

Then we went out for lunch and I started crying.  I was so energized, excited, jittery after the meeting this morning that I talked all the way to the new home and then I crashed.  It all seems so good, so wonderful that I have trouble believing it's real.  It's so far removed from what I've experienced with Katie and agencies and caregivers that I don't trust this good feeling.  Isn't that sad?

Even the big guy, he's given me more support with Katie than her own father ever gave me which makes me want to cry again.  He loves his step daughter as if she were his own.  He appreciates her, understands what an amazing human being she is and he fully supports her.  He doesn't see her as defective.

Yesterday was my birthday and the big guy and I went out to see "The Book of Mormon".  I loved it!  It's deeply irreverent and filled with swearing so pretty much right up my alley.

And now we're relaxing.  It snowed again last night and there is more snow in the forecast.  It will be gone by next week but right now it's good to just slow down and do nothing productive for a change.

I'm beat tonight, had a busy, hard day at work.  Yesterday I had a five year old boy that needed an IV started for his MRI scan.  He was so quiet.  It breaks my heart when we have children.  Most of the kids stay over at the U but we get kids for radiation.

One of my patients today ended up with a huge hematoma on her arm from an old IV site.  I asked her if she was on any blood thinners and she started crying and said she had cancer.  I gave her a hug and three warm blankets because she couldn't stop shaking.

Another patient came down at lunch time.  We had put a PICC line in him yesterday at the end of the day and during the night he was hallucinating and pulled the PICC line out.  He felt bad but even worse, he was worried that the cancer had spread to his brain.  What do you say?  A few months ago he was playing golf four days a week and now he's dying of cancer.

I had one patient this morning who is an old drug addict, not that old and not that long off of drugs.  He kept falling asleep as I was explaining things to him.  He actually fell asleep on the table while we put his line in.  Normally I'm fairly patient but he irritated me today, mostly because we were too busy.  On the way home I thought about him.  The man is homeless, he's an old drug addict, he's diabetic and has cancer.  I'm pretty fortunate actually.  I have a home, someone I love and who loves me, I'm healthy and I have a job.

But it snowed here.  So there's that.  Most of it melted today but it's still cold outside with more snow in the forecast.  It will melt but really?

And the dog's back has been acting up.  She has spondylosis which means her discs are degenerating and there are bone spurs growing on her vertebrae.  She doesn't understand this and doesn't understand that the pain is coming from within her body, not from outside of her body.  She looks at us when her back hurts, as if we've done something to her.  She's on anti-inflammatories which are helping.

Thankfully it's the weekend.

We met with a new agency this morning who wants to provide care for Katie.  They listened to us and asked questions for two hours.  And not only do they want to provide care for her but they also offer a day program for her.  They want the cape off, they want her out of the wheelchair, they want her living her life and they understand that the agency needs to accommodate Katie, not the other way around.

I am thankful and I cried of course.  Tears of joy.

Today I would rather be here, wandering along the beach, listening to the sound of the waves gently touching the sand.  It's been a tough week.  We have long term patients at work, many patient's I've known for years.  One of my favorite patients came in this week for a scan.  I've known her for five years.  She has a wonderful smile and laugh.  She loves life, especially spending time with her grandchildren.

She was looking and feeling awful when she came in so she ended up on a stretcher.  We joked a bit, I got her a blanket and then she said she thought she was almost done which made both of us cry.  She's only sixty years old and she's had cancer for the past five years.  She has a seven month old grandson who won't remember her.  I suggested she leave a letter for him but she said no, she wanted her other grandchildren to tell him about her.  When she left I gave her a big hug and I thought about how much I hate cancer.

Yesterday I found out another one of my favorite patients has opted for assisted suicide on Saturday.  Fortunately I was in a stairwell when I was told this so I could cry in peace.  This patient is a man who is only a year younger than me;  he has a three year old daughter.  He's kind and gentle and just such a lovely person.  He's been coming to us for awhile as well and now he's an inpatient nearing the end.  Today he came down to us to have his central line checked because somebody thought it might be leaking.  He was pretty well medicated, maybe even a little high, but not in pain.  I overheard him explaining to the x-ray tech that he was going for MAID, medical assistance in dying, on Saturday so we just needed to make sure the line was working.  He told the doc too.

Yesterday when we took him upstairs on his stretcher he was singing.  Today I told him that it was a honour to take care of him and that I was so glad I had the chance to meet him.  He said, "I'm so glad we met too Sherry."  I smiled and didn't tell him that wasn't my name.  I'm okay being Sherry for him.  He made me smile and I will raise a glass of wine to his memory when I go out for supper on Saturday.

Today a young man paralyzed from his tumor pressing on his spine came back to us;  he was with us last fall for months.  He was a huge guy, six foot five, three hundred pounds.  It always took five of us to move him from the stretcher to the table.  He's lost almost a hundred pounds, the cancer has spread to his brain.  He doesn't have much time left.  His daughter is sixteen months old now and walking;  last fall she was still a baby.  She won't remember her daddy.

There are more.  People getting sicker, new patients taking the place of those who have gone.  A never ending carousal of cancer.

I will spend the weekend working in my garden, digging up weeds, mulching, moving plants, digging in the dirt.  We're going out with friends for supper on Saturday.  I will walk the dog.  I will try to remember to be thankful for the time I have here.