Groundhog Day ’19

 

I can’t believe an entire year has gone by without a post.  Actually I can…  there were so many times I meant to post and it was a big year but I never got around to it and now suddenly it’s Groundhog Day again.

12:00 am

This year Groundhog Day starts at Midnight again.  I’m at work.  I don’t typically work Fridays but my schedule is all over the place now that I’m back in school.

I’m attending Jefferson College of Health Science which is currently connected to Carilion but is in the process of being bought by Radford.  But since they are Carilion currently and I’m a Carilion employee I’m only allowed one proxy card (key card) so I have both my school ID and work ID on the same clip.  On Fridays I only have a short break between classes and work and since we have to wear scrubs in our lab to go from school to work I literally just turn over my badge.

I only have one patient tonight.  I was scheduled two but my second patient didn’t show.  So I only have one pediatric patient.  And they’ve been hooked up and in bed for almost four hours now so the night seems to be dragging.

I’m working on scoring studies from last night.

12:30ish am

I have a snack.  I’ve been trying to pack food so I eat healthier and have been doing really well for several weeks now.  Tonight’s snack is apples, cheese and peppers.

1:00 am

Still just scoring and watching my patient.

1:40 am

On my break tonight I need to take a test.  I’m taking Pathophysiology online.  That was the only option I had, but I would have preferred a more traditional class for this one.  It’s hard and basically self taught.  Today is the first exam.  We have to take it online and it’s only available from 8 am Friday until 8 am Saturday.  Which really sucks.  I have three back to back classes on Fridays with only 10 minutes in between them.  I start at 9 and get done around 4:30ish.  I have just enough time to go home repack my lunch, feed the animals and then head to work.  I won’t get out of work until 8:30 am Saturday morning.  So when exactly am I suppose to take this test?

I put on some coffee, gather my things and start my test.  I have an hour to complete it.

2:50 am

I finish with the test.  It was so much harder than I anticipated.  I was feeling pretty bad until I remembered that it’s just a regular class and not a Nursing class so it’s on a 10 point scale instead of a 7.  And according to the statistics I did better than the majority of the class.

3:00 am

The Capnographer is out in my patients room, but she’s in REM so I’m leaving it until later.

3:15 am

Go in and fix the EtCO2, wake my patient in the process but she goes right back to sleep.

3:21 am

The lab phone rings.  We all look at each other like “who’s going to be brave enough to answer it.”  I mean who calls a Sleep Lab at 3:20 in the morning.  One of my co-workers answers it and from his end of the conversation I get that they are looking for me.  I’m a little nervous, who calls on the lab line in the middle of the night?  It’s someone from another lab.  Appartently they were told to call me and have me explain the “new scoring guidelines for Cheyne-stokes.”  Huh? What new guidelines?  I eventually get that she hasn’t implemented changes that were suppose to happen in 2017.  So I briefly explain the criteria for scoring Cheyne-stokes.

3:30 am

Feeling hungry so I get my lunch and eat it at my station while I finish scoring a study I’ve been working on since midnight.

4:00 am

Finish the last study to be scored from the previous night and start on the study that I’m currently running.  This is the part of the night were I really struggle with staying awake.  I don’t want to drink more coffee so that I can sleep after work, but I really need to stay awake.

4:30 am

Go online and work on one of my assignments for Foundations of Nursing.  It’s not due until Monday, but it is an easy one to get out of the way.

5:30 am

Start to monitor my patient for signs of an arousal, because at this point if she wakes up she gets to go.  Finish up scoring my study.

5:59 am

Patient wakes up.  I go in, disconnect her.  Review the morning paperwork and take my equipment to be cleaned.

6:30 am

Finish cleaning equipment and getting it back in the room.  Enter all her information into Epic.  Finish scoring my study, generate reports and wrap things up to head home.

7:40 am

I’m done and headed home.  Decided to take a detour and drive to the site where I’ll have clinicals this week.  It will give me a rough estimate of how long it will take to get there from the lab, as I will be going straight from work to clinicals (won’t that be fun).

8:15ish am

Stop at Kroger on the way home for Cat food.  I don’t think I’ll be welcomed in the door without breakfast.

8:35 am

Home from work.  The cats and Kikapu meet me at the door.  They will follow me around making noise until I put their food down.

Lulu has to stay in the Laundry Room during the night as I don’t trust her to roam the house when I’m not home.  She is so sweet she doesn’t make any noise, just sits and waits patiently for me to come greet her.  She also won’t go out until I give her a hug.

Lulu goes out first, but she’ll need to go out again halfway through her breakfast (it’s just how she does things).

The dogs can’t go out together.  In fact they can’t do anything together.  Kikapu just does not tolerate Lulu so I have to keep them apart.  After Lulu comes back in I take Kikapu out and she does her impression of a Ground Hog.  Unlike Pauxatauny Phil, Kikapu does she her shadow.  So does that mean Virginia is in for 6 more weeks of winter.

I put food down for all the animals and get ready for bed while they eat.  I’ve been wearing the same scrubs since yesterday morning so it feels good to finally take them off.

9:00ish am

Kikapu is the only pet allowed in the bedroom while I sleep.  She curls up in the laundry basket and sleeps there all day.  Climbing into bed is the best feeling after being awake for almost 27 hours.  I fall asleep pretty quick.

1:30 pm

Annelise is home.  She stays with her sitter for a little while on Saturday mornings so that I can get some sleep.  Typically I will get up when she gets home and get something done with the rest of the day, but I feel particularly exhausted today and I have a very busy week coming up so I decided to get more sleep.  I fix her a small lunch give her an iPad and climb back into bed.

She’ll spend the afternoon watching Netflix and playing games.  Thankfully she is very responsible and I can trust her to watch out for herself.  I do leave my bedroom door open at this point, so the cats will usually come in and out and crawl all over me.

2:20ish pm

Annelise comes into my room upset that Moe ate part of her cookie.  I promise to get her another one when I get up which will be soon.

4:40 pm

Okay, it wasn’t soon.  About 4:40 I finally get out of bed.  Get Annelise her cookie.   And tell her she needs to practice her piano while I shower (I’m pretty sure she did it). Let the dogs have some outdoor time and climb in the shower.

5:00 pm

A hot shower feels so good.  I could and almost do stay in there until the water turns cold.  After my shower I climb out and since I’m in the bathroom, I clean it.  My little mantra right now is “no wasted minutes.”  I’ve been so busy I have to squeeze some of these little tasks into the few free minutes I get during the day.

As soon as I’m done cleaning the bathroom Annelise decides she has to use it and then complains about the bubbles in the toilet and the seat being wet.  This leads to a long discussion about why we clean the bathroom and bacteria.  She is rationalizing that if we just leave the bacteria alone, they will grow big enough that we could see them and once we can see them we can avoid them.  Explain that’s not quite how it works and we still need to clean even if we can’t see them.

5:30 pm

We head out for supper.

On Saturday nights we walk to Grandin Village for supper.  Right now we rotate between the CI and Grace’s.  I just found out that there is a new restaurant coming to the Village that is farm to table and makes special hamburgers.  I am excited about it and would love to work them into our rotation but when I mentioned it to Annelise her reply was “But MOM!  What about the cows?!”  Apparently Annelise has a hard time eating cows, has no problems with chickens and pigs though.  There are a couple of other restuarants I would love to work into the rotation, like Taaza and Bethlehem II, but I know she won’t eat what they offer.

6:00ish pm

Supper at Grace’s.

We have now reached the level of regular customer that after we are seated the waitress comes over and asks, “Cabernet and chocolate milk?”  We also don’t need to order our food, we have our “usual” (breadsticks, spaghetti for Annelise and pizza for me).  I don’t let Annelise have electronics when we’re eating out just the two of us.  I figure this is a good time for us to talk and for her to develop good dining etiquette.  She’s always quite entertaining.

 

6:40ish pm

Headed home from supper in the Village.  I love our little walks to and from the village.

And I love coming home to our little house.

There was a hockey game tonight that I had wanted to go to but Annelise hadn’t been overly excited about it and I thought for awhile we wouldn’t be able to get tickets so we made another plan, and then when I found out we could get tickets Annelise didn’t want to change our plans.  So instead of a hockey game we had a movie night when we got home from supper.

7:00ish pm

We like to have movie night in our pajamas.  So when we got home from supper I tried to get us into our pajamas as quickly as possible (for those paying attention that means I was only dressed for about 2 hours today).  We were really slow tonight and there was a lot of goofing around.

7:30ish pm

Finally enjoying popcorn with our movie.  Tonight’s selection was a double feature.  Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving, and The Mayflower Vouyagers.

8:40 pm

Movies are over.  Annelise gets ready for bed.  She is now totally independent in brushing, flossing, and doing a fluoride rinse.  We have been reading chapter books at bed now since last summer.  We have been working our way through the Critter Club series.  She got several for Christmas and her Birthday.

9:15ish pm

With Annelise in bed, I also really want to go to bed.  I had the flu a coupe of weeks ago (first week of classes), and I don’t think I’ve fully got my strength back.  But I have an exam on Monday that I need to study for.  I attempt to study but am frequently interrupted…

“Lulu leave the cat alone!”

“And that one, too.”

“Lulu, Kikapu does not want to play with you.”

“Sorry sweetie, I can’t play either I need to study”

Poor Lulu.  I am giving serious thought to another young, biggish dog so that she’ll have a playmate.  But I’m concerned that it will be a lot more work and I really don’t want to have to deal with housebreaking another dog right now.

10:30 pm

I give up.  I’m too tired to stay awake.  I let the dogs out one more time, brush my teeth and climb into bed.  And that’s it for another Groundhog Day.  Hopefully I’ll find to update the blog before next year, but if not see you next year!

Other Groundhog Days

Groundhog Day ’16

Groundhog Day ’17

Groundhog Day ’18