He told me no more shoes...

And he meant it... In a role reversal for this week's HNT, Bug no longer content to be "the corpse" has our darling damsel under the knife so to speak. I'm sure I can convince him not to go through with it, but he is understandably chagrined at being poisoned and skewered with scissors in past HNTs.

Be sure to visit King Osbasso and also read his (in)famous? decrees on HNT here.

The Formulary Has New Addition

Foxglove's Formulary now with medical examination table...

Vanity Gone Wrong

Yeah. Jersey. Sometimes it's too easy to make fun of us. Sigh. This was at theatre after watching X-Men 3.

I Love My Deck HNT

OK, I know it's not even 2 pm but I've got to get to work and they don't have the internet on the psych floor. Imagine that. In fact we have an ancient computer we call "Microsoft Jesus" cause it's that old. Yay technology!

Another early, and thankfully, failed attempt at attempting to turn my skin from fish belly white to a more appealing shade of "Live Person". I just get more freckles and all burny. Anyway, I promise to stop making you all admire my most recent ink which hurt really really badly after this one.

Go check out our Chieftan, the Mighty Osbasso and also go here to learn more about the ancient art of here.

And more importantly- does the wood on the deck look funky? Like dried out our possibly..termitey? I'm worried.. And ignore the stretch mark. This proves lack of photoshop, dammit. No, don't go looking for it now....

Movie Star Delusions

I'm a movie star! And no I'm not topless, it's strapless dress.

And there's a reason people as pale as me shoudn't sit in the sun. I now have an extra 14,498 freckles on my arms and a bunch more in the decolletage, as well as annoying burn. Stupid sun.

Foxglove Loves Aughra. Warning- extremely cheesy.

When I was working in Jersey City in 2001 (right across from where the WTC was for most of my time there) and I used to log into the UPN.com Buffy the Vampire Slayer posting board "the Bronze" and browse around, occasionally delurking to post a comment here and there, I never thought it would change my life. But it did, cause I met this girl, Aughra, who liked all kinds of cool things (Johnny Cash, the same hot movie guys, the same ridiculous fashion things, books, music, and who had the same brilliant sense of humor I'm blessed to possess. -thanks Dad for that-) So, in addition to subtly mocking this one chick who clearly imagined herself seated on a large velvet chaise with devoted servants flocking to and fro, we gradually got to know each other a little more, and started e-mailing each other. She gave me her number, I gave her mine, and I'll never forget that the first time we spoke, I was driving on the road I used to live on, on my way to work, just past Bug's super duper Nerd Farm (by the Dunkin Donuts) and that I could tell by her voice that she was awesome. We chatted a little bit, because there's a cell phone dead zone right by there, and I called her the next day. By the time we met in person, (Aug, how many months after we started talking was it? Not many..2? 3?) I already felt as if I'd known her for years, only with her only hearing about all the stupid and shitty things I'd done without having gone through them and being jaded by them. She is my super friend- I know she'll indulge me a bit, but only for so long before she tells me to just get over it. I get to hear her joy in being a mom (to a kid I'd happily clone) and about her great relationship with her dad, and I get to identify with her relationship with her mom, which is wonderful, but as most mother daughter relationships are, is also bumpy. We've commiserated over weight, bad hair issues, stupid husband days, and our mutual hatred of Lindsay Lohan. She's smarter than me, and I love her so much that it's actually ok. I feel kind of bad for all of you out there who know Aughra only through the blog, and have never actually gotten to see how she really does brighten a room by walking into it, or how infectious her smile and laugh are. Granted, watching guy after guy trip over their dick to talk to her gets a little ego smooshy, but she's worth it. There's no occasion for this, I was just sitting around and thinking (after her last text of the night, about Anderson Cooper and whether we think he's gay considering how fey he looks in Vanity Fair, and how she texted me to tell me that Norman was going to be on SVU) about how great she is.

She tolerates my babbling messages about work, about ER on TNT in the mornings, about goats, and about my insane GI tract. She's the best friend I could ever hope for. And she's all mine, suckers! Aughra, I love you darlin'.

Here are some happy Aughra and Foxglove pictures! The "I loved this slip so much I had to buy one for her too" photo collage, and a smiley picture from her most recent picture. I can't wait to meet this next kid, cause I know he'll be just as great as Gus because her and Fodge breed great kids...

Happy Anniversary, HNT!!

shawl 

So, the magical HNT is ONE YEAR OLD TODAY! And our chieftan, Osbasso wanted us to post our first every HNT (see above) and a new one celebrating the one year anniversary. (See below) Well, I haven't got champagne or balloons or confetti, but I do have the same shawl I wore in the first one in black, and with lots of credit due to HNT, way more self confidence. So I'm celebrating in MY NEW HOUSE by wearing similar outfit, with mostly full belly showing, and what is supposed to be coy smile. And it's blurry cause I suck at photography, not cause it's camera phone. To steal from AughraLuv again, since I'm incapable of independent thought, you can see most of my old HNTs here.


HAPPY HALF NEKKID THURSDAY EVERYONE! AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BIG BROTHER GRIMM!

poop shouldn't be a weapon, man!

Remember this special patient?

He's back, and just as handy with the feces as ever. Admitted Friday at 5 am, throwing feces and smearing on walls by 9 am. This poor kid is one of the sickest patients ever. And he's two years younger than me, and will just never get better. The best he gets is still REALLY sick. It's sad. But he's also scary as hell, not just for the poop throwing, but because he gets the really bad command hallucinations, the kind that tell him to try and poke his own eyes out and also to attack us because
a. We don't believe that he's John the Baptist, here to save the Muslim race
b. We're not letting him pray enough
c. We are trying to dissuade him from doing things like SMEARING feces on the face of nurses (obviously not Foxglove because they wouldn't let me write this from prison, which is where I'd be now) and try to bite people. Last time he was in, he was in this thing (scroll down to item 2) a bunch of times, and needed the 5 2 1 IMs (Haldol 5mg, Ativan 2mg, Cogentin 1mg) each time. It tooks us about 6 weeks to get him even close to stabilized, and the one medication that worked for him can't be used anymore because he had a seizure 4 weeks ago and they (the doctors or Popes as they're sometimes known as) can't be sure it wasn't cause of the Clozaril . So, the one medication that helps the kid? Helps quiet the awful voices that try to get him to hurt himself (and others, yeah) and have essentially stolen his life? He can't take. But we spend lots of money on medication research for erectile dysfunction. Tom Cruise also does a lot to forward the cause of mental health research, and since it's been awhile, let me just mention again how much I hate him for the misinformation he spews that hurts people who need help but who listen to him because he's a Thetan possessed friggin celebrity. (trying not to cuss for my mum and dad). Asshat.


I'm terrified of him, and my heart breaks for him at the same time.

This is my job.

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Behold the 3 legged dog foraging for survival. It's like PBS!

An Actual Nursing Post!

So...we all know that the patients on my floor can be a bit patience draining. Occasionally soul sucking even. So, basically, you need to be able to deal with a lot. I'm not even for a moment going to pretend it's anywhere as near as difficult or stressful as medical/surgical nursing (in a different way) but, if you can't deal with people in general, you reallywon't be able to deal with our patients.

As a general rule, anything that would be cathartic for you to say, like "Shut Up!" to someone who's been calling you all kinds of horrible things for 7 hours is just unacceptable. I'm not saying it's not something you'd like to do, but as a licensed professional, you need to suck it up and do what we (i.e. the good nurses do) and WALK INTO THE OTHER ROOM and mutter under your breath or close the door to the chart room and tell all the other nurses how desperately you wish to commit some kind of gruesome murder. And then you get over it. Obvious, right?

Not for one of our staff. An LPN, proving that in our hospital anyway, most LPNs are crap. At my old job, the only LPN I knew was by far one of the Best Nurses Ever and I learned tons from her. This one, however, is cruising for a firing.

Saturday- tells a patient to shut up, overheard by our awesome weekend social worker, who tells Stella the Bullet Stevens who, understandably, freaks the hell out. She tells the LPN "You can't tell the patients to shut up!" She's ready to kill LPN anyway, because LPN's medication administration skills are pretty weak. Like when he tries to give patients their 8 pm meds at 4 pm. And doesn't notice how that's wrong. Or gives patient Depakote ER instead of Depakote NOT ER because that's what was in the patient's drawer, making it clear that it's a good thing pharmacy doesn't send down K Cl because our patients would all be DEAD.

Cause LPN is missing some crucial brain bits. Social skills noticeably. Sunday night: we've a patient who's on 72 hour meds (that means he doesn't get to refuse cause he gets injections instead then and you can read all about how that works here, and we don't use it that often and we hate giving people shots instead of pills when pills are the easier option. (though I am AWESOME at giving injections) and LPN tells patient to "stop being such a crybaby, my grandmother takes shots better than this". LPN then read riot act by Foxglove, who is totally mortified that such an incident has occurred on her watch. Foxglove immediately tells Stella on her return from break. Stella is not pleased, but as Foxglove has already reprimanded LPN there is no reason for her to do so also.

Monday, Stella and Foxglove are both off. Hooray! Tuesday night we hear little bits and pieces of the LPN's stupidity, but Wednesday night (LPN off) Tommy Davis "the Thinker" and Paul "Saloon" Sanders tell us this little nugget. LPN apparently SLAPPED patient in face and said "Now don't swear anymore!" How much was witnessed remains in debate. In addition, this particular patient has been coming in to hospital for 20+ years and is sadly, so used to being beaten down, that he didn't say anything. He makes us all crazy, but we all kind of think fondly of him, (and desperately wish he'd get away from the nursing station and stop asking all of us the same question 9000 times and no, Mr. Patient, I'm NEVER going to agree with you that the medications are bad for you and again, NO, "If you were my wife I'd prove to you how wrong that is" is not something I ever want to hear again, so just give us a break. You know we all want the best for you. You're a legend here.)

Stella, Theresa "Hellish Devil" Payne and Doris "Shotgun" something or other and I just stood there, mouths agape. What? He did what? You've got to be kidding.

We're waiting for fallout. We tried to warn him, we tried to tell him constructively what needed to be fixed. But idiot didn't listen....

having 2 dogs is great.

They are getting along well, though Daisy is a little devil and likes to steal Isaac's cookies, toys, and any and all socks. (they are ours, not Isaac's) She also likes to eat shoes, which obviously is not cool. She is super pliable, and if you place her somehwere she will just lay there and sleep, with all 3 of her legs up in the air. Her and Isaac like to run around together and knock things over.