Work, Sleep, Eat, Take Care of Children, Try to Clean, Repeat

Our days are full. Sometimes not full of anything that feels particularly productive, but full. A 1- and 3-year old combined are a full-time job, no joking, and with one of us working full-time and the other home with the kids, that pretty much takes up our time! I can't imagine what it would be like with both of us working full-time, as many parents do.

I have settled in the IMCU (intermediate care unit, a step down from the ICU but still more critical than the general medical/surgical floors), where I will do an extended period of "internship." I work with my own team of patients and am a staff nurse in that unit in every sense of the word. The goal is technically still the ICU, and it is expected that after a few months I'll be better prepared for the rigors of the ICU.  The ICU is certainly very, very intense and very invasive. I'm not sure what I feel about that. The loss of dignity any patient suffers when they are splayed naked on a table with needles poking into them, electric shocks permeating their body, and literally bone crunching calisthenics practiced by a medical professional bothers me. Especially when the survival rates of people undergoing such practices are extremely low, and even if "surviving," a patient may just barely get back to "alive." People usually suffer death or permanent damage following such an episode. Do you know anyone who has "survived a code" in the hospital? Is it worth trying at ANY cost to restart a heart beat in an essentially dead body? I am quite certain I wish to be a DNR but I'm still thinking about any exceptions there might be so I haven't made it official. It's scary to think of not being "resuscitated" but it's a scary thing to be dead to begin with, and so being a DNR is really just a way of avoiding all of the suffering that will go along with death if resuscitation should be necessary. Resuscitation does not return life to normal. Limited intubation might be OK for me, though, so I'm still on the fence about what I will specify.

I'd love to hear any thoughts on the ethics of intensive medicine as we practice it in the USofA.

On the other hand, I really do love the job I'm doing right now and I'm happy to be there :) I have been on my own for a few months now and usually I feel good about my work nights. Occasionally things are pretty overwhelming, but nurses who have been doing this for a long time say there are always those nights where everything seems to go haywire and there isn't enough time to do everything.

The girls are well, though Tass has a cold, and Porter is busy doing home improvement projects and getting the girls here and there to classes, parks, and the library. Life just keeps rolling on...

I joined the iPhone party! I got an older model on eBay and now I can take pictures on the girls, which I love 😊 Best feature, in my opinion. Not  going to be a very thorough  update but it'll be better than silence.
I  have been biking to work every day. The other day if was about 22 degrees out and I felt pretty legit.
Tassie went to school for the first time today! So exciting. She is going two mornings  a week. She didn't want to leave when it s time to go home. They have all the children between 2.5 and 5 years old  together. They make their own bread  ( yes,the children!)) and on Fridays she'll be bringing two vegetables  for soup.