Dear Kate Cox,

I am so sorry your state is treating you and the doomed child you carry so poorly.

And to gain nonexistent points against people like yourself.

This is wrong.

I’ve written before about expletive-deleted people who think that torturing women and children who are not meant for life out of the womb will gain them anything. Except for derision.

These political hacks who are using women and women’s rights as pawns in the sick, twisted gamesmanship game they are playing.

They forget, you see.

They forget that women are living, breathing human beings with rights, not just gestational chambers.

It is not even about the child. It is about the tax revenue that the child will bring in IF they survive to adulthood.

Or rather they want to force us back 70 years when they had ALL the power. Or every further back than that.

They want to torture the babies who are not meant for this earthly plane. And their parents.

You see the issue has always been about control. It has always been about power. They perceive a danger to their power and are desperate to keep it.

You are better than they know or can even comprehend.

You seek to preserve your fertility and they seek to control us through our fertility.

I am worth more than the theoretical contents of my womb.

Signed,

      a concerned woman in North Carolina who is very sorry you are going through this

The post-it reads “Ambition. Dirty word?”

We’ve all worked with the ambitious nurse who has designs on the captain’s chair.

So to speak.

The nurse who has ambitions to be something beyond “just a nurse”. And who is willing to do just about anything to become something beyond “just a nurse”.

I used to think that I didn’t have any ambition because I never aspired to nurse manager or assistant nurse manager. Or house supervisor.

I’m sure there is a Star Trek reference here.

After all, Lieutenant Reginald Barclay had ambitions to be the captain. Or the hero. Or to be anyone else than Lieutenant Barclay. This is a Star Trek Next Generation and Voyager reference.

Ha! I knew I could do one.

It isn’t bad to have ambition for higher rank. Or a higher position.

But there may not be room for a multitude of people at the top.

It is when your ambition blinds you to who you are hurting as you jockey for a higher position that is dangerous to you.

Never forget that as operating room nurses, as labor and delivery room nurses, as emergency room nurses, as cath lab nurses, as mother baby nurses, or NICU nurses the reason we work is for the patient. That is good enough for me.

My ambition is to be the best nurse I can be.

I think it is a pretty good one.

The post-it reads “Sometimes I think that a patient thinks that medical imaging is like a window into their body. It is, but it is frosted over.”

Patients are always keen to look at their films. They don’t know what they are looking at and want us to interpret for them, but they are excited.

Medical imaging- CT scan, mammography, MRI, even x-ray, can be confusing for an untrained eye to look at them and diagnose themselves. Doctors train for years and years to be able to interpret faint images that result from these tests. To tell the good, crisp scan, which they aren’t, from the blurry blob.

Each of the medical imaging type is used in the diagnosis of different things. A CT of your abdomen when you have belly pain will tell the doctor different things than an ultrasound of your abdomen.

An MRI is more specific but prohibitively expensive, which is why the cheaper tests are done first.

There is an art to medical imaging reading that, again, takes years to learn.

And even then the picture can be fuzzy.

I was going to write kind of like tea leaves and augury (mucking about in entrails) to tell the future but medical imaging is hard science, not telling the future.

I will absolutely bring up your pictures, but unless there is a helpful arrow drawn on by the radiologist, I have very limited experience to draw upon.

I am better with x-rays of bone.

I haven’t written yet today for the simple reason that all the papers have been turned in. I’ve written 56,271 words for November. And my brain is completely empty after turning in two 20+ page papers in the last two days.

This word count is for lecture notes, notes from readings, rough drafts, actual papers, and blog posts.

I know this because I kept track because November is National Novel Writing Month, where writers try to write 50,000 words.

I’ve participated in NaNo, as it is colloquially called, for years with original fiction. I wrote Calling in Dead, which is about a road trip with a scientist who is becoming a zombie who is trying to get to the cure while trying to outrun the hunters who want to kill the partial zombie. I wrote Gabriel’s Gate, which is about a politically connected detective agency in Maryland. I worked on Occupational Hazard, which is about a serial killer in the OR.

I have to say, after being a working nurse during a pandemic, about a virus, makes me kinda reconsider the zombie virus. It just hits differently.

The overall point of this blog post is that it is okay to admit your brain is empty after the end of the semester.

Just look at what you’ve done over the semester.

Books that have been read.

Papers that have been written.

Tests that have been taken.

Be proud of yourself for all that you’ve accomplished.

After finals put away the schoolbooks.

Enjoy the holidays if you participate.

Enjoy the time off if you don’t.

Spring semester will be here before you know it.

Yes, the title is clunky.

It is meant to convey that there are crispy fried jalapenos in the cookie dough.

The fan favorite of the OR. 95% of OR approved.

There is always going to be a few outliers. Statistics has taught me that.

This is the final Thursday of the Something from Nothing November theme. Where I use random ingredients from my pantry.

Today is the container of fried jalapenos that I bought from Trader Joe’s.

I was wondering if they could cookie. And they can.

It is a more subtle taste than fresh or dried jalapenos.

Let’s see if they like them.

This is a short post because this is four days into my own hiatus.

Off to work on the final paper!