So I had an appointment with my doctor this morning. I knew going into her office what she was going to tell me because I had been able to look at some lab tests at work. I knew what the results of those lab tests meant. Yes, she officially diagnosed me as having diabetes. The diagnosis came out of the blue because I haven’t been having any symptoms, and actually feel just fine. A routine lab draw showed an elevated fasting blood sugar and we followed that up with two separate glucose tolerance tests. They were both elevated. The fasting blood sugar was only very slightly elevated, so I wasn’t too concerned at that point. I wasn’t even terribly worried when the first glucose tolerance test came back high. I managed to convince myself that there had to be some reason it was skewed, inaccurate, just not right. Yes, denial can be very powerful. But then the second glucose tolerance test result was even higher. At that point, the denial began to crumble. Sure, I kept hoping my doctor would tell me it was a mistake right up until the minute she said the word diabetes, but I knew in the back of my mind there was no mistake. The good news is that my glucose levels aren’t horribly out of control, so I don’t need to be on insulin. Just an oral diabetic medication. And my doctor said that we caught this early enough that I have a great deal of control in my hands to determine how this plays out… how bad it gets. And I’m in a position where I’m extremely motivated to take that control. I’ve seen the worst of what happens when people with diabetes don’t control their blood sugars. It ends up effecting literally every system of your body, one by one. I refuse to let that happen. I’m only 41. I have far too many years left to live and far too many reasons to stay healthy. I went shopping today for healthy snack foods, found a yummy very low carb pasta, and bought an iced tea machine because I like my iced tea when I get up in the evening and have been drinking sweetened bottled stuff and need to change that. I’m definitely motivated to do what I need to do. It’s scary, a little overwhelming, but going to be ok. My mom asked me today how I am with this, not physically but in my head. I told her “mostly ok,” and it’s true.
I’ve been really busy with all kinds of “real life” things ever since I returned from Guatemala a week and a half ago. So I haven’t been out with my camera lately. And I even got a new one… a new Nikon D3000! But I do happen to have a photo of some geese who visited with us on the grounds of the hotel where we stayed for 5 nights in Mazatenango, Guatemala. These geese were very talkative and had Attitude with a capital A! :) To play along or to see other Camera Critters entries, click here Camera Critters
I read a news article recently that made me chuckle. Granted, it’s fairly easy to make me laugh, but the irony in this story is definitely comical. http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2009/oct/03/admitted-embezzler-wins-lottery-drawing/
In a nutshell, a former radio executive in Kansas admitted he embezzled almost $88,000 from his employer in order to pay for his addiction to scratch off lottery tickets. (Hey, I didn’t make it up, I’m just repeating it… ) At a preliminary hearing recently he was notified he won a $96,000 lottery prize. The irony? The $96,000 winnings are going to pay back his employer so he won’t see a penny of it. You have to admit, that is laughable, yeah?
And in other news, I leave for Guatemala in just 5 days! Yay! I’m busy with last minute preparations and very excited. Many, many photos to follow when I return.
In a town where I lived for greater than 20 years, a criminally insane murderer recently escaped from a state mental hospital while out on a field trip to the county fair. My first thought on hearing this news was “A field trip? Really? C’mon, we’re not in third grade here, people.” Apparently patients at the state mental hospital are routinely taken on fairly well supervised field trips as a way to integrate them back into society. While I agree with that reasoning and it may be appropriate for some patients, I wholeheartedly disagree that it’s in any way appropriate for a violent murderer who is still presumably unstable enough to be discharged from that state mental facility to be out on a field trip. And it’s especially not appropriate for them to be out in a crowd like that filled with children. And apparently I’m not the only one who thinks it’s not really the greatest idea to have this happening. There are news reports that employees of the state mental hospital told administration they had concerns about the type of patients being allowed to go on these field trips. Rules and regulations about this had not been changed, however. There are also news reports that employees supervising the field trip noticed within moments this man’s escape, but it took up to two hours for administration at the hospital to notify law enforcement officials. If that is actually true, it’s inexcusable. As a nurse, I totally understand that a hospital employee’s first priority is patient safety and doing what’s best for the patient. Those concepts drive all patient care. But in this unique setting of a mental hospital where the patients often have a higher than normal propensity for violence, there is public safety to take into account, as well. I’m sure at times it must be difficult to balance the two. But in this case, it seems to me there was a breakdown along the line that lead to the public being put at risk. And that needs to be corrected. Immediately. I have no doubt that by the time the investigation into just how and why this happened is done, some heads are going to roll. Many members of the community are understandably pretty angry about the situation and going to demand some answers. A spokesperson for the state mental facility has said this man is stable on his psych meds for another two weeks. That’s all well and good, but what happens after that time? It’s highly unlikely he has a supply of his meds with him to continue taking. And even if he does have a supply with his, making sure he takes them correctly isn’t really going to be a top priority for him. Are they banking on the fact they’ll find him before the two weeks are up and he decompensates and becomes even more unstable and potentially violent? Are they willing to stake the safety of an entire city on that? That seems like an awfully big risk to be taking.
***UPDATE***
The patient has been found and is back at the mental hospital without any injury to anyone.
I was on the phone with my mother today and I was jokingly whining about my “bad day.” The lawn maintenance people woke me up too early with the noise they were making, I grabbed the wrong kind of cereal when I was at the grocery store and I don’t like the kind of cereal I ended up buying, and two lamps I bought recently just don’t go with the decor of my house at all. Then I had to add that if THAT is all I can find to bitch about in my life, then my life is pretty good. And really, it IS. Those really are the worst things I can think of to complain about. So I’d say my life is pretty blessed. And on that note, I have a few photos to share. They are shots I took recently while visiting Multnomah Falls, which is the second-tallest year-round waterfall in the nation. The water drops 620 feet. It’s really beautiful to see.
I’ve been busy with work and some travel arrangements for my upcoming trip to Guatemala, so I’m again digging into the folder of photos I shot at the wildlife safari a few months ago. Hope you’re not tired of them just yet. To play along or to see other Camera Critters entries, click here Camera Critters Meme
I don’t have any new critter shots for this week, so I’m digging back into my file of Wildlife Safari photos I took a few months ago. There were some just beautiful animals I saw. This is located in southern central Oregon. If you wish to play along or see other Camera Critter entries, click here Camera Critters
So, a few weeks ago towards the end of night shift as I was preparing to leave work my nurse manager for our floor informed me I wasn’t allowed to leave, we may need to mandate someone from night shift to stay in overtime for day shift. She had been phoned by our staffing office at 4:30am letting her know we’d be very short staffed for day shift and to get her ok to call anyone in they could get to volunteer, even if it put them in overtime. This was three hours later and no luck with getting any additional staff. She was saying she hated to do this, and I could see the anguish in her eyes. It was not a pleasant situation for her. A few minutes later she told us (staff from night shift) that we were allowed to leave, no one was being mandated to stay. So, of course, we all ran out of there before things changed. In an interesting coincidence, I was riding the elevator down to the parking area with someone on the staffing committee for the whole hospital. She explained to me that for a nurse manager to put someone into mandatory overtime the approval has to come from her, the hospital wide nursing supervisor on shift, AND a member of the hospital executive team. It has to go through three layers of approval before it actually happens. That was comforting. It was nice to know that mandatory overtime is something all levels of management take seriously and it can’t just be done on a whim. It truly is a last resort. And that’s the way it should be.
I recently got a new laptop… a macbook pro. This is my first mac. I’ve been using windows Vista since shortly after it was released and pretty much hate how unstable it is and the almost constant updates from Microsoft trying to keep it secure and running as smoothly as they can get it. My brother in law and sister and a good friend are all mac fans and have been telling me I really need a mac. They’ve used the arguments that they’re more stable, more secure, and have better graphics. I was slightly worried about being able to get used to the differences after being so used to windows based PCs over the past ten years. So I did some research on apple’s online support pages and decided it wouldn’t be all that difficult to get used to. So I ordered my new laptop. Then I worried about if the extra money I spent on it would be worth it… if I’d really be able to see enough differences. Those worries were gone the minute I unpacked the new mac and booted it up. I could virtually instantly see a difference in the graphics. And over the past four days that I’ve owned it, I’ve not ONCE had to reboot because it froze or started acting buggy. Programs are a breeze to install, finding programs I want to use is simple, and it’s not been difficult to get used to at all. I have things customized how I want them on my desktop and dock, and it was very easy to figure out how to do that. I am totally sold on mac!
My sister has a dog named Grace. (She also answers to Gracie, and Gracie Girl) She is just the sweetest dog… very affectionate and gives lots of slobbery dog kisses when she gets to know you. I was at their house last weekend out in the backyard with the dog and my camera… so this is her. :) To see other camera critter entries or play along click here
