Pain, blonde, essays.

The boys are getting ready to leave for Philmont tomorrow so the house is swirling with activity. I squeezed in three shifts at the hospital over July 4th weekend so I’m working from home the two weeks that they are in New Mexico.

On Monday, every single one of my five patients needed pain medication. I was giving out morphine, percocet, dilaudid, Xanax, oxy & flexeril all day. A day of pain management is a tough day. That’s like 3-5 doses of pain medication per patient so – 15 trips to retrieve the medication, administer medication and then to find a witness to waste the narcotic because sometimes the ampule comes with 4 mg, but the order says 2 mg. I hate pain management, one feels like a drug dealer.

There still is hair dying occuring in the house:

Bacon socks.
Vince is blonde.

We squeezed in the beginnings of the college application process a few days ago by beginning to talk about the “brag sheet” that Vince was to provide to the guidance counselor by the end of the school year last year. (whoops) It started out rough (because, as we know, my hang-up is college admissions), as these conversations usually go between me and Vince and then it smoothed out by the end (which I give 100% of the credit to Vince). Vince was writing about various jobs he’s had or leadership roles and, of course, I’m encouraging him to polish them up a little (spin) and he rolls his eyes. But we have fun. I’m like – put down that you babysat toddlers and they voted you favorite babysitter because you make a mean Kraft mac & cheese. Then halfway through the hour, hour and a half we are talking about this, he looks at me and says, am I supposed to get pity points? Should my college essay be about Edda? Because it sucks, of course, but I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for us. Then we discuss this a bit. I asked a friend about this – she said, of course you have him write the essay about Edda, how could you not? I’m like, Edda’s not really that sick. We are lucky, we aren’t in the hospital all the time, she doesn’t have seizures, she eats well, I’m not worried when she catches a cold – I can still control my lifestyle pretty well. Sure, I gotta find childcare, but it’s not super specialized childcare. And she’s like – Doris, you know she’s really far from being well, right? And then I say, only when I talk to people with typical kids and usually only for the first time I talk about Edda am I reminded that Edda is really far from well.

The spaghetti sauce exploded in the Target shipment.

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