Cruising the Oregon Trail

Be nice to me, I gave blood today

2011-08-12T13:40:00.001-07:00

After noticing that a rather large number of patients have been getting blood transfusions lately, I wandered down to the lab and asked the manager, Salah, if there was a need for blood here. He replyed in the affirmative, citing a need for type-O in particular. (I am O+.) I was working at the time, but promised to come back after my shift to donate.

During my shift, I tried to encourage my collegues to donate as well. Unfortunatly, Palestinians seem to be as lame as Americans when faced with the idea of voluntarily going under the needle, and I didn't get any takers. However, at least the excuses where different. Rather then citing a colorful recent sexual history, most stated that they could not donate during Ramadan, that married people couldn't donate, or that women couldn't donate.

I actually didn't think that I would be able to donate myself, as my hemoglobin is generally through the floor and I have been joining the rest of the hospital in the Ramadan fast. But I guess that a diet of yellow rice and chicken is high in iron, because I was actually in the double-unit bracket (although I only gave one.)

I did warn them about recent travel to Haiti (which is a rule-out for America because of the risk of malaria) but that was not a problem. As an ex-screener for tissue donations, I was pretty shocked that I didn't have to fill out a 10 page survey of my medical and social problems, but things here are pretty different.

"Gas The Arabs"... seriously?

2011-08-05T16:24:00.000-07:00

Jessica

I have been in touch with a young lady named Jessica who has spent the last few weeks in Gaza, and I was happy when she gave me a call, saying that she and another volunteer, Emmett, were in town and were hoping for a visit. They were involved in an Art Exchange in Gaza, where they worked with art projects with the kids there, and exchanged the art with other kids in the states.

Unfortunatly, I had to work that night. I did manage to sneak away-- I wanted to smoke shesha with them, and smoking during the day on Ramadan was not allowed. I had suggested to then that they visit the night market, but we found out that was closed. I was shocked-- 2AM shopping was half the fun of Ramadan while I was in Yemen. However, the Israelis did not allow shops to be open at such a later hour. So with only about 8 hours that one can eat, Palestinians can still only shop during less then half of those. (Another blow to the economy.)

Jessica had actually been in Palestine about a year ago and knew more about Hebron then I did. Emmett had not been, so the next morning we had breakfast in my room and then headed out. (As it was Ramadan, I had snagged some food during my overnight shift to store in my room, where we ate away from the eyes of fasting Muslims.) We walked to the old city, where we were approached by what I call an "impromtu tour guide". Seeing that we were on the way to the Cave of Ibraham, he told us that it was closed, but that he would show us around.

People come to Hebron for two reasons-- to see the Cave of Ibraham, and to see the occupation. As most visitors to the Cave are Jewish and therefore stay in the settlements, any westerners that can be found in the old city can generally safely be assumed to be examining the effects of the occupatiuon, as we were. Our tour guide, Ibrahim, was well aware of this and basically started to give us the tour without asking. It's hard to say "no" to someone whose schpeal basically starts with "come and see what terrible things have happened to our city." To say "no" sounds like "I don't care".

Ibraham was a great guide. His "specialty" seemed to center around the different art and graffitti that can be found around the settlements, as can be seen here. The most shocking, of course, was a door that proclaimed "Gas The Arabs JDL" (JDL stands for "Jewish Defence League".) which made me both angry and highly confused.

Shada Street
Palestinains on the left, Isrealis on the right

The roads that are around and in the settlements are often segrgated,with some roads allowed for Palestinians to walk on, and others restricted. (There are also areas where Israelis are not allowed to go.) There is even one street, Shada street, where a divider through the center of the road seperates the area that Palestinians are allowed to walk from the areas where Israelis are allowed to walk. (Only the Israeli side allows cars, in general Palestinians are not allowed to drive in the Israeli-controlled areas of "H2".)
Our tour ended with a walk through a beautiful Arab Graveyard and a stop at a subterrian lake which Abraham and Sarah supposidly washed at at one time. Washing in it yourself was supposed to be good luck, so I headed down. The stagnent water was rancid, smelly, and buggy so I quickly dabbed myself with the green water while Jessica snapped a quick picture. Afterwards, I felt much dirtier then before.

In retrospect, ew.

Ibrahim concluded his tour at this point, and Jessica talked us into heading to the "Synagogue part" of the Cave of Ibrahim. After the shooting in 1994, the cave was seperated into two parts. My tour book informed me that I was not allowed into the Jewish half, but Jessica told me that would be assumed to be Jewish and allowed in. Turns out that she was right. We walked right in to an area that was crowded and stuffed with people and books. Jewish tourists mingled amoung the people praying as we examined the Cenotaphs from the Jewish side. It was too busy for me, so after seeing everything we decided to check Ibrahim's claim that the mosque was closed. (It wasn't, the little twerp.)

The mosque side has a totally different feel. The first thing that we noticed was the hostility of the soldiers as we endered, which contrasted strongly with the welcoming smiles that we got walking into the other side. One of the soliders asked Jessica if she had "anything sharp, like a knife". (I did not point out that had she been carring a knife for the purposes of harming someone she was not likely to verbally own up to it.)

Damn it, this doesn't look like Mt. Doom

When it is not Ramdan, many people will come simply to sit in the cool shade and drink water (as often the mosque is the only place where drinking water can be found.) The only think that I don't like about it is that women are forced to cover in incredibly hot denim capes that Jessica said made us look like hobbits from Lord of the Rings. We took a seat by a fan and were approached by a kid asking for money. I offered to take a picture of him instead. He counted by asking if he could take my picture, and I handed over my camera. As a result of this action, my camera was returned about a half hour later with about 5 lovely pictures (and 45 blurry ones) documenting the mosque and it's visitors from every concievable angle. Palestinian children are easily amused. He did take some good pictures, especially pictures that I would have never taken, such as the following pictures of people praying:

There is nothing that bridges a language gap like a phrase book.

Jessica and Emmett left that day for a small area outside of Bethlaham. They were going to be staying with a woman who is dealing with an entroaching settlement that is slowly taking over Palestinian farmland. At night, fences will appear that grab farmland and are protected by the IDF. My hat is off to her, I can barely stomach the "Gas The Arabs" sign.

Night Shift

2011-08-04T16:01:00.001-07:00

If you have money to blow, we could use
a few new incubators

I have been working in the NICU, and during Ramadan most of my shifts have been night shift. This is because people prefer to be home during "Iftar", the meal where the fast is broken.

For me, one of the best parts is getting fed at 3AM. Normally, I would either have to wake up to get food at this time, squirrel some food away, or just go hungry.

This little one is hoping that her
next leap will be the leap home.
Seriously, it's a 360-degree ultaviolet device
for jaundice.

At one point, a sleepy staff member came out and told me a bit about himself. It turns out that he had two jobs-- one here, and one in Ramallah. Ramallah is about a 3 hour round trip. I asked, surprised, how many hours he worked in a week. He told me 40. I nodded, thinking that this was normal, until he told me that he had an additional 35 hours at the hospital that we were at. Turns out that he is working two full time jobs.
I found out the reason for this when I asked if he had kids. It turns out that he and his wife are not able to have kids, so the extra money that he is raising has gone to two unsuccessful in-vitro fertilization attempts. They are trying for a third. Having kids is vital to family life here in Palestine. (As there are no retirement homes here, it is also vital for a comfortable old age.)

"You Come To My House And You Will Be Better"

2011-07-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

I've been sick again (this time tonsilitis, which I am prone too) and my illness has been causing a few cultural snafus. Just like the local belief that a stomachache apparently needs to be treated with food, a sore throat (and other respirtory illnesses) need to be treated with a journey out of the city and into the country.
So, when news hit the hospital that I was sick, a "rash" of invitations came rushing in, each to a villiage more distant then the last. Although it's rude to refuse an invitation to another's home in this culture, I tend to put my foot down when I am not feeling well and just want to rest. Unfortunatly, the invitations do not appear to be voluntary, and I have taken to hiding in my room to avoid them. The first one I thought that I would be able to perry with an excuse, but the lady said that if I came to her house I would be better. I laughed at her joke, then realized that she was serious. At that time I had a slight fever and I was an hour from the end of my shift and an hour from bed. Unlike milky food which can be hidden in the trash, I have had a harder time trying to convince people that I just don't want to travel or meet a ton of people when I have a fever.

For me, it seems unreasonable to make any type of demands on someone that doesn't feel well, and I am trying not to feel frustrated that people will not just accept my "no thank you, I don't feel well, perhaps another time" and drop it. I am trying to imagine my own reaction if I found out that someone was continuing to smoke during a nasty chest infection-- I would not take a "no thank you" to my advice to stop smoking if I really cared about the person, no matter how polite. I think that people here feel the same way about getting me some fresh air. But, after working for eight hours, I really just want to rest and spending another four hours trying to stumble through a conversation with my weak Arabic is just not an option.

I have been transferred to the NICU, where I have been for the last few days. The plus sides is that I don't have to try to talk to scared parents that don't understand my English. The con side is is that I am working with men who don't really know how to react to a woman like me, but I think that we will all learn. People of opposite genders are not friends here, unless they are also family.

Water Water, nowhere?

2011-07-26T12:36:00.005-07:00

I was talking to some NGO workers the other day, and I learned about the problem in Hebron that involves water.
You have probably heard at one point or another that the water is not divided equally amoung the groups here. There are basically two governments, the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is below the Israeli government. The Israeli government decides who gets the water and how it is devided up amoung the people, and the PA who rations out the water that the Israeli government decides that they get.

Needless to say, there isn't a water problem that I know of in the settlements. The area of the city outside the settlements is another matter, however. Most of the Palestinians have water tanks that are on their roof. The PA gives each house 2, and richer families will buy more. The water is rationed to different areas during the month. When it is your month, you fill up your tanks and that is all the water that you get for a few weeks. This means that water usage that it not considered "vital" will have to wait. Some couples will even have to forgo sexual activity as they are unable to properly wash afterwards to pray. (I also heard that during the Intifada, bored Israeli soldiers guarding the settlements would shoot at the water tanks to rupture them, and leave the families without water.)

This is obviously not an issue here at the hospital, where we are able to have all the water that we need. But after learning this, I have taken steps to conserve.

A Sad Day

2011-07-18T10:52:00.004-07:00

Beleive it or not, the hospital isn't all
dying children and crazy staff.
There are good days, too.

The day before I got sick, we admitted a little guy with Down's Syndrome who was having respiratory problems. I had not been able to determine what exactly was wrong with him, but he had obvious cardiac surgery, acidosis (probably respiratory), and was gray. I guessed that he was about less then a year-- age was hard to judge because of developmental delays. We did the same respiratory resuscitation efforts that we had done on Farah the day before and he was admitted to our pediatric ICU.

He wasn't doing very well when I came into today, with bruises on his body from what looked like DIC. I found out that he had been coded during the night. He was on a respirator and a heart monitor that was showing periods of apnea. I think that the heart monitor may have also been a defibrillator that was keeping him alive, but I wasn't able to find out. I worked in another area for about an hour, then when I went in to see how he was doing I saw that he had died. He was wrapped in a sheet that was taped closed, and someone had written something (probably a prayer) in green. I am not sure why the child died, or if he would have died had he been in the States. Down Syndrome kids tend to have pretty significant cardiac problems, so it was probably related to that and may or may not have been fixable.

About an hour later, the family started to congregate. I didn't take much notice of the men, but a young woman came in and sat in a different set of chairs and started to cry. Everyone was busy with rounds at this time. Now, the problem with working with families that have lost someone is that death rituals differ greatly, including among different areas and classes. So although my first instinct was to take this women in to see her son, I wasn't sure if that was appropriate.

I did know that, regardless of culture, it wasn't appropriate in any situation for this women to have to quietly sob while people were laughing at the nursing station five feet from her. I tried to get someone to take her someplace private (I didn't want to lead her away without telling her where she was going, and I didn't have the words to explain) and they started to take her into Farah's room (the young baby I've been caring for). Knowing that the last thing that women needed to see was another women holding a living baby, I intercepted the her and took the bewildered women into the nursing break room. I gave her some tissues and a glass of water and then demanded that she be allowed to see her son.

Finally, two nurses took her into the PICU and unwrapped her son for her to see and touch. She cried,touched his face, and asked that he be covered up. The family wrapped up the youngster in a blanket and took him away.

Code Bleah

2011-07-17T06:51:00.001-07:00

Been sick for the last 24 hours with some sort of stomach virus that has been going around. I think that I am finally over the worst of it. The staff here have been really great about taking care of me, although mostly they come into my room to try to talk me into eating food that I can not digest. I am going to head out in a bit and try to find a store that sells ramen. Instant ramen is a pretty universal food, I am hoping. I keep trying to explain to the housekeepers that I would rather be punched repeatedly in the stomach then try to digest the oil-laden hummus, flatbread, and yogurt that they keep bringing me.

My one (and only) patient, Farah, went down a few days ago to have a gasto tube placed as tube feedings unfortunatly seem to be a part of her permenent future. While she was down there, I got to wondering what would happen if a patient coded while on the unit. I had not been shown a crash cart, paddles, or anything like that. And I came pretty close to finding out. About an hour later, one of the nurses got a call to pick her up. I was behind the nursing station when the doors opened and Nabila called out that we needed O2. I wasn't able to figure out what happened exactly, but Farah was grey as stone and her mother was in tears. We took her into the room and I used a nasal cannula that was there to give her O2 until someone brought a vent. We got an O2 monitor at her and she was running at 76% O2 (normal is 95-100). We manged to get to O2 stats up, but she kept on stopping breathing on me and I had to shake her awake. It took 20 minutes to get her color back, and I insisted that the doctor be called when the poor little girl wouldn't stop gasping for breath. Normally, I would have called a rapid responce the second that she had gotten off the elevator, and reamed surgery for sending what obviously was an unstable patient on an elevator without supplimental O2. On that note, I don't think that I have seen any portable O2 anywhere in the hospital. We do the best that we can with the little amount of equiptment that we have.
Anyway, she is doing a lot better now.

Salami Legroom

2011-07-14T11:21:00.004-07:00

Nabila, my preceptor, hasn't been paid in
three months, yet here she is diligently
showing how we get a flush

As Friday is a Muslim holiday, Thursdays are basically Fridays here in Hebron. As a result, there is a fireworks show going on at some big place about 200 yards outside my window. They shoot off about 20 or so every hour. It was cool at first, nows it's starting to get annoying.

Life at the hospital goes on. I found out today that no one here has been paid for a month. One of the nurses told me that since there is no money for the Ramadan feast (Ramadan is in August) she is planning on eating her children for the Iftar, or breaking of the fast. I think that the joke might have lost something in the translation. (There go the damn fireworks again.)

My patient, Salah, whose name is actually Farah (Salah is the mother) is still here. The doctors said a week ago that Farah could go home as soon as her parents buy a home suction machine. I am starting to wonder if the parents know that. I have tried to get the other girls to ask the mother if she has questions about this request, but the baby is still here. Not that I mind, I enjoy taking care of her. (That is us in the picture.)

Me and Farah

But I am really worried about her. I think that I mentioned that her mother and father are older, which is probably why she has so many congenital defects. She was also an IVF baby. With the baby being likely developmentally delayed (I suspect Down's Syndrome), deaf, and mute from the trach, she will need much more stimulation then most babies to help her mind grow. She will cry, but it is completely silent, so she can't even ask for attention.

Farah and her mother, Salah

And there go the fireworks again...

Hebron

2011-07-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

Unrelated note, what is up
with this picutre?

For my first day off, I took a walk into the old city of Hebron. Hebron is unique in that it is the only area in Israel and the occupied territories to have a settlement in a major city. Hebron is divided into two areas, H1 (under Palestinian control) and H2 (the Israeli settlement.)

Guard tower at the separation
between H1 and H2

As a Red Cross/Red Cresent volunteer, I have made it a goal not to become involved in the politics of the situation. Although I have my own beliefs, I am not here as a protestor to to serve some agenda, at least I am trying not to. It is hard when everyone wants to talk to me about politics, or you walk around in Hebron.

I am willing to consider arguements about Israel's right to be here and it's founding, etc etc, but do firmly beleve that the settlements are wrong. Supported and populated mostly by the most extremist populations, it is generally believed that they serve simply to increase the land holdings of areas that are not under Palestinian control. They are akin to people moving into the “Green Zone” of Iraq, and are not only agaist international law, they are against Israeli law as well. They are tolerated in this country for the same reason that the US tolerates things like Abu Ghraib and Gitmo-- it is thought that they are necessary.

Hebron old city market, with the covered to catch garbage.
Can you imagine living here?

A lock to a shop soldered shut

In the case of the settlements in Hebron, they have causes the old city and it's holy site – Ibrahimi Mosque-- to become heavily fortified by Israeli solders. Lonely Planet states that there are 4000 soldiers to protect the 500 settlers (no, that isn't a typo, in fact I just looked itup again to be sure.) After eeing the rooftop lookout points and walking through three checkpoints to get to the mosque, I did not find this hard to believe. The settlement houses are across a small alley from the Palestinian houses, and the Palestinians have had to put webbing over the roads as the settlers will throw trash out the window. In one house that I visited, my host said that he had to keep his windows closed and locked lest his neighbors from across the way toss rocks and Maltov cocktails into his home. (I did not believe him about the Maltov cocktail part until he showed me a area that had been bombed by such a concoction.) He also showed me that many shops were forcefully closed and their doors welded shut to prevent the re-opening of the shops. The shops were too close to the settlements (often, they were in the first floor of the building) and so they were taken away. Resisters were arrested.

The old city

Hebron's recent history includes a massacure in the Ibrahimi Mosque, were a settler (who happened to be a doctor) walked in and killed 29 men and boys while they prayed, injuring another 200. This is most of the reason for the security to get into the Mosque. After walking through two remote controlled locked doors and being searched by two guards, I could start to feel the irritation. My irritation reached its peak at the last Israeli solder who searched me. She was blonde with an American accent, and when she asked me: “Where are you from?” I couldn't help but answer “America. And you?” She gave me a dirty look and let me pass. So much for not getting involved politically.

Praying at the tomb of Abraham

Heartbreaking

2011-07-06T08:16:00.001-07:00

I am continuing to work with Salah, the little girl that I spoke about yesterday with the congenital defects. She is still needed almost constant suctioning. Today the doctor ordered that we try and perform feedings with the bottle, but she will almost immediatly start to choke, and she doesn't try top suck (probably because she has never successfully fed from the bottle or nipple.)

Her mother is an older lady (40+) who is having a very hard time dealing with her daughter's medical needs. I noticed that she has had no visitors, which is rare in Palestinian culture. I learned today that she is actually from Bethlaham, so she is a long way from home. She also doesn't have any other kids. She is trying to be positive about her daughter, but when little Salah vomitted everything that ws given her, the mother broke down and stated to cry. If the child survives, then this women's next few years is going to be spent caring for a child that can not even eat. The mother has been very good about doing the suctioning and feedings herself, but today I had to take over when she was threatening a nervous breakdown. Even if I could speak English, there would be no words of comfort that I would be able to give her.

She must have been looking forward to having a child very much. Of course, there is no guarentee that any child will be born healthy, but I am sure that she was not expecting to suddently take care of a child that is so ill. I tried to get her to leave this afternoon, even for a few hours. She left overnight a few days ago, and returned in much better spirits, but the mother didn't want to leave. The child will be discharged soon, and hopefully will some day be able to have surgery to correct some of her defects. But I worry that the baby will die much before that.

We also got a terrible case of meningococcal meningitis. I was horrified to see that he was not put on droplet isolation, but they did have contact isolation (of sorts). He was covered with sores due to a very high PTT that was probably caused by DIC.

Days 2 and 3

2011-07-05T08:35:00.004-07:00

Nursing Station

Well, I have completed day 2 and 3 of my hospital work. Today was very slow, we didn't have any admissions. I am starting to remember what I found most frustrating about working overseas, and that is the slow pace of life. Honestly, the workload of the entire unit could be done by one nurse from the hospital that I used to work at. The parents do most of the care, leaving the nurses to just administer medications. There were four nurses today, including myself. That means that there is about only one patient per nurse. Much of the day is spent talking and eating. There is a special concern over my eating habits to the staff, and the kitchen will often call the floor to tell me to come eat.

Intake/med room/1 of 2 sinks

I did get my own patient today. Little Salah is a little girl who was born with severe congenital defects. You can see in the picture that she has a trach, 6 fingers on her right hand, and deformed ear canals. I have not been able to find out more about her condition, but I think that even in America there would be little that could be done for her. She requires almost constant suction, feeding through her NG tube, and is on an antiepeleptic drug phenobarbitol. She is going to stay until her mother "psychologically accepts her condition" and has learned to care for her. I think that this will happen soon. The mother would not allow me to touch her or play with her two nights ago, but today the mother picked her up and cooed to her and was able to perform feeding and suction. At the end of shift, I was told to give report. Sif, the head nurse, was there for report and I assumed that he would translate. I said that the infant was stable, was not needing suction as often, but that the mother needed to understand the importance of checking residue prior to feeding.

An empty patient room

I am learning a lot. I inserted my first NG tube, although I wish that it had not been on a baby of a month old. All patients get an IV, and scalp IV's are not inserted by the doctor, so I am terrified when I will first do this. There are only two sinks on the floor with liquid soap and paper towels, so I carry a bottle of Purel which I share with the other nurses.

What I wouldn't give for my maternal and child textbook!

Day One

2011-07-03T07:23:00.001-07:00

No pictures, I am afraid, I forgot to bring my camera. I should have some tomarrow.
I am hoping that this is just first day jitters, but I am actually not sure if this is going to work, but I am certainly going to try. The language barrier is a real problem. All the people that work are Palestinians and have only a very basic skill of English. I think that they thought that my Arabic was better, but if they are willing to give it a go, so am I.
I am working on the Pediatric ward, and my preceptor probably has the best English there. The kids that were there involved a few babies with hyperbilirubin, a baby with terrible congenital defects, and a few older kids with chronic health problems (respiratory).
The worst part was that I couldn't answer the questions of the parents or even explain what I was doing when I went in to take vitals. At one point, a mother went to the door and motioned to me. I told my preceptor, who was charting, that help was needed and she told me to go in myself. I did, but obviously couldn't understand what she needed. I mean, how awful is it to have a sick kid, and a nurse who can't talk to you to boot? Communication and teaching is such a vital part of nursing, and this is why I am not sure if I will be successful here. Even asking a simple question like "do you want some tea?" is rewarded with a barrage of Arabic rather then a yes or a no. I am not very good at learning languages in the first place, and I don't think that I can raise to a level where I can be a helpful worker. But, as I said, I will try.
There was rounds in the morning, and for some reason they would switch to English when the doctors would announce what his plans were for the child. At one point he pointed at a premature (29 week) newborn and asked everyone what we should be concerned with regarding the eyes. No one there knew, and he was very pleased when I finally said that we should watch for retinopathy of prematurity, so maybe I will be able to help after all.

We will see tomorrow, maybe it will go better.

Hebron

2011-07-02T20:00:00.001-07:00

Well, I finally made it to the hospital. I am in my new room listening to call to prayer. My room faces west and I am able to watch the stunning sunsets over the city of Hebron. The strangest thing is that it feels like I never really left.

Yesterday, after a very brief argument over the day of the week in a Tel Aviv bus station, I discovered that it was actually Friday, not Thursday. This meant that the offices of the Red Crescent would be closed, and I would not be able to travel that day. This was actually pretty good news, as it meant that I would have a day in Jerusalem, although I was eager to start my work. At the bus station, I met a guy from Holland, Jaap, who was coming in to volunteer as well. It turned out that he was not only going to Damascus Gate, but he was also planning on staying at the Palm, which was the same place that I was last time.

We actually met due to the extreme rudeness of the Israeli citizenry that I have encountered here. We had been waiting for about 30 minutes in the searing heat for a bus to come. When it finally did, Japp helped me to load our luggage onto the bus while the rest of the people got on. When he started to get on the bus, the driver told us that there was no more room. We had to grab our bags from the bus, which drove away almost the second that our bags hit the pavement. Although this behavior was what I may have expected in America, I was used to the hospitality of the countries that I had been in and was pretty shocked. But it did give me a traveling companion, and we spent the day in Jerusalem together, visiting the tomb of Jesus and watching Shabbat at the Western Wall.

Ack, I am so tired. Will write more later. But here is a picture of the Seperation Wall for your viewing pleasure.

They're not buying it, Chewie

2011-07-01T00:45:00.003-07:00

Made it in!!!
I didn't think that I would. I got into the airport having made a few friends on the plane and was chatting with them in an attempt to look casual as I approached the passport station. I had read somewhere that whistling people appear to be less worrisome, so I whistled a silent toon and tried to look tired but excited.
When I approached the customs person, I think that my first mistake was answering a little too pat. On the plane, I talked to a few Israelis who all expressed a good deal of shock when finding out that I was planning on asking for a three month visa. I was told by all of them that there really wasn't enough here to have a three day stay. I also found out that there really isn't an age limit for working on a Kabutz. So when they asked what I would do here, I said that I wanted to start in Jerusalem and move outward to see everything, and maybe volunteer in a Kabutz if there was time. She nodded, hit a few more keys, then asked me to go to the office "for security reasons".

When I went to the office, there were a few people of obvious Arab decent there (the women where wearing scarves) and no other white people. I waited patiently, trying very hard to stay calm. I felt a little better when another white woman was shown in. She was irate, swearing under her breath. I folded my hands and tried to look polite, feeling a little better. I felt a lot worse when she was was told a few minutes later that she was free to go.

All the people I was waiting with (and a few new people) were cleared and I started to feel screwed. An hour later, I finally noticed that one of the security men were looking at my passport. My stomach sank when he started to key my name into a computer. I basically gave up hope when he picked up the phone and told the listener my name.

I was called in a few minutes later, and the minute I stepped in a second man who looked like a policeman walked in behind me. Great, I thought, they are going to arrest and deport me on the spot. The computer guy asked me if this was my first time in Israel. Knowing that he knew the answer anyway, I said that it wasn't. He asked what I had done during my last trip, and before I could answer the two men started talking. I wished that I knew Hebrew. Mr. Computer then asked me about money, and asked to see my credit cards. I handed them over, with a glimmer of hope. He dashed that when he then asked me if there were any "problems" during my last trip.

In a move that probably allowed my entrance, I told him flatly that yes, there were problems, I was arrested and deported during that last trip. Hegding my bets that his computer didn't have any details about my arrest, I said (very somewhat truthfully) that I was following "a guy I met" from Denmark. I said that I stayed with a group of international women, and that I was arrested "for being in the wrong place". I said that it was stupid. I also told him that I was planning on volunteering during my stay. I told him that I was in contact with the Red Crescent and was also hoping to work with the Israeli version of the Red Cross, and perhaps a Kabutz. I said that I was a nurse.

He then asked me many times if I knew anyone here. He asked if I was still in contact with the women or the man that I was "following". I laughed a little and said no, I didn't even remember their names, I think it was Gustov or something. I talked with a few others later who had been held, and questions about people that we knew in the area were a common theme. Finally, I was asked to wait somewhere else. I assumed that they were holding me so that they could get the right people to escort me out of the country.

My hopes dashed was actually a bit of a relief, as was the coke machine that was in the new place I was waiting. I got a coke and watched some football on TV while I waited my fate. After about another hour, a women said my name, handed me my passport, and said that I could go.

"Uh, where?" She pointed to customs. I opened my passport and saw a three month stamp. It was a beautiful moment.

Palestine iPreperations: How to get in (hopefully)

2011-06-21T13:06:00.001-07:00

Well, the preparations are going slowly, and it turns out that the electronic preperations are much more of a big deal. As I heard from a friend today who is going to Gaza:

On my way out of Tel Aviv, they went through every scrap of paper I had, including a notebook for directions to various places. They also scoured my bag for residues, found teargas (I was at a [protest, details deleted] and the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] teargassed us), and had me escorted onto the plane by a heavily-armed, uniformed soldier. The airport security (IDF) have been highly trained to evaluate people and how nervous they are. They rank you on your way out of Ben Gurion based on your security threat level and I was a 5 (out of 6). I'm afraid of ever trying to fly back in.

I had a friend who arrived last summer and had her laptop searched. They demanded a password to her email and found that she emailed all of her pro-Palestine information to another email address, then demanded the password to that. She got in after a seven hour interrogation and strip search.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, a lot of the horror stories are true. BUT there are a lot of ways to save yourself some grief:

- Carry NOTHING about your work, or anything political AT ALL.
- Have Jewish Israeli contacts who know you are coming and will be able to confirm you will be seeing them if called.
- Have a clear itinerary. Make a couple hostel reservations or have your contacts be ready to reaffirm the same itinerary details.
- They will be suspicious of a one-way ticket. Have an explanation for your trip. Maybe you plan to fly home through Egypt?
- Clean your laptop. Remove every Arab-sounding name from your phone and email contacts. Disable Facebook. Try to erase any kind of political past you may have online.
- Dress nicely on the plane. My travel companion was pulled off of the plane immediately for questioning because she couldn't be bothered to look decent, and they automatically assumed she was an activist (dingdingding).
- Make a friend on the flight. Chat with them as you leave the plane. It makes a big difference to be shooting the breeze with a nice Jewish lady. :)

So, part of my preperations include removing myself from the internet. You may be thinking "well then, dumbass, maybe you should not be writing about them in your blog!" Don't worry, this blog, Facebook, and everything else is going to be going away in a few days.

Anyone who wants to help can let me know if they find me on the internet, and where they found me. (Don't worry about FB or this blog, because they will be gone.)

Also, please don't email me anything pertaining to my trip for a few days. The last thing I need is an email stating "How's Palestine?" for the IDF to find when I get off the plane.

I am going to be bringing everything back up a few days after I get in. See you then!

Make Memorial Day Happy

2011-05-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

It’s Memorial Day, and I have been seeing a lot of the following drivel on Facebook:

A normal person has 1,000 wishes. A Soldier only has one, to come home safe. I know 97% of you won't post this as your status, but the 3% that do are my friends. In honor of someone that died, a wounded warrior, or who is fighting (or has fought) for your freedom, please re-post in their honor. Memorial day Weekend! God Bless all those serving now..!!!!

Well, uh, no, I am not going to repost, of course, and that might mean that I am not one of those lucky 3% that get to be your friend for a few keystrokes. (Kind of slutty, don’t you think?) But I am one of the 0.09% that actually DID something to help make the lives of vets a little more bearable. You can join me, and here's how:

1. Call your local VA to volunteer or donate, even just stopping by to chat with a vet. As part of my job, I have to call hospitals all over the place. When you call a VA, the first thing that the recording says is “Thank you for calling the VA. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, please call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at …” followed by the local number. (FYI, the national number is 1-800-273-TALK (8255) and they have a special page for vets.) That’s right, enough vets are calling the VA because of suicidal thoughts that they had to stick a message on their recording. That’s f’ed, people, and a FB status isn’t going to make these people feel better.

2. Call or write your congressman and ask them to vote against activities that cause violence in the region of your choice. No, I am not just talking about Iraq, I am pretty much talking everywhere. I suggest that you ask for the School of the Americas to be closed, which is a training camp for Latin American dictators and basically teaches one how to throw a coup and then trash the country afterwards. One such graduate was Michel Francois, who threw the coup in Haiti that removed Jean-Bertrand Aristide and caused the death and torture of more than 5,000. How will writing your congressman help? Well, the School of the Americas in in Georgia. That’s Georgia, USA.

3. Give money. Pick a charity of your choice and sned 'em $$. Too busy for that? Then send a text message "DAV" to 90999 and you will donate $5 to disabled vets. Or give a dollar or your lunch to a homeless guy, who is probably a vet. (If I was a vet standing on a street corner, I would personally want to deck every idiot who thinks that some FB status is going to get me fed that day.)

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” I am sure that when Mahatma Gandhi said that, he was hoping that it would be more then the FB status of a bunch of spoiled westerners.

You can make it so.

You have a pal in Palestine

2011-05-29T16:34:00.000-07:00

Well, my next move has been decided, and that move is Palestine. It was between that and Haiti, actually. Funny story. You see, one fine day I woke up and found the following in my email inbox:

Thank you for contacting the Palestine Red crescent Society. Being a nurse, we would like to have you volunteering at the Hebron branch Hospital. I have already contacted them, they need you for at least 8 months. Is that suitable for you? They will provide you with accommodation and meals.

This was sort of a shock since I barely remembered applying. I sort of took a rapid-fire approach when I got back to Haiti and realized how much I wanted to work overseas. My preferences where Haiti, Palestine, and Nepal. Most of the places that I applied to wanted me to basically write a disertation before they would even consdier rejecting my application. So to be accepted outright was sort of a rush and terrifing at the same time. Give a girl some warning, will ya?

You might also have noticed the definite lack of information that the email gives. I actually really had to beg to wean more information out, but it looks like I would be staying at a hospital in Hebron. In fact, I think that I am going to be doing something like this: http://www.ms.dk/sw187323.asp

So, my next question was how to get there. Like a moron, I assumed that I would get a working visa, etc. What I found out was:

We prefer that you get one way ticket or an open ticket that you may change later according to the situation over here. You will get the ticket to the Airport, that you are coming for Tourism to Jerus'm and so. After 3 months here, volunteers actually go to Jordan, stay there for a couple days and then come back through the same bridge an get visa on borders for new 3 months.. so we may only have for 6 months instead of 8, unless we figure out a way for you to stay here more.

As Lando said, "This deal is getting worse all the time." Uh, you want me to lie at the airport and you can't guarantee eight months? Of course, I felt like an idiot to think that the Red Crescent was going to get me a visa. The Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) has about as much authority to hand out visas as I do (perhaps even slightly less!) So I figured, well, this is the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), right? Perhaps I can appeal to the Israeli version of the Red Cross (MDA), to let me in, citing the impartiality that the Red Cross inflicts on it's members. (They aren't called that, but I am using that name so that this post doesn't pop up on too many search engines.)

Now this is interesting. Turns out that there was a huge debate and the ICRC wouldn't let them in. While I was researching this debate, I figured that the ICRC did this because the MDA was stopping PRC ambulances and accusing them of hiding terrorists. I found out that in fact, the dely of letting Israel in was actually due to a squabble over what symbol they would use. MDA wanted to use a Red Star, the ICRC demanded that they use one of the three designs that they already had. I mean, what the hell?

It was around this time that I heard back from an organization in Haiti. This post is getting long, so I will wrap it up to say that I did not get the Haiti job, and I have since chalked it up to God or fate or whatever telling me that I need to go to oPT, where I am probably more needed. I felt like a bit of an ass anyway for choosing Haiti over them simply because Haiti was more convenient.

Third Goal

2011-05-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

Third goal: this kid is counting on me

Well, it's been about a week since I have been back, and I have found although it's nice to be able to take showers with running water (although I am still feelign guilty over the waste) I miss being overseas a lot more then I thought that I would.

I did a presentation at work (which was really more of a slide show) to show them the type of work that I have done, and unlike the other countries I have been to, I would really like to try and fufil what Peace Corps calls "The Third Goal". Peace Corps has three goals: to help the people that you visit, to teach the people that you visit about America, and then to bring whatever you have learned about this country back to America.

I think that Haiti has learned all they really want to know about our grand country, thank you very much, so the second goal wasn't really a priority to me, but the third goal is. It's also probably the most challenging, as it's nearly impossible to not learn about a country and teach them about yourself when you are in the borders (well, maybe for some Americans) but when you get back it's really easy to forget what happened and just concentrate on enjoying different types of foods again.

On second thought, maybe Haiti's better off without me.

Speaking of which, I could really go for some Eithopean. I had sushi the other night. Yum. (See how easy it is to get distracted?)

Anywhoo, my PP presentation was a step in that direction. I mean, aside from the fact that it's one of the poorest countries in the world, has been overrun by coups and recent natural disasters, what do people really know about Haiti? What do they really know about US policy there? Or even about voodoo? Why should be care about Haiti when there are so many other places that also deserve attention? And what the hell is up with the School of the Americas that is still running for some very odd reason?

Yes, all good questions. I'll leave it to Paul Farmer to answer them, most of which he does in his great book, The Uses of Haiti.

Meanwhile, I am looking for more work down there. Or in Palestine. Or maybe Nepal. Or Burma. OK, so I suck at Third Goal. I know I don't want to go back to Samoa is all.

Goodbye Haiti :(

2011-05-02T17:03:00.000-07:00

Goodbye Haiti, I will miss you!

What I have learned:

1. ALWAYS study the language. Learn “it won't hurt” “sit here” at the very least.

2. You never have enough clean clothes

3. You always have more electronics then you need

Things I will look forward to athome:
1. Secularity

2. A REAL shower

3. Flat surfaces

Things I will miss:

Everything.

Another satisfied customer

This is my last blog entry from Haiti,but there is still so much to say. We had the last day of clinic,and we mostly had schoolchildren and older people. Mary Kay, whensigning the contract for the iStat, agreed that all 300 cartrigesneeded to be used to show that the machine was really needed inHaiti. The problem was that we had to struggle to get that number,especially since the tests would take about three minutes to read. Since we had about 75 tests still to run today, I was really runningwith those stupid tests.

So to run a test, I had to pierce thepatient's skin with a lancet and squeeze the hand to get the blood. I needed a ton of blood as the cartridges needed quite a lot. As aresult, I had to squeeze the hell out of those Haitian hands (many ofwhich were badly callused, and my hand is very achy from 5 days ofsqueezing, or as I liked to put it: “My hand is as sore as a NYC hooker!” (Take a sec, you'll get it.)

Andrew, Amanda, Mary Kay, Kristen, Judi, Norma, Glenn, Chelsea
Maia, Kimberly, Naomi, Linda, Lynn, Margie, Kelly, me, Suzette, Julia, Julie, Sherry

I think that another thing that this trip has done is really recharge my desire to get out and join a medical team. I am going to really work harder towards this goal. I loved the people that I worked with, they were such a great mixture of people with varing talents and humor. As well as Haiti, I will miss them terribly. I hope that we are able to keep in touch, perhaps even have a party later.

I have learned so much from the people of Haiti and my teammates, and I hope to come back soon. I hope that I have helped to make Haiti a better place in even a small way, helped to make someone's life a little brighter, and helped give Haiti a butterfly's breeze push to a better future.

Thank you Haiti, I will miss you.

It's a Hard Knock Life

2011-05-02T15:04:00.001-07:00

Mary Kay had promised had promised Rachel, who ran alocal orphanage associated with MTM, that we would test all the kidsfor anemia. This news was not well received my me as I hate testingkids for anemia, as they scream and fight and don't bleed well. Plusyou have to stick them in the heel, rather then the finger, and oftenthey are able to give a well-aimed kick to the face.

Mimose seeing Suzette at the airport in Haiti

In Haiti, you are considered an orphanif you have lost one parent. Many single parent households will puttheir kids up for adoption if they can't take care of them. One girlin my group, Suzette, was actually adopted by her mother Kelly (alsoin the group) when she was nine, she went to live with Kelly at 12. Her birth mother met us at the airport and stayed with us for a fewdays. We have often wondered what Suzette is thinking as we see herwith her biological mother. Kelly, her adoptive mother, is obviouslywho she thinks of as her real mother. Suzette does not seem to holdany anger towards any party for her situation, but seems like a welladjusted young lady with two mothers. She was adopted when she wasnine, but didn't get to live with her current other until three yearslater.

Suzette and Mimose

Rachel told us a bit about adoption while we were driving up, stating that the mothers can come and visit thier kids while the kids were in the orphanage, and many often do. This can be very hard for thier kids, and sometimes the mothers will change their minds. Single fathers generally balk at the idea of a closed adoption (which all are by default) while mothers tend to view adoption as an act of compassion towards kids and feel that they would have a better life. Rachel's kids are generally gone in about 18 months, which is a very short time here.

Attacked on the couch (Judi, Kristen, and myself)

We pulled up to the house and saw a kid, standing in the driveway staring at us. I got my supplies out of the car adn started to walk towards the house when two more kids came running out. The first kid ran to me and threw his arms around my legs and squuezed for a second, looking up at me with angelic eyes before moving on to Kristen. The next few kids did the same, and soon we were surrounded by enegetic and outgoing todlers who had obviously never heard of stranger anxiety. After we got into house, Krisin sat on the couch and three kids hopped into her lap. I saw next to her and was similarly tackled. I wondered if Rachel had trained the kids to act this way to help encourage perspective parents to take them home. Whatever she was doing, it was working as almost all the kids already had homes.

Me comforting a munchkin

Work time. I got out the kits and started on the kids and almost immediatly became very unpopular. The caretakers would hold the kids while I poked them. One of things that I noticed was that the caretakers, like the translators, were very disengaged. (You can sort of see what I mean in the picture.) I wondered if this was because it was the end of the day. The kids were pretty interested, however. They gathered around and watched with interest as I poked thier compatriots then screamed like banshees when it was thier turn. I needed to scream myself (for help) periodically as they started to crawl onto me as they fought for attention.

Drawing blood

Many of the kids, sadly, were anemic. Rachel feeds the kids well, lots of greens, meat, and milk, but almost half had low hemoglobins. We left them with some children's vitamins and instructions to give iron with juice, and not give milk within an hour of getting the vitamins (milk prevents the absorption of iron, while vitamin C enhances it.) This isn't easy when you have 15 kids that you are caring for (most meds are given with meals) but I know that Rachel will try. With so many kids, she was able to keep them very straight. She knew the background and active illnesses of every kid.

Orphanages like Rachel's, that focus on adopting out kids, are only one type. There are others that focus on keeping kids in Haiti and trying to help them become productive members of society. What Haiti doesn't want is for mothers to receive funds from overseas to support their kids, since this would encourage parents not to work. But there are a lot of kids that need homes and food, and no real solution.

The damage doesn't look as bad from out here

2011-05-02T05:49:00.002-07:00

My roommates made me buy chocolate
(Julie, me, Mary Kay, Lynn in back,
Kristen and Norma in front)

It turns out that that I didn't have towalk all the way over to church, it came to me as the music flowedover the valley into the guesthouse.

Although I had been worried that Sundaywould be a fairly dull day (the clinic is closed that day) it turnedout to be a pretty interesting one. During our morning prayers,Beth (who runs the guesthouse) announced that she would be heading togrocery store in a little bit. I immediately volunteered toaccompany her on this normally mundane task. We bundled into herfour-wheel drive and headed out. The grocery story brought backmemories of Samoa, where I saw packets of cookies and other foodsthat I had not seen since I left there, leaving me to wonder if alldeveloping counties shop at the same store. The people in the groupthat could not fit in the car asked me to pick up some chocolate,after much debate Judi and I found some Peperidge farm cookies thatappeared to be the best bang for the buck. We exchanged some moneyand added them to our possessions. We made another stop for ice,driving past the mansion of the former president Rene Preval. Bethtold us that since she doesn't have a freezer, she buys ice every daywhen she takes the kids to school. Judi and I also examined themeat, which was grey and suspicious looking. One pack was labeled“dog meat” and Judi wondered out loud if dogs where the intendedrecipient or the contents of the package. (It turns out that dogsare not eaten here, however cats are!)

There were rumours in the guesthousethat Willham was going to take us someplace after church. PerhapsPort-au-Prince! He was at a religious conference, and his return wasperpetually imminent. Shrotly after returning from the store, Bethasked me to come with her, and bring my iStat! mary Kay (thepediatrician) and Norma (a NP) were also summoned. As I gathered upmy supplies (it takes an amazing amount of crap to check a few dropsof blood) I learned that a pastors wife had been found fainted in adiabetic coma, and we were need to come check her out.

What we found when we got there,however, was a very different story. She didn't have diabetes (theperson who lived in the house just thought that she had) and had notactually fainted. she was, however, pretty sick with a fever. Herblood levels were fine, so we advised acetaminophen and rest.

Willham had returned by the time thatwe got back, so we, as they say here, had to “hurry up and wait”. We gathered up water and food and other supplies, wondering where wewere heading to. By the time that we got in the car, we were toldthat we were heading to a place called “lookout point”. Sodesperate were some of the people in the group that they didn't outwhere we were going until after we got into the car and were on ourway.

You can barely see the waterfront at Port-au-Prince

The trip up was quite lovely. Most ofit was on a “real road” (such a road in the states would havecaused worldwide riots) and we enjoyed the breeze and the change ofscenery. “Lookout point” was exactly what it sounded, what wedidn't realize that was it was looking out on Port-au-Prince. Ireally wish that we could have gotten decent pictures of the awesomeview that we witnessed. We saw the presidential palace, the airport,the ports. I couldn't help but think of the line from Star Wars:“That's funny, the damage doesn't look as bad from out here!” Wealso noticed that for such a big city, there should be a lot ofhi-rises and major buildings, but there were only two builds thatrose above the others. Most were only two or three stories.

It's easier to see PoP in the painting!

After we had our fill of the view, wewent to try to barter for some of the stuff that they were selling. There were a few other trucks of white people, they were all withNGO's or churches. As far as I can tell, Haiti has no tourists rightnow, so the souvenirs sellers were a touch desperate. I had alreadybough a few things, so I wasn't very interested until I saw apainting that I really liked. The guy wanted $40 for it, I told himthat I only had $20. All part of the game, apparently. Beth hadtold us to pick a price that was half to a third of that offered. Thesellers were very good at looking offended at our bids, but I wastold that it was all part of the game. However, when I pulled out mymoney, I found that I only had $15 left. He took the money anddemanded $5 more. I told him that it wasn't a matter of me holdingout, but that I really didn't have any more. He demanded $4, then$3, then $2. I put down the painting and tried to get my money back,but he refused to both surrender the cash or stop asking for more. Finally, I took the paining and walked away. He pocketed the money,but followed us to the truck loudly proclaiming that I was rippinghim off. All part of the game.

People sold art at the viewpoint

Stuff on sale

But the most interesting part of theevening was when we got back and I was told, once again, to grab myiStat. I actually have to run, so I will write about this later.

So Many Patients, So Little Time

2011-05-01T08:38:00.004-07:00

The front of the line waiting to get into the clinic

With church today, it's hard to believe that we only have one more day of clinic here. I could easily stay for at least another week before I start to wish to come home, and it feels like we could stay for a month before we actually start to help the population of 2000 here. (The population in Haiti is 9 million. With about 20 people in hour group, it's easy to see how Haiti's resources have been completely overwealmed for health care alone.)

Back of the line. Willham is walking up.

When we open, the line for people puts the Star Wars episode 1 lines to shame. Often, the people will start waiting the night before to get into the clinic. Siblings bring siblings, mothers nurse in line, they wait in the sun. All to see a health care provider for five minutes and get a few pills. Some people have aches, stomach problems (gastroreflux from worms, generally) and others have things that are much more serious. We ask people to come back the next day to wait in line, some can, some can't. We see as many people as we can and still turn away people at the end of the day. It makes me never want to leave.

Julie giving stiches

(Sidenote: I have decided not to go to church. I have already sat through many church services in other languages and I really did not want to go to this one. When we found out that the truck was not available, and would have to walk there and back in dresses and nice shoes, That did me in. Sorry.)

I was back in the lab today, but I did see a few people that came in for pretty serious stuff. We had one kid that was seen who needed stitches in his scalp. Julie, the pathologist, sewed him up and gave him some antibiotics. He had fallen while traveling up some stairs. (In the picture you can see that the boys have a school uniform with a plaid design on the shirt, the girls wear blue skirts and suspenders, looking sort of like "The Wiz" version of Dorothy. I hate school uniforms It is a plot to confuses the hell out of exapts. Anyone who has been overseas and had to deal with them knows what I mean.)

Linda's holding a little one with an extra finger removed

We also had a little one who had an "extra finger". I don't have a picture of the before picture, but here are the after ones. Although mary Kay (the pediatritian) said that it was indeed an extra finger, it looked more like a skin tag. She just got some sterile scissors and cut the thing off.

After the surgery

The waiting room. Linda, the trip leader, is in the back

Once the people get into the clinic, they are "triaged" with their weight, pulse and blood pressure taken. If they are pregnant, have hypertension, or are a kid they are triaged to the lab. Otherwise, they see a doctor. It's kind of crazy trying to explain to people where and how they should sit and we try really hard to not have any confused patients wander out after they have gotten their lab work and see that they are done. We are also able to give them eye exams and have a full pharmacy. For such a small clinic and a smaller number of workers, we do a good job. There are 23 of us. Four are providers, four are nurses, and the rest are non-medical personnel. (Some of them have medical backgrounds, such as working in a medical office.)

Pharmacy

The eye examination room

Yes, even speech therepy!!

One of the volunteers, Glen, is a speech pathologist with a specialty in stuttering. It turns out that one of the interpreters, JM, has as stutter. It's hard to tell, as the pauses when he is speaking English and generally attributed to his grasp of the language. Glen has been working with him during lunch breaks, teaching him a few techniques that he can use to treat this. It really is a miracle that of all the people in Haiti, there happened to be a person with a stutter and a speech pathologist in the same place. So Glen feels like he also has a special place here in Haiti.

Who is happier, Kristin or the baby?

On the way home, we ran into one of the familes that we helped, and we were able to get them a ride home. Kristen had started to walk and decided to stop one of our trucks when the rain started, and that truck stopped to pick up the family. They handed over the baby for her to hold, and as she said, she was in heaven.

Hopefully today we will go to Port-au-Price to look around, then we will have one more day at the clinic.

Seeing Patients

2011-04-30T06:00:00.004-07:00

Opening the clinic

Rather then going on and on about the perils of travelling to and fro from the clinic, I thought that I would spend a moment discussing the real reason that I came to Haiti-- to provide health care for the Haitians.

A lot of people (myself included) assumed that I came to Haiti to provide earthquake relief, but in truth most of the most effective programs have been working in Haiti for years before the earthquake hit, Mountain Top Ministries included. The village that I work in, Granmothe, was actually not directly affected by the earthquake. There was an influx of people coming out of Port-au-Prince after the majority of the city was devastated which has overwhelmed what little resources that there are here.

This little one had a burn on her lip

Most of my time was spent in the lab area, which is a tiny little space, separated by a cubicle wall that houses the scabies treatment area and a shelf that blocks view into one of the treatment rooms where patients are seen by one of the providers. This assembly-line setup has meant that I don't really come into contact with the individual stories or illnesses. But I got pulled from the lab for a few hours and was able to help one of the nurse practitioners, Kristen, as she helped patients.

My job with Kristin was to keep track of the patients she saw, write out prescriptions on a pad, mark the diagnosis on a list, and gather the supplies that she needed. This was the first time that I was actually being a nurse, and I loved it!

The first patient that we saw had complaints of stomach problems and gas. Kristen laid the patient down and felt her tummy, then asked me to do the same. In the books, a patient with worms had what was described as “a doughy stomach” and I had been worried that I would not be able to recognise this. I shouldn't have worried, the woman's stomach felt exactly like a huge bowl of bread dough. This was incredibly common in Haiti. Fortunately, it was easily treated with a dose of Albendazole. Worms would also cause gas, as they would bloat the host. We have nearly every patient Albendazole, as nearly every patient.

Glaucoma (right eye)

The next patient that we saw was a little 10 year old with a terrible looking eye. We called for a consult with Mary Kay, the pediatrician. We quickly diagnosed him as having glaucoma. This exciting moment of seeing this rare ocular disease was quickly tempered when we realized that we had no treatment. Without the correct eyedrops, the young boy would one day go blind.

Cataracts, conjunctitis

The next two people that we saw also had eye issues. One lady had nasty cataracts and conjunctivitis (pink eye). She was easily treated with amoxicilian eye drops. In looking for these eyedrops, we also found some eardrops for another patient that we had seen with a nasty ear infection. Antibiotics are really a wonderful thing, and they are perfect for our purposes, as we would not see the patient again. However, I was worried about compliance. The people who worked in the pharmacy hardly had time to count off the pills and tell them how to take them, much less provide teaching on the importance of taking all the pills and not sharing them. Paul Farmer has done a lot of work with TB (which requires 6-12 months of treatment with a nasty antibiotic) to prevent resistance. With every pill that we handed out, I worried about what would happen if that particular bug became resistant, but other then not handing out the pill there was no other solution.

I helped Kristen to a pap smear (to pictures of that!) She needed me to hold up an otoscope so that she had a little light to see what she was doing. She and I had to lean over between the woman's legs, as I shined the pathetic flashlight into the speculum so that she could visualize the cervix.

elephantiasis

Near lunch we saw a woman whose leg was swollen with elephantiasis. I was back in the lab by the time that I met her, and didn't even notice that her right leg was double the size of her left until I got her on the table. She was also hypertensive. The clinic was closing, but I snuck her in to see Norma, the other nurse practitioner after getting her labs. In addition to the massive swelling of her legs, she also had a pulsing right carotid artery that could be felt easily on palpitation. Her right leg was swollen as well with pitting edema, but that was easy to miss with has massive other leg. Her right leg was probably edemous as well, but the elephantiasis hid that. She saddest bit, like the boy, was that the condition with treatable and preventable, but because she hadn't sought medical attention prior, her leg will always be terribly deformed.

Scabies

In addition to these, we saw a few people and kids with scabies. For the adults, we treated with a pill, ivermectin, which is not approved in the US but works well nonetheless. For very young kids, We had to use the scabies cream. This involved taking them to the “scabies treatment area”, taking off their clothes, rubbing them with permethrin cream, then redressing them with new clothes. I worry about the effectiveness of this treatment, as they should really be re-treated a week later when the scabies eggs that are under their skin hatch, but we have no way of seeing them again. This makes the babies scream

Kristen and JM with the glaucoma eyedrops

The Glaucoma boy had a happy story. While sitting on the floor to breastfeed, our trip leader, Linda, noticed a bunch of eye drops that were under a shelf. She got them out and saw that they were glaucoma drops. We asked around and managed to find out the address of the boy that had Glaucoma and were able to send a 4x4 with the drops to him. We passed along several bottles. Although this will probably only postpone the inevitable (blindness) it was still good that we could get him some treatment. Even if blindness is only postponed for a week, I tried to think of all the things that he would see during that week that he would have otherwise missed. As Kristen said, we can only do what we can do.

Haitian Rollercoaster

2011-04-29T06:00:00.015-07:00

A few little munchkins we met on the way

After the harrowing experience of riding home in the pickup during a thunderstorm, I decided to join the walkers and trek back. Unfortunately, it was not raining this afternoon, and the sun was doing all it could to try and convince me that a walk was a bad idea. the only positive thing about walking was that Haiti is on "island time" and walking in the sun seemed a better idea that waiting around in the van for Willem. (There is a third option, which would be waiting in the shade in view of the truck, but that option seems only to have come to native Haitians.

My little 12.5 megapixal camera can NOT do justice to the landscape of this place, and I doupt that I have the poetry that would also be needed to describe it. Mountain Top Ministries is located in a section of massive hill-like mountains. I say "hill like" because they are rounded and covered with vegetation, but have the height and slope that is normally associated with a mountain. The villagers will plant their crops on the side, with the plants growing at acute angles to the land. Sadly, this is one of the reasons that the county has such a poor growth rate per acre, as this method of planting causes massive erosion. In addition, much of the trees were cleared for plantations and for charcoal, so thier supportive roots also are not present to help keep the soil in place.

The road heading out of the clinic.

So my commute to work is three parts. First, we travel almost at a 45 degree angle downhill with the riders in teh back holding white-knuckled to the truck. Then, there is a light respite as we travel over a massive dray river bed covered in large white rocks. Finally, we travel uphill again at a hear 45 degree angle (the Haitians are not one for switchbacks.) It's not a trip for the lighthearted or the weak-stomached. In addition, the "road" is actually mostly mud and rocks. Oh yes, and there is often a massive drop to one side. And the road is one lane with tons of blind spots. Good times. Some of the people in my group cross themselves before they leave, and trust me, they are not just being cute.

The little bracelet girl

So I walked. We met up with a few kids who joined our group. One was a little school girl who enjoyed tossing her bracelet down the path. It would bound, bound, bounce until it hit a curb and she would run and grab it and start again. she listed to our chattering in English with great interest, saying "oui" and "no" when she felt it was appropriate. This part of the road was fairly well maintained, with the middle pretty much cracked out but the sides still more or less intact. There were huge ruts in the side so that there was something to grab onto, the road is that steep!

We came across a few other travelers
Unlike myself, most people are not able
to choose if they walk or not!

Chicken wire "bricks" with rocks inside make up a wall

Eventually, the road gave way to a rocky path near the bottom near the dry river bed. The "road" was washed away when the waters came, and no one was been able to rebuilt them. One of the groups that came with MTM actually rebuilt the road, which was hard to believe since the rock path was barely transverseable-- made me wonder what it looked like before!! In addition, the group build a wall by making boxes of chicken wire, then loading them full of rocks and making large "bricks" that they would use to keep the waters back. These were still intact.

Other volunteers chose to ride instead

A pathetic Haitian excuse for a road

The dry river bed

After making it down the mountain that the clinic is on, we trek along a wide dry river bed. I guess during the rainy season, the river will fill up. The rainy season is from May and goes on through the summer. It's good that the season is in the summer, because if the river bed is transformed into an actual river, the children that go to school at the ministry can not cross it to get to school and back. There is no bridge. When the water comes in, people are stuck. As an American, it is nearly impossible for me to understand how life can be so ruled by the weather, when of course in most of the world the weather is a way of life!

She loves shoes, boys and chocolate

All in all, the trip is about three miles although it feels like more, especially the last mile heading up hill in those slippery paths. There are not many houses on the ministry side of the "river", but on the guesthouse side we start to see a lot more houses. Some of them are nice houses, others are not so nice. A lot of them are just concrete bricks that make up a room, with no electricity or running water. Many times, the water is brought from a public well on the heads of female children of the household, and all the laundry and bathing is done from this.

Mountain Top Ministries at dusk,
as seen from the guest house
(although it should be called
"Halfway up the Mountain Ministries")

Finally, we get to the guesthouse! Time for a soda, a cold bucket shower, and a rest. While resting, I realized that the ministry could be seen from the back of the guest house while sipping cold Sprite on the porch. I noticed that you could see the ministry from the porch. I suggested that it might be easier to install a skybridge, like the one at OHSU, where we can just ump in a little carriage (preferably air-conditioned) and travel over in comfortable seats over a wire. Beth, who runs MTM with her husband, said that this was a good idea and she would be happy to have it built as soon as I raised the funds needed.

The Haitian Experience

2011-04-28T18:12:00.005-07:00

While driving in the back of a pickup under a metal cage going uphill along a cliff on a mud path in a thunderstorm:

Sherry: It's all part of the Haitian experience!

Me: What, dying?

Another long day in the clinic. We saw about 500 patients today, I did blood sticks on about a quarter of them. I have been so busy that I haven't even seen the rest of the clinic (a large room, divided by curtains, that is about the size of a very small gas station convenience store) and I didn't notice that the weather outside was turning bad. Anyone that has been in the tropics knows that the weather can be very bipolar.

This little guy didn't cry once

I am lucky as my station is right by the window with the breeze blowing in, but I was so busy that I couldn't spare a glance outside. I had to do sticks on all pregnant women, kids between 6 months and 3 years, and people who have hypertension that are on meds. A lot of people, but I would see more if it meant that I didn't have to see any babies. These little guys are the worse because they are just too small to really give the amounts of blood that the machine needs to be able to do a proper reading. They are also pretty dehydrated. They also start screaming the second that the little needle pierces their skin, and that's the real problem. I try to get the people that are standing around watching the spectacle to help out by holding them down, but they generally don't hold hard enough, and they also get bored and wander off or start to play with the baby. Meanwhile, the baby will smear what little blood has come out all over the place with their screaming. I have been trying to get the moms to breastfeed in order to keep them quiet, but that only helps a little.

Me and Judi drawing blood from a 87 year old

Anyway, while working on baby #5 the head of Mountaintop Ministries, Wilhem came running into the clinic and said that we had to get done and leave now. I looked out the window as he was telling us that a thunderstorm was coming, and saw that he was right. I finished up the draw that I was working on and started to clean up. One of the nurse practitioners, Norma, stopped by and said that she absolutely needed am H&H and one last baby. Wilhem was yelling that if we were going to leave, we had to leave now. By this time, the clinic was empty except for me, my lab assistant Janet, the family and Norma. I guess that the family had been waiting for several hours to be seen, and Norma needed an H&H to make a crucial decision in her treatment. Fortunately, I was able to get blood on the kid (a one year old) pretty quickly and we threw it into the machine. We cleaned up the lab, watching the storm blow in from the neighboring valley and threaten ours as the machine ran through it's agonizingly slow three minute cycle. The test came back, negative, and we grabbed the iStat and ran out of the clinic to the waiting pickup.

My side job, treating scabies with Kim 2

We jumped in, watching as the clouds invaded our valley and everything turned to gray. I asked Lynda, the trip leader, if maybe we shouldn't stay at the clinic and wait the storm out. I told her that this would give us a chance to clean the place up, maybe come up with a few new protocols, but she wanted to head home. Since her infant baby was riding in the front, I felt that she wouldn't have said that we should head out.

I had never seen anything like that fog coming in. It was a black thunderstorm, and we were right in the middle of it. It wasn't the rain that worried me, however. It was the journey home. You see, both the guesthouse where I am staying and the church are on the near tops of large hill-like mountains. The roads go almost straight up the mountain, with few switchbacks that we are used to int he states. As a result, it often feels like we are travelling at a 45 degree angle, and it's harder to say whether it is more terrifying to go uphill or downhill. Plus, there is often a step drop on one side of the road. So the reason that I was offering to sleep on the concrete floor of the clinic rather then brave the drive home was that the roads were of that really slick mud and rock that sends even the most sure-footed person on their ass. Oh, and did I mention that the driver had to stick his head out the window just to see the outline of the road?

Obviously this story has a happy ending. We got home okay and I was soaking wet from the rain.

Tomorrow I am going to switch stations and work with one of the NP. This is going to be great as I will see patients and learn about their conditions and assist in their care. I am sad to be giving up the lab, but I am also very excited to know that I am going to learn about their health problems and learn more about patient care in a developing country, as this is really what I want to learn long term.

Finally, a touching story. When I was trying to get blood from a Haitian, I commented that "Haitians don't bleed." My translator smiled at me and said "That's because they've bled enough."

Clinic Day One

2011-04-27T18:35:00.003-07:00

The clinic

Just got back from my first day at theclinic. We saw about more then 100 people, which I am told isactually not that many. Julie, the pathologist told me that it wasbecause word travelled and people were scared of us. And by “us”she really meant me due to the screaming coming from the clinic.

The day started when we were woke uparound 7AM. I found a set of scrubs and got them on, and wentdownstairs to run the controls on the iStat and eat breakfast. Weloaded the massive amount of medications and supplies into the backof a truck and then headed up down the hill. Mountain topMinistries is located on a hill, and the clinic is on an other hill. The “roads” (very much deserving of quotes) were just a littlemore narrow then the truck, and I swear that they ran about 45degrees to the road. We went down the mountain, across a dry riverbed, and then up the other side where we unloaded the bags and headedinto the clinic.

Dry river bed

We had three stations at the clinic,plus the pharmacy and the lab. Two nurse practitioners, apathologist, and a pediatrician saw patients and diagnosed. I drewblood and fed it into the iStat, and the pharmacy obviously handedout pills. To get the blood, I had to prick the patient's finger anddraw the blood into a lancet. I think that I would have preferreddoing simple venipunctures, but we don't have the equipment that weneed for that. Although the finger pricks might hurt less, they tooka lot longer, and the patient saw a lot more blood.

The babies were the worse, because Ineeded to perform heel sticks, and they just refused to bleed. Thechild would scream and kick, and the stress would causevasoconstriction, which would in turn halt the bleeding. After thefirst three or so patients, I finally got it figured out and was ableto do my job.

I didn't know why most of the patients were being seen. There were a lot of young women that were pregnantthat came in for well-woman visits, and we tested them for problemswith glucose and anemia. A bunch of people with hypertension. A fewkids with scabies which were covered head to toe in spacial cream(the adults got a pill). Yes, a lot of screaming. We also did a lotof urinalysis and pregnancy tests.

Right now we are sitting around thetable at home looking at “People Magazine”. Justin Bieber, hotor not?

Arrived in Haiti!

2011-04-26T19:19:00.002-07:00

The first time we were all together in Miami

No pictures, because I can't quite get the internet in the guesthouse to keep it together enough to actually write and publish a post. (But the pictures are pretty cool.)

Haiti is hot. I had forgotten what hot really was. After getting off the plane, I went from being happy to be someplace warm to feeling happy to actually be hot for a change to wishing that the Haiti airport was air-conditioned in the space of about a minute. About five minutes later I was sweating like I was back in Samoa.

Haiti is one of the most densely populated places that I have ever seen, with the smallest airport that I have also ever seen. Someone had fixed it since the earthquake (probably so that aid could get in) and made a nice little walkway. There was a band playing for us as we moved down the walkway into the main terminal. Throughout our trip, we would pick up various people from various places that were in our group, and this was honestly the first time that I saw us all together. Most of the people that were on the plane were Haitian or of Haitian decent, and all the white people that I talked to was there with an NGO. We gathered in the main terminal (which was slightly smaller then the woman's bathroom at LAX) and tried to figure o Tut how to fill our our customs forms that had been written in French and Creole. I think that this was one of the first places were English was not an option. I wondered why this was, since there was such a strong (and highly dysfunctional) relationship between the US and Haiti.

From there, it was a pretty long walk from the terminal to the truck, even with our bags (50lb each x 2) on carts. Some guys that were identically dressed swooped in to take the carts, I found out (too late) that they didn't work for the airport. I tried to get rid of mine, and handed him a dollar. He said "Give me five dollars" and refused to take it. It turns out that "give me five dollars" is a common catcall for Americans here, there was a kid that called to me from the other side of the gate "Hey, sister!" When I looked, he requested this distinct dollar amount. Fortunately, but this point, the guy who is in charge of Mountain Top Ministries, Willhelm, told us not to pay and the haggle was over, although I was out my dollar. I didn't feel to mad about it, I was temped to give more to the kid at the fence. But I also know that such handouts are not helpful in the long run.

We left Port-au-Prince in a huge traffic jam. I was in the back of a pickup truck, and I am not going to describe driving in a third world traffic jam except to say that if you've even been in a third-world traffic jam, you know exactly what I am talking about. It's not for the lighthearted, and the danger was compounded by the fact that we were climbing up mountain roads along cliff sides. I had been nervous about my stomach-- I don't do well on windy roads, but after just a few minutes I forgot about my stomach and would have taken the chance just to get the car to move and generate some breeze. I was wearing a hat, my face was burned just a few minutes later anyway.

The area that we are staying was not directly affected by the earthquake, but a lot of people fled Port-au-Prince and came back to these villiages, so they are going to be the people that we are helping as this area isn't well set up for medical help. Our first job, after lunch, was to sort the bags. We had a ton of bags to sort, and Linda had packed them in a way where the necessary supplies we spread out rather then in one bag. As the bags were lost or pilfered, this made for a extensive re-sorting process. We scattered all our pills on the table and made then into little 30-day packets. We bundled them into baggies and slipped in a little piece of paper saying what the pills were and how they were to be taken. We are thinking that we sorted 30,000 pills as we went through about 1000 bags. It wasn't a bad job, very zen.

Tomarrow, we will go to the clinic. I will be drawing blood for the iStat. Tonight, I took my first bucket bath since leaving Thailand and loved every bloody second of it. The ambian is start to really kick in, and as much as I would like to write in my soon-to-be-forgotten ambien high, I think that I will turn in. Talk to y'all tomorrow!

Forest Park Hike

2011-04-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

Took a break from Haiti preperations for a hike in Forest Park. Forest Park is known for being the largest forest reserve within city limits in the country. (Not be be outdone, they also have the smallest park in the country as well, but this one isn't a very good hiking spot.

Hailstone!

Can you see the harp in the window?

In typical Portland style, the day was clear and sunny when I left, started to rain while I was on the road, overcast when I got to the parking lot, and started to hail about fifteen minutes into the hike. The hailstones were a good few centemeters in diameter, unfortunatly we were not able to get a good picture of one before it melted.

Pitcock Mansion

I was hiking with a new friend, Casey, who is also studying wildlife and has most of his labs in places like this. He was able to point out most of the different plants that we saw, let me know which ones are edible and which ones will sting (and demonstrated thier stinging properties over my protests). He also pointed out the types of birds that we saw, although having only seen a robin, his skills in that areas were not quite as impressive.

A mysterious stone structure

A doorway becons..

Me in the mysterious stone structure

Casey investigating the moss

The view of Portland from the top

Jeremy Cowart's "Voices of Haiti"

2011-04-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

One of my teamembers posted a link to our list that featured the photography of Jeremy Cowart, who is truly very talented and has captured the Haitian people in a truly unique and touching way. I highly recommend that you check out his photography work in Haiti.

Haiti Preview

2011-04-18T17:30:00.001-07:00

T minus 7 days until Haiti!! If you (like me) can't wait to see my blog from Haiti, check out this link. It's from a guy that went to Haiti and worked with Mountain Top Ministries in the Gramothe Villiage. He seemed to have a pretty good time.

http://hiking-cyclingchristian.net/vacations/2008-Haiti/2008-Haiti.htm

Also, I learned that the villiage I am going to be is someplace between Petionville and Kenscoff, but Google Maps does not have it. So, the best that I can reckon is that I am going to be someplace in the little red circle that I made:

Or, someplace on the little squiggly blue line that can be seen here.

iStat-tastic

2011-04-15T18:50:00.004-07:00

Connie, Mary Kay, and Julie

On Thursday I went to the office of the pediatrician who is going to be going with me to Haiti. She wanted to make sure that I knew how to use the "iStat". Not developed by Apple, this nifty little device is going to enable us to check the blood of our Haitian patients.

It comes with cartridges that you put a little blood on. Slide the cartridge into the device, and it will tell you the blood chemistry, Hbg and Hct. This is normally a test that you would have to send down to the lab. I learned that the clinic in Haiti will not electricity. That means, in addition to not having power to run devices, we also don't have any refrigerator in the clinic.

Me showing off my awesome blood collection technique

This means that we can't spin down blood and store it, so this device is pretty handy. So why isn't it used in all labs, or at doctor's offices? Because the device is very expensive, and the little cartridges cost more per pop then I fork over for a co-pay.

We really wouldn't have the funds to have anything like this in Haiti, but the company that developed them decided to donate the device and 300 cartridges. This comes to several thousand dollars (they have to give back the machine, but still.) The amount of generosity that I have seen while preparing for this tip has been pretty incredible.

Figuring out the iStat
(Note: it needs you to configure it to require a barcode.)

And hard to use! To get the blood, I had to use a little glass tube (similar to a swizzle stick) to get the blood without any bubbles. Fortunatatly, Julie, the pathologist was more then willing to be a guinea pig as I demonstrated my ability to suck blood. (She proved to be in good health, according to our iStat.) There was another person who worked in the lab, Connie, who knew all about getting blood, and she helped us out. She said that she would like to go, hopefully she will be on the next trip. (So might I!)

We are also taking a bunch of urine sticks, that technology has been power-free for quite some time. I was the guinea pig for that test (no pictures of that, I am afraid!) I am happy to say that from a urinary standpoint, my health is quite good.
T minus 10 days!

Peanut Butter

2011-04-11T09:35:00.002-07:00

I think that we are good for peanut butter donations for Haiti.

On getting the Flintstones Vitamins, I started singing the Flintstones vitamin song ("We' re the Flintstones Kids/Ten million strong, and gr-o-owing") and none of my coworkers knew what the hell I was talking about. I'm old.

Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major

2011-04-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is. Andante from Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major, performed on 4/6/2011 at Classical Revolution PDX. It's good that I can record this as I am able to hear that I really need to work on pitch, although the other flute isn't much better, which tells me that a) I am coming along well when copared to a more professional student and b) we didn't tune well and c) the recording equiptment didn't have the best sound. (This ws a cell phone video that Kazu took, which is why it is so bloody dark!)

We actually performed this without a rehersal (which would have been very helpful) and down a flute. That violinist stepped in at the last minute. Finally, Kristin (the player on the right of me) pointed out that the peice was actually more difficult due to the numerous long tones, and suggested that a piece with shorter tones would be easier, as we don't have to sync up the pitch so much.

My flute teacher tells me that I need to keep my fingers down, and this picture illistrates her point well...

Still, it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to perform again!

Special Things Happen

2011-04-09T17:08:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, I sent out an email asking people for supplies for Haiti. I put out a box and a bit of hope. When I came into work today, I was pleased to see that someone had added a few items. There was a big thing of paper towels, wipes, band-aids and Tylenol. (I felt like a moron when I was asked why we could donate Tylenol and not aspirin. When I told this to the meeting, half the group yelled out that it was because of Reye's Syndrome. Duh.)

Honestly, I wasn't really expecting much of anything. I wanted people to just bring junk from home.  So I was pretty surprised when Kevin (my hiring manager) and Barbara Crow, the CEO of the Lions Eye Bank (where I work) told me that they wanted me to speak at the monthly staff meeting about my upcoming trip. (This is where I made the Reye's snafu.)

I got up and talked at the meeting about my upcoming trip.  I told the group about how I was going to be travelling down to provide medical aide as a nurse, and that any donations -- either money or goods -- would be very welcome.  I explained that due to the disasters that followed Haiti (namely New Zealand and Japan) donations for Haiti have dropped while the need in Haiti is still very great.

At this same meeting, we had had a lady who represented our benefits provider walk us though a few things, and she had sat politely sat through our meeting. When I told the group how Haiti still needed lots of help (perhaps more help then Japan and New Zealand needed, as they are first-world counties) she stood up, identified herself as Hatian, and asked to speak. With tears in her eyes and her voice cracking, she spoke passionatly about her family who were living in tents. She told us about how she didn't know if her family was even alive for three weeks. She provided rememberances of an elder member of her family who had died from lack of medical care. She told us how the entire country was still covered in rubble. And she thanked me for remembering Haiti, and asked the group to do the same. It was a very powerful moment.

I found out later that one of the people in the office (Janet) wrote the following:

I’d like to suggest that coincidence is more a matter of the good work we do and the good energy we all put out, rather than a random occurrence. I don’t think that anyone else had the good fortune of seeing all of the pieces that went into the phenomenal occurrence at our staff meeting last night... Kevin... suggesting that the Eye Bank get behind Kim in her assistance of the Haitian people. Barbara forwarding Kevin’s suggestion. Kim giving us an opportunity to help others through her mission.

Is it a coincidence our first benefits rep wasn’t a ‘fit’ and that our new benefits person happens to be Haitian? Is it a coincidence that we happened to have our benefits person speak with us the evening that Kim shared about her trip to Haiti? I don’t know. What will happen as a result of all of these ‘coincidences’? I don’t know. I do know that I have experienced special things happen when thoughtful people put strong thought and energy into producing something good, whether they are directing that energy together consciously or not.   For me, this is definitely one of those experiences and I thought it was worth mentioning; as we all contribute in our own way. It’s something to think about.”

And when I walked into the office today, I found that someone had placed a box-- with a ton of goods in it, in the front room where we greet visitors. As you can see, someone put a great deal of work into the box, and I was nearly moved to tears.

Be the Change...

2011-04-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandi

Haiti Jobs

2011-03-31T15:06:00.000-07:00

I got an email from one of the doctors who is part of the medical team a few days ago:

Hi Kim,

I am a pediatrician and the medical director of our Haiti mission team.

I am so glad you are coming along. My last team only had one nurse and it was really tough. This time we have 4 maybe even 5, so much better.

Margie and Lynn have told me that they would like to work in the pharmacy. Margie said you like hands on jobs best. I would like to find out what you want to do as we are going to try to prepare a little to make things a little smoother. You can trade off later in the week but initally getting set up it's nice to have one person in charge of a station.

I will need a nurse to do the check in. It means taking a lot of weights and blood pressures, and other vitals as you see fit, like temps. You would have 2 helpers.

The other station is the lab. We are going to have a little machine to check hgb/hcts and lytes/glucose with. Also lots of urine dips and preg tests. This person would also likely oversee the scabies treatments. Again 2 helpers along side.

Let me know what you think. I still need to ask Betty also what she wants to do.
Looking forward to a wonderful experience.

I wrote back with:

Actually, the lab station sounds the most interesting, but honestly I really want to be where ever I am most helpful! I don't think that I would have any problem with either of these jobs, although I do not know French.

She answered with:

Thanks for getting back to me so quick. I talked with Bettie today and she is very happy to do the BP check in station, so you are set to be the lab RN. She lives up in Shelton so it would be hard to do the training on the i-stat machine anyways. I should be getting the machine in the mail on April 12th, and so sometime after that you and our pathologist, Julie Kingery will need to get together and figure out how to use it. I want to make sure we have all the right supplies and controls and all that. It's good to practice reading Urine dipstixs too before you go. No worries on the language. We will have Creole translators and they are very versed on telling people to pee in cups!! :) You can read about the i-stat on line at Abbot.com.

Item Donations for Haiti?

2011-03-28T07:41:00.002-07:00

(This post is more for local people, although you non-locals are welcome to help out.) I am in the process of gathering supplies to take to Haiti. As I mentioned, my team leader is going to commandeer my checked luggage and most of my carry on for supplies that the Haitian people need. All of my trip fees are for buying supplies, but it doesn't cover everything that is needed. Therefore, if you are able to help out with supplies, let me know.

If you do want to donation, things can be either used or new. If you have these lying around the house, great, if you want to pick up a generic bottle of acetaminophen (generic Tylenol) the next time you are at the store, even better! All items will go directly to the Haitian people that we work with in the clinic, as well as an orphanage that is also associated with my group.

Here is a list of supplies that we still need:

nr Clinic:

washclothes (for hygiene packs)

bags of all sizes (large trash, small trash, baggie, snack, etc)

clorox wipes

non-latex gloves

peanut butter

batteries- all sizes

adult multi vitamins with and w/o iron (UNOPENED)

children's multi vitamins with and w/o iron (no gummy, they melt, also UNOPENED)

Tylenol (generic or regular, UNOPENED)

paper towels

For MTM orphanage:

combs & brushes for black hair

skin lotion

hair cream-with a tar or sulfur base if possible, these tend to repel scabbies

deodorant/antiperspirant

bath towels

kitchen towels/bar rags work best & are less expensive, can be bleached

underclothes & socks

pj type clothing

misc. clothing in good condition, modest (boys sizes 7-12, girls sizes 7-16)

accessories are always welcome-belts, purses, ties, hair foo foos, etc.

As I said, you can just give these things to me (either at work or at home) or if you are feeling really ambitious you could mail me the things if you live far away (although it would probably just be either to send me a check and a list of what you want me to buy.)

Three Things....

2011-03-27T10:58:00.003-07:00

OK, the first thing is an earthquake update. I was listening to this guy on the radio who was talking about earthquakes and tsunamis on the west coast. His interviewer asked him about tsunami warning systems, and how people would know if there is a wave coming after an earthquake.

His answer: if the ground shakes, that IS your warning. If an earthquake stikes the west coast, a tsunami WILL follow. South coast has about 10 minutes until the wave hits, north coast has a little more time, about 20 minutes. He suggested that you get about 80 feet up, more if possible. If you don't know what 80 feet looks like, then right after a earthquake is not the time to find out.

The second is an update on my trip to Haiti. This lady that I am going with is insanely organized. She is bringing food. She brings supplies. Scrubs are already there. There are books and a computer there. She even has toothbrushes. "What should I bring?" I asked her. "Nothing, really", she admitted. Of course, she is claiming my entire checked bag quota (and part of my carry-on bag) for medical supplies going there, and I will have to stuff my nothing into whatever is left. I have my ticket and so this is looking like a go.

The third thing is that I MAY be playing flute at the Waypost on 4/6 at 7:30pm. I will probably be playing as a part of Classical Revolution PDX. I am hoping that I will be playing Bach's Andante from Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major with three other flutes, which will sound near but not quite like this:

(Yes, there is a lot of uncertainty in this announcement. But if you get there and I don't play, then you are probably better off.)

Only [NOT] in the US

2011-03-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

Could you imagine the president of a major company in America personally apologising to those that were affected by his company?

This picture is from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42144324. The caption reads:

Norio Tsuzumi, vice president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), left, apologizes to evacuees at an evacuation center in Tamura, Fukushima prefecture, March 22. Public sentiment is such that Fukushima's governor Yuhei Sato rejected a meeting offered by the president of Tepco, the utility that runs the Fukushima nuclear plant. "Considering the anxiety, anger and exasperation being felt by people in Fukushima, there is just no way for me to accept their apology," said Gov. Sato on national broadcaster NHK.

If this were America, not only would the mayor take the companies apology (and probably his campaign finance contributions), the company and the mayor would probably band together to place all the blame on the opposite political party.

Please consider Donating to Japan. They are doing all they can to try to help themselves, but this disaster is too big for anyone to handle alone.

Earthquake readiness

2011-03-18T15:23:00.001-07:00

So, my housemate found a video of some geologist that is claiming that due to a perfect storms of tides and full moons and equinoxes (equini?) the "big one" is going to hit this Saturday. As the picture shows, I ran right out to the store, and I feel pretty prepared:

In all seriousness, if there is a big one, check here: Safe And Well. I will put myself on the site, if anyone cares.

Here is the video. Imminent earthquake? Decide for yourself. Before you panic, keep in mind that this is Fox News that we are talking about:

Music for All?

2011-03-17T14:55:00.001-07:00

I attened a "Brown Bag" at the Old Church in Portland. As the name implies, the Old Church is the oldest church building in Portland. However, the name is misleading as it is actually no longer a church. It is not a nonprofit that houses weddings, concerts, and other gatherings. It is a beautiful place, and they will hold free noontime Wenesday concerts that I love to attend. This week, we heard David Rothman, who presented us with many lovely Chopin pieces. A list of their concerts can be found here.

They announced that the concert was going to be taped, and requested that we remain silent between movements, only clapping when the piece was completely finished. I wondered why live concerts were taped like this, rather then just taping in a controlled environment. I guessed that it probably had something to do with the energy of the player or something like that.

A few minutes into the concert, a few people came in. The newcomers were obviously a group of people who were developmentally disabled, with two escorts. They had to come in through the handicapped door due to the fact that one of them was in a wheelchair, and that door was at the front of the room, so everyone was staring at them. I glanced at the microphones, and thought to myself that this wasn't going to go well.

About five minuets after they showed up, one of the members gave a long, loud moan. Everyone's head spun around at the sound, mine included. The person who had made the noise was smiling and clapping his hands siliently in joy at the music, and the room glowered at him. I smiled, but I saw that a lot of people were troubled and a few were angry.

The pianist was one of them. After the song, he asked if there was a noise. One of the audience members pointed out the group and said that it was them. There was an uncomfortable silence, then one of the escorts led the noisemaker away.

I felt so terrible for him. Although I understood that the tape of the concert was probably ruined (at least for that song) I wondered if the audience and the pianist realized just how vital it was for the young man who was kicked out to attend a concert like this. If it was so important to get a good tape, then they should have made this clear prior to the concert to make sure that people who were not able to listen silently would not show up. Maybe the man who left didn't understood why he was leaving, or maybe he did and was sad, hurt, or even humiliated. I wouldn't be surprised if the small part of the concert gave him just as much joy as the rest of the people listening, perhaps even more. The disabled are marginalized, removed from societal, and rarely able to attend an event like that. It was wrong for him to leave.

Anything helps

2011-03-14T16:18:00.001-07:00

I was driving to work the other day when I saw a guy holding a sign asking for money standing by the road.

Now that isn't a strange thing in Portland. At almost every busy corner, stoplight and stop sign, there are homeless people holding signs.

What was odd about this guy is that he was standing at the end of a freeway on-ramp. You know, the part where you have just accelerated to the speed of the expressway and you are getting ready to merge. He was standing right where the expressway meets the ramp.

He was holding a sign that stated "VETERAN, ANYTHING HELPS, GOD BLESS".

And as I zoomed by him at 50 mph I couldn't help but think, "Well, that explains why we haven't left Iraq yet."

Micheal Bay Meets Japan

2011-03-13T10:57:00.001-07:00

I can't believe the pictures that are coming out of Japan. It's like the entire area was the set for some lame Micheal Bay movie. The most dramatic pictures that I have found are here.

Please consider donating aid if you can. I, of course, recommend the Red Cross, and you can donate directly to Japan here.

Going to Haiti!

2011-03-06T09:45:00.001-08:00

I will be travelling to Haiti this April!

I will be in Haiti from April 25th through May 3rd. I am very excited about this opportunity! This will be the first medical trip that I will be making as a nurse, I am going to be using some of the money that my father left me to fund the trip. I would like to think that he would be proud of what I am doing.

I will be travelling with a group of people to work in a clinic. The clinic is run by Mountaintop Ministries. I found out about this through another RN at the Red Cross who is also going.

I have added a personal goal of not getting arrested in this particular country.

Stay tuned!

Zombie Oregon Trail: Flee the Zombie Hordes!

2010-11-01T07:56:00.001-07:00

Although it's a day late from Halloween, I wanted to repost this awsome re-hash of the classic game (on which this website is based) "The Oregon Trail". Instead of battling natural forces, you are battling zombies to get to my new hometown of Portland, OR. It's a blast.

You can play the game here.

There is really no better way to spend your All-Saints Day.

Let me get this straight, Fiver...

2010-10-23T08:23:00.003-07:00

Last Friday I exposed my 11-year-old housemate to what is essentially the whole of my childhood- Watership Down. My sister and I had a game, we would name a line in the movie and the other would have to give the next line. The loser either couldn't name the next line, or named the wrong line. (The script, by the way, can be found here.) That should give you an idea of how many times we watched that movie. A lot. And yes, on a few occasions we did manage to recite the entire movie from memory, a feat that I am sure I could repeat today. Oh yes, and the lines also included the heavily-accented cockney spoken by the human characters at the start of the movie and during the farmhouse scene.
I was glad to share this experience with my current foster family, as well as fill them in on any lines that they missed (and explain the Warren of the Shining Wire, which I don't think that the movie did a few good job of covering, we can't all be perfect.) While watching this movie for an iteration that I am sure went into the triple digits, I was struck by how lovely the score was, one aspect of the movie that I had never really highlighted as one of it's charms. Anyway, I got to thinking how nice it would be to be able to do a sort of medley on the flute.

Anyway, a quick search of "Watership Down Score" showed that no such was available. No score is for sale. The soundtrack is also out of print and very pricey. I figured that I could pick it out myself, but I have a lousy ear and plus I wanted to have the option of piano accompaniment. Anyway, just when I was about to give up, I found someone who shared the thing. I got a copy, and I will start to work on a flute solo transposition straightaway, but first I thought that I would share it here:

Download a version of the Watership Down score.

It's not the actual score, I think that someone had my idea of putting together a medley, but they did it with a full orchestra. Anyway, if you, like so many others, have been searching, enjoy! And please leave a comment about the book, movie, or the score, as both are truly amazing. (The TV show sucked however.) If you haven't heard of this and would like to check it out, then use one of the links below as I get money from Amazon when people buy off my site.

And remember: "What is, is what must be."

Panyhose Haiku

2010-10-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

Run in my stockings
I was chic dressed all in black
Now I just look cheap

Google Rocks

2010-10-10T17:00:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I can't beleive how smart Google is.
I was applying for a job, and I wrote in the email cover letter "Please find my resume attached" but forgot to attach my resume, as I often do.

When I hitsend, Google threw up an error box that was like "Uh, do you want to attach something?"

I'm telling you, someone should write an app that can tell when you are romantic with someone by looking for keywords...

Then when you type too slowly or make too many mistakes, an error box will pop up and say "You appear drunk. Are you sure you want to send this?"

World watch it, it's Nurse Kim

2010-09-28T08:24:00.001-07:00

Me celebrating NCLEX passage

On Wednesday at approximately 11:45 AM, after taking the NCLEX, answering 75 questions in about 45 minutes, I officially became an RN. This has been a long and difficult road, the nails in the pavement being people that told me that this was something that I could not do, the gaping manhole the middle of the sidewalk being the hours spent as a CNA doing you-don't-want-to-know to get the tuition money to pay for this, and the crap in the middle of my path that I had to jump over being a little pile of poo named Jodi K. But here I am, Kimberley Anne Gray, RN. Doesn't rhyme, but it does have a much nicer ring to it.

The RN exam is truly a great exam. They use something called "Computer Adaptive Testing" (CAT) that allows you to basically as as few of the questions as possible. Back in the day, you would have to travel to a test site, book a hotel room, and then sit in a room with about a hundred others and take a long, written, paper-and-pencil exam. You would turn it in, wait several months, and then finally get your result. Totally lame.

Today, what happens is that the questions are scored in terms of difficulty. There is a midline that indicates the lowest level of competency for a new RN. Your first question is slightly below the midline. If you get that right, you get a harder question. If you get it wrong, you get an easier question. The computer will try to pick a question that it feels you have a 50% chance of getting right.

You have a minimum of 75 questions, and a max of 265. If, at the end of the 75 questions, you are above the minimum competency line, then you are granted a pass and the test cuts of. Or, if you are well below the minimum competency rate at 75 questions, then the computer shuts off and you are granted a fail. If you are around the line, then the computer keeps firing questions at you until it is either out of questions or your are well above or below the line for 60 questions.

So, while you are taking this test, your are constantly asking yourself "Am I getting easy questions or hard questions?" Because, if the questions are easy, that means that you are bombing the test. Of course, the questions might also be easy because you are incredibly smart and you think that they might be easy. Or they might be easy because the person who grades the test deemed them hard when they are actually pretty easy.

In other words, trying to gauge your progress by the difficulty level of the question is kind of pointless. You just have to wait for the results.

The results are available after 48 hours of starting the test. The NCLEX testing crew really has us here, because they can really charge whatever they want by asking for a "Quick Results Fee" ($7.95 by Internet, $9.95 by phone) and they know that they will get that fee. They didn't get mine, however!! Nope, because after checking to see if my results were available, I finally just checked the OR BON (board of nursing) online registry the next morning to find that I had already been added. OR BON rocks!!

If you don't believe me, then click here.

Now I just need to find a job.

MRSA the Superbug and the VERY BAD IDEA

2010-09-14T15:11:00.002-07:00

So the other day I am chatting with an RN on a case. She told me that a patient was put on a course of Vancomycin. I asked her if the patient had MRSA, which is a condition that can only be treated by "Vanco" (as the drug is affectionately called). She told me that no, the patient doesn't have MRSA, but rather that the hospital tends to put people on Vanco on admit as part of thier protocol, and then take them off if the cultures come back negative.

For reasons discussed below, this is a VERY BAD IDEA.

This is an interesting link that describes the problem from a different aspect:
Superbug’ patient treated at MGH

I wrote the following letter to my friend Cherelle Jackson, who is a Samoan Journalist:

Hey sweetie! How ya doing?

Listen, I came across this article and I thought about Samoa. You see, Samoa, along with many other counties in the developing world tend to offer antibiotics over the counter to anyone that asks. People will self-diagnose and take the antibiotics when they are not needed, or worse yet, they will take just a few pills and stop taking them when they feel better.

This causes the bacteria that the antibiotics are trying to kill become "resistant". (Please forgive me if you know this already.) Basically, you are killing all the bacteria that are weak and are left with just a few strong bacteria. (This is why you start to feel better a few days after taking an antibiotic.) However, if people stop taking their antibiotics at this point, then the "strong" bacteria will multiply and reinfect the person. After a few generations, the bacteria becomes resistant to the antibiotic and the antibiotic stops working.

The real scary thing is that some "bugs", like MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin is an antibiotic and staphylococcus aureus is the name of a bacteria,) are already resistant to all but a few antibiotics. If they become resistant to the few antibiotics that are left, then we will truly have a pandemic on our hands!!!

The reason that I think that you should write about this is that your audience includes a lot of the people in the Pacific Islands that are part of the groups that tend to misuse antibiotics. If people were to only take antibiotics that are prescribed by a doctor, and take ALL the antibiotics, then this would help to slow the problem-- hopefully until newer, stronger antibiotics are developed.

Anyway, I really think that there is a story in this and I think that this is information that is vital to know. Tell me what you think.

Love,

Kim

The Woeful Tale of Couple, Mousy, Bimbo, Frat, and me

2010-08-31T15:21:00.001-07:00

So I am leaving my house the other day, and my housemate asks where I am going. I told her that I was going to the Lucky Lab to play games. "Cool," she said, "who are you going with?"

"I am going with my Depressed and Anxious people meet-up group!" I told her brightly. "Want to come?"

She burst out into laughter. "Sounds like a good time," she said, "but I'll pass."

Yes, there is a depressed and anxious person meet-up here in Portland. I have decided to stop fighting my depression and try to hang out with people that are more sympathetic to it. This was after many rather disappointing meetup experiments with the local social crowd. You see, whenever I go to one of these things, I am sandwiched between two people that have awesome chemistry and spend the evening flirting over me. It's quite annoying.

The worst was a meet-up at some pub. It started out great. At the table was me, a couple, and another really nice mousy girl. The female half of the couple was a nurse and we talked about that for quite a while. I had a few beers and got pretty tipsy and was having a good time until this blonde little prima donna bimbo showed up.

You see, the problem with me, is that I tend to fade in the light. When I am in a group with those self-absorbed people that seem to want to talk about nothing but themselves, I find it pretty hard to engage. Part of me is bored still as this stupid blonde idiot described the last meetup that she went into in terms of how many people hit on her, and the other part is kind of resentful that she took what was a perfectly enjoyable and balanced conversation and tipped it towards her annoyingly scantily clad breasts.

At one point, Bimbo was gracious enough to shut up long enough for us to talk about the different meetups we went to. Couple went to a couple's meetup. Mousy had gone to some art meetup. And I told the group about my Scientology Adventure. This led to a conversation about Scientology which went on for a little bit. This was due to the fact that Bimbo, upset that the focus was no longer on her, leaned back to tell the other table all about herself. At this point a young man who looked like he got lost on the way to a frat party joined our table and announced that he too was part of the group.

At this point we had moved on to the subjects of age. When it came to me, I said that I was 35 and Frat turned to me and said in a rather loud voice "You're 45?" I like to think that his shock due to the fact that I do not look like I am 45, however, when I corrected him, he just nodded approvingly, making me think rather that he was more shocked of my being at a meetup that was geared towards young adults aged 20-39.

"She's also a Scientologist!", Bimbo said, managing to rejoin the conversation right when Frat sat down, surprisingly. I protested this while Frat oogled Bimbo they began their sickening flirtation, which basically consisted of her describing what a ball-breaking bitch she tended to be, and him grinning like a moron and pretending to be shocked at the fact that she would send her one-night-stands out for coffee the next morning. (She never did mention if they bothered to come back.)

From then on out, whenever a new person came to the table, Frat and Bimbo thought that it was hilarious to go around the table and introduce everyone with a one word sentence, ending on "And this is Kim, she's a 45 year-old Scientologist." What was worse was that the newcomer would generally come back with a shocked "You're a scientologist?" rather then "You're 45?"

The first time that this was done, I smiled obligingly, the second time I slightly curtly corrected Frat, and the third time I finally told him that he needed to stop introducing me in such a way. He and Bimbo found this entire thing very amusing and stopped introducing me altogether, making me wonder if this was due to the fact that they didn't have another adjective to use in their little two-man introductions comedy routine.

I think that Mousy was getting sick of this as well (Couple had long ago stopped talking to the table entirely and was chatting among themselves) and she excused her self and took off. A few polite minutes later, I stood up and went to get my bill. It was a bit of a wait, so I went back to reclaim my seat just to see that it was taken by a twenty-something in a baseball cap that was hoping for a shot at Bimbo himself.

Needless to say, that was the last meetup I attended. They say that depressed people should make an effort to get out and meet new people. I say that those people have never meet to this particular Portland meetup.

Next week: Hello depressed and anxious folks…

Blog Update

2010-07-26T10:59:00.001-07:00

This summer I am trying to make my life more blogworthy. This means that I am trying to do things that other people may just want to read about. In other words, I am trying to spend less time on the couch watching Seth MacFarlene cartoon reruns and drinking PBR.

So, I have updated this blog with a few new features. You've probably already noticed the new title. I am quite proud of that. You can follow me on Twitter, RSS, or you can just subscribe via email. I fixed the slideshow so that it actually works and doesn't show the same damn pictures. (Well, it does show the same damn pictures, but it shows them in a different order.)

And, well, that's about it. For the all the work it took me, I thought that I would have more to offer.

MICU?

2010-07-25T17:18:00.004-07:00

I was just working with a medical record of someone who was on the MICU, and that got me wondering about what exactly a MICU is. Turns out that it's a medical intensive care unit.

Excuse me? Isn't that a tad redundant? I mean, is there a non-medical intensive care unit where they just stand around and hope that you get better?

Jon Stewart was Right: they are Appholes

2010-07-24T12:59:00.003-07:00

Let me please take a minute to do what blogs were really designed for -- angry rants towards large corporations to minuscule and insignificant audiences who don't really care, all simply for the purpose of making me feel better.

So, recently, John Stewart recently went off on Apple. A brilliant monologue -- that was no surprise -- but I thought that Mr. Stewart had gone a little bit too far in saying that "…It wasn’t supposed to be this way – Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one! But you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes! What the fuck is going on???!!!" I thought that this was a bit over the top until I actually had the pleasure of visiting a Apple Store. You see, my iPod has suddenly decided that I really don't need to hear music in both the left and right ears. One should do fine, thank you.

Let me take another second here to say that this is the third iPod I have owned and the third one that has broken down in less then a year. The first was actually a present, so when that one decided that it didn't want to do anything except show the damned Apple logo on it's useless little screen I sort of cut my losses. The second one was used and after it decided to become a $200 paperweight I decided that I would never own an iPod again. Then a friend came around and sold me an iPod Touch after getting an Android, and well, I couldn't resist. I mean, I figured that it was a totally different bit of machinery and I was willing to give iPod another chance. Big mistake. I don't see my Microsoft is so intent on building an "iPod killer"-- the damn things are committing suicide just fine on their own.

Anyway, I went to the Apple Store knowing that I was most likely going to be very disappointed. My used iPod does not have AppleCare© associated with it, so I was pretty sure that the Apple Store was going to tell me to either fork over more money then my iPod was worth or get the hell out. As it turns out, I didn't even get that far.

No, I got to the store and as I attempted to walk in, I was stopped by not one, but two mall security guards. There were three at the door, and the third was chatting up the Apple guy who was lounging outside the store. As the guard asked me what I needed, I looked over his shoudler assuming that someone was going bonkers with an uzi inside-- the only reason that I could think of that a store would need to have four men manning it's gates. Turns out that this was not the case, this is just stardard operating procedures for an Apple Store nowadays.

I told the guard that I needed to have someone look at my iPod, and the guard indicated-- no, bowed, actually, at the Apple worker and told me that I would need to "talk to him first." The guard told me that this god-like man "may or may not choose to let me in." Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Let me in? Is this studio fucking 54 now? Would it help if I were a blonde bimbo? I waited a good thirty seconds while the Apple guy talked to the guard about some restaurant that he'd gone to before Mr. Apple God finally agnowleged me. When I told him what I wanted, he pulled out an iPhone and asked me in a snooty maitre'd sort of a way if I had an appointment. No, I told him, I don't have a damn appointment, all I need is for some AppleCare moron to tell me that they can't fix my iPod. The Apple Maitre'd offered to make an appointment for me. When I asked if I could get in that day he just laughed at me. (I am being totally serious.) I turned around an walked away and Mr. Maitre'd Apphole remembered something he read about customer service and called after me to have a good day.

Like Mr. Stewart, I am also feeling a bit put off. Aside from the fact that I haven't owned an Apple Computer since 2001 (when I went to work for MS), I did support those losers when their stock was worth less then a candy bar. I spent my hard-earned money from working at my college cafeteria on a damn PowerMac 7100, for god sakes. And now they won't even let me in the store to fix my broken iPod.

Screw them. My next mp3 player is going to be... oh, who am I kidding.

Scientology is Complete Crap

2010-07-22T12:38:00.003-07:00

So, one of my meet-up groups has been doing a tour of different religions. I am new to the group, and I am pretty sorry that I missed pretty much every one of these talks. They have had nights centered around all sorts of different faiths, including Baha'i, Muslim, Hindu, and even Mormon. This week they were sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel and we went to explore the Church of Scientology.

The inside didn't really look much like a church, it looked more like the room of a top-rate nonprofit, with a main meeting room and classrooms and offices at the side. The meeting room walls were advertising various books and workshops with "L. Ron Hubbard" spattered in every available niche. (For someone that is so philanthropic, as we learned later, the guy sure seemed to like his name spread around.)

Anyway, the first part was a viewing of thier new DVD (based on the book "The Problems of Work"). This was basically a poorly acted but generally well-produced "dramatization" (so we were told, no I have not read the book) of the different chapters. They are geared to help improve communication at work as well as one's own being. One of the things that they talked about were "Tones". Someone at the bottom of the stack feels "sub-apathy", and the idea is to move them upward through the various tones to Serenity. Now although tones are really just a rip-off of Kübler-Ross's grief model (Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) I do have to admit that for me, a chronic depressive, there is a bit appeal and dare I say logic to this model. We were told that people get stuck at various tones and need help to pull them out. When the video talked about how people who were stuck in apathy saw the world as (I am paraphrasing here) "like looking at shades of gray through water" I have to admit then had it not been freakin' Scientology, I might have considered actually picking up a few pamphlets and maybe checking out their books in the library. I mean, after dealing with despression for more then half my life, that stuff spoke to me and I am long past the point where I will try just about anything.

Anyway, after the video we had a guy who looked remarkably like Kyle MacLachlan with a beard (Cooper from Twin Peaks or Orson from Desperate Housewives) jumped up with a smile and ask if we had any questions. He quickly established that he was one of us (sane) by saying that he is an engineer and Catholic (probably figuring that would cover pretty much everyone in the group in some way.) Kyle took our questions, and being that we were a pretty nice and respectful group, we started out with some easy ones. Is there a service in the Church? How does the church see god? Are other faiths accepted? As Kyle took our questions with his smile, the other Scientologsts that were standing around holding thier free DVD and other stuff slowly inched in as the questions started to get more difficult. When one gentleman asked about Scientology and it's believes towards physics and other established sciences, Kyle's little posse started to edge in protectively, smiling at us with suspicious eyes.

Finally, someone got around to asking about money. After assuring as that "no one has ever gotten rich over Scientology" he said that this would be the last question, as he knew that "we" had to go. I looked around and didn't see that anyone in my group looked particularly interested in leaving. The Scientology posse was getting nearing and started making "alright" gestures- nodding and looking like they were ready to give us our DVDs and get us the hell out. Before this happened, however, one girl did manage to ask about Tom Cruise and his views twoards Psychiatry.

Now here things got interesting. Kyle gave a sort of fake laugh and then went all Jekyll and Hyde on us. I inched towards the edge of my sheet, thinking that Kyle was going to go off on Tom Cruise and what a lousy representative of Scientology he was. Instead, Kyle started to rail on psychiatry in general, stating that people are spirits and can not be controlled chemically. Although he did come out in favor of Phycology and it's "talking cure" (every psychologist I ever had referred me to a psychiatrist for a prescription) he stated that pushing pills and chemistry was simply a way to control the natural spirit. There was no pill, Kyle insisted, that would help the spirit. Pills were a way of pushing buttons to control people, and Kyle said with a snear, do you know who started these vile experiments? It was the NAZIs!!!!!

There was a definite change in the room at this point. The Scientologist bouncers looked ready to jump and the audience was just getting started. One woman in the back quickly jumped in and identified herself as a clinical psychologist. She pointed out that although the "talking cure" was well and good, there were many of her patients that suffered from visual and audio hallucinations that talking really could not cure. Kyle seemed to see that he had gone a bit too far and then back-peddled, saying that there were people who were "insane" that Scientology didn't really claim to help. Apparently the door was closed to the "insane", non-insane people who didn't hear voices were welcome to join their own brand of "medicine"-- provided they were willing to toss their antidepressants and anti anxiety medications. Obviously, that was the end of our little talk.

Anyway, my opinion of Scientology has gone from mocking it to realizing that this is a pretty scary concept that should be stopped. They target people who are depressed, lonely, and scared and lure them in with promises of a cure. They encourage them to abandon their established methods of treatment and throw their mental health (along with their wallets) into the hands of what is essentially a group of quacks. This is wrong, and this is unethical. It is no different then those people who claim that they can cure cancer with no more then clean living and a special concoction of vitamins and snake oil.

Scientology isn't just a cult, they are evil.

Update from Samoa

2010-07-19T18:31:00.001-07:00

I found this old email, and thought that I would pass it along as an update to my time in Samoa. A sister of my Samoan mother wrote me to let me know that my Samoan grandmother, Fetu, passed away. Although she was never officially diagnosed, Fetu suffered from Alzheimer's and was cared for at home by my Samoan family.

Hi There Kimberely,

My name is Tui Filemoni I am one of many daughter in-laws of Fetu. I was asked by Talosia Sini in Nuusuatia to get in contact with you to inform you of the family's sad loss of Fetu. Who sadly passed away in Samoa on the 11 January 2008. Talosia sends her sincere apologise for not being able to get in contact with you sooner, and also asked to send her love onto you. I do apologise myself for being the one to inform you of our mum, but am pleased my sister Talosia has asked me to do this for her as she expressed you had deep love for our mum. I am in contact with Talosia quite alot so if you wish for me to relay any message to her and the family back in Samoa, please do so, would love to repay the favor for you.

Many best wishes from the Fetu Filemoni family

Tui Filemoni

Dear Tui,

Thank you so much for writing. I was so sorry to hear that Fetu passed way. I actually work at a hospital and we get a lot of elderly patients, most of which have Alheimers like Fetu had. For these poor people, they live in nursing homes and they have no one to care for them. When they come to the hospital they are very confused, and many of them are screaming for help. I try to help them, but I know that what they really need is to be at home in a familiar place with people who love them.

And then I think of Fetu. I am pretty sure that she also had Alheimers, but unlike the poor, lost, scared souls at the hospital she was at home, and she was with people who loved her dearly, and that made me so happy. She was such a lucky person to have so much love in her life. Many times people with Alheimers will become confused-- they will swear, and hit-- but this is just the disease. When I think of Fetu lying in her fale, tapping the floor, singing and saying prayers, it always makes me smile and feel glad that she was able to have so much support for such a terrible disease. I remember that I would teach Anne songs on a flute and after hearing them a few times, Fetu would be singing and tapping away with us.

I know that it must have been so difficult for Talosia to care for her mother when her mother was so different, and I hope that Talosia knows that it was the disease that made her mother do strange things. But when I work with people who have the same sickness here, in America, I always wish for them what Fetu had. I wish for them that their families would show even a little of the care and respect that Fetu's family gave her. That is something that I always remember when I think back to Samoa and to my family in Niusuatia-- the love and devotion that is shown to each other-- even to me, a stranger. So although I am very sad that she died, it always makes me so happy to know that Fetu had so much love at a time when she needed it the most.

Please tell Talosia that I am living in Iowa, and that I am studying to be a nurse. This may sound a little crazy, but I think that I started thinking about being a nurse when Angel got sick right when I first got to Samoa. She was so hot, so sick. I guess that something like that is normal in a country like Samoa, but for me I had never seen a child so sick and it made me scared. I went to Apia and found some children's fever medication, and the next day when I got back from school Angel ran out of the house and threw herself into my arms, not a trace of fever left. Ever since then I always felt that I wanted to help children everywhere get better. I am going to a school in Sioux City, Iowa called St. Luke's College, and to pay for school I work as a nursing assistant at St. Luke's Hospital. It's a Methodist hospital. :) I have about a year and a half left, then a few years working in the states before I travel again.

After I left Samoa I went to Yemen, then Thailand. It was so hard to leave Samoa, but it was something that I had to do. I felt bad that I left so quickly, but I was offered a job that needed me right away. I am glad that I have had the chance to travel so much, but everywhere that I have been I have never found anyone who cared about me so much as my family in Niusuatia.

Tima

PS:
Did you know that you can see Talosia's house on Googlemaps?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=samoa&ie=UTF8&ll=-13.983696,-171.838735&spn=0.002415,0.00346&t=h&z=18

Nursing School: Check!!

2010-06-28T12:10:00.007-07:00

My and my Dummy, who was my patient stand-in and helped my pass the CPNE. He is happy to return to his former job as my PJ's, a ski-mask from my Iowa days, and a few pillows.

Note: this blog entry could alternatively be titled "Jodi K can kiss my ass." Yeah, you know what I be talkin' about.

Despite trials, tribulations, tears, and transfers I have finally completed nursing school, yes, about 6 months late. 8 months late if you include the obscene amount of time that they make you wait for your actual graduation date. Anyway, you can read about the final test that I had to take to achieve this milestone here. Basically, this was a hellish weekend in Albany, NY (no, not Albany OR, and yes, there is an Albany, OR) where I had to perform at my highest standards. To pass this test you have to:

1. Complete for simulated lab stations: IV push, wound dressing, IV drip, SubQ/IM injection
2. Real-life "Patient Care Scenarios" where you have to provide care under the very watchful eyes of an instructor.

On each of these, you can fail once. Most people fail for little things. But really, this is an easy exam. If you had to walk across the street at any time of your choosing and just do it for $25, then this exam would be a joke. When you have to wait 4-6 months for a test date and need to cough up $2500 for the test, plane ticket, and lodgings, it becomes a little bigger of a deal. And it's generally the only think that stands between you and the RN. So I will just say that I was feeling pretty fuckin' good when I passed that. I told everyone at Starbucks and killed my phone battery.

Today, I am suffering from post-CPNE syndrome. I wake up panicked before I realize that I don't have to take the CPNE again. I start to get restless if I don't check the CPNE bulletin boards after about a day. I need to double check with my college to make sure that I really passed it. The real scary thing was that after I got back from the CPNE, my body totally went to shit. I was sick for a week. My periods, which had been absent for about three months, suddenly came back with an angry vengeance. It was all this that made me realize just what my body can do for me.

The good think about the CPNE is that it makes the NCLEX look like a pathetic joke in comparison. Onwards!!

Old Friends, new friends?

2010-05-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

(Kloro, it would be good to catch up, send me your email, you should be able to email me though my profile...)

My good friend Dylan suprised me with a visit yesterday, and we wandered around my 'hood a bit, got some Thai, et cetera. It was good to see him again, and he asked me about Portland. I had actually just been talking about that subject with one of my Portland friends... ahem, let me restate that, my ONLY Portland friend the night before.

Dylan asked me how I was liking Portland and I said that I liked it fine, however I have not been terribly sucessful is making friends. Talking with Dylan made be realize just how much easier it was to make friends when I was younger-- why is that? Have I changed, or have the people around me changed?

When I was younger, like when I was at Apple or Microsoft, I felt that I had a good number of friends, of course back then I worked in teams and had to deal with other people to meets goals. In my current job at a call center, I really don't work with my co-workers all that much. I think that it also has a lot to do with the fact that most people my age are involved with kids and families and are not really in that "lets make friends" place.

I can see why many people choose to stay in one place for thier entire lives. It sucks when you are in your twenties, but then you get a little older and having a few familiar faces can make all the difference.

New Spiffy Blog Title and Look! Yeehaww!

2010-05-25T18:32:00.002-07:00

I am going to start off my requesting that the person who left the comment that they met me in Santa Cruz please stand up and identify yourself. I have an idea who you are, but I am not sure, and it is drive me crazy.

Anyhoo, It's been a while since my last update. I have to say, it is hard to keep a blog when your life is nothing but work and you are not allowed to discuss your job outside of work. Had that problem when I worked at the hospital and I have that problem now.

Anyway, I am working at the Lions Eye Bank of Oregon as a Donor Coordinator. I love it, it's a great job!
All for now. My next post will be all about PDX biking.

Get Picked up at the Supermarket

2010-03-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

I got picked up at a Seattle supermarket, unfortunatly he turned out to be gay.

Just a Thought...

2010-02-11T02:31:00.001-08:00

For those of you that forgot to get a birthday present, it isn't too late...

http://www.peterrivard.com/Pages/potter.html

Home Health Haikus

2010-01-09T22:16:00.000-08:00

I work as a Home Health nurse while I am getting through the end of nursing school. During an twelve hour overnight job, I wrote the following haikus whilst trying to stay awake at 3AM which I feel are a rather poignet insight into my character:

The focused student
Learn! Because after the test
She'll forget this crap

Red roses in a vase
Starting to wilt and show age
What a waste of cash

Oh stupid black dog
Wake up the patient again
And YOU'LL need a nurse

Warm heater air blows
I drape my shirt on your vent
Oh such warm buttocks

Dumb empty Coke bottle
Laughing at my exhaustion
Laugh in the trash can

(This one is a bit darker, but keep in mind it was three in the morning:)
Diligent nurse
Watches her patient all night
"Just die! I want sleep"

Update, finally

2010-01-05T20:47:00.002-08:00

Hello world, I am hailing from Portland, my new home. Anyway, I am here and am very happy to be out of Iowa. Very happy.

Anyway, a new friend just asked me why I haven't updated my blog in a while. He also seemed to express a bit of surprise over the fact that I hated my new (and please God, temporary) home health care job that I have. I hope to answer both of these queries in My New Rant (TM).

Ahem.

As you know, there is a a huge health care problem we face today. Too many sick people and not enough money. And as you also may have noticed, there is another problem which is less pressing where funeral homes get these poor people who have lost their loved ones to spend way to much money on their uptake.

I will connect these two in a minute. Grandma dies, and the family is either told or feels that their final act will indicate how much they loved Grandma. I mean, what cold hearted bastard is going to place her in a pine coffin and throw her in the sea? Even though she is dead and doesn't care, it just feels wrong to not do the best. Even when the best is a total waste of energy and time.

You see, I am not a advocate of the so-called "death panels", but I do feel that money would be better spent if we could figure out a way to put people who are in Hospice and have no quality of life out of their misery and spent that money, say, giving a five-year-old a new kidney. But of course going around and telling people to euthanize grandma is a step above telling people to just dump that corpse into a patch of forest that desperately needs fertilization. It isn't going to fly.

Keep in mind that I am talking about people who have no quality of life. People who don't know who they are, where they are, and who do not enjoy anything. People who can't get out of bed and have bedsores and people who are in constant pain and stress because of all the things that we are doing to them to "make them comfortable". When a person is screaming in pain as you roll them to clean up a BM or apply a dressing to an open bedsore, you really have to wonder what you are keeping them alive for.

I hope that I never see this. Someone please-- about 150 units on Insulin in my ass should really do the trick, thank you. Take the money that you would have used to keep me alive for another year and go feed Africa.

So why I hate my job-- well, although home health has a romantic ring to it-- helping the suffering, easing pain, yadda yadda yadda, most of the people that I see are pushed aside, forgotten. I mean, if you loved you sick little mother so much that you just had to keep her around for another year so that the two of you could bask in each other's glory-- even if she didn't recognise you-- would you really hire someone to take care of her for 10 bucks an hour and whose only job requirement was a GED? I mean, these aren't exactly the kid from Lorenzo's Oil that I am taking care of. Yeah, I am sure those patients exist, but most of what your average home health worker is seeing is a person that is forgotten. It's sad, and it's a waste of their time.

I think that Lorenzo from Lorenzo's Oil is a good example of why to keep someone around-- not that he kind of got better at the end, but that he had people who loved him enough to really take care of him. Had he been forgotten in a nursing home and neglected until his sacrum as pushing through the skin, I might have felt differently for the poor kid.

I also want to finish with a story from Thailand. My teenaged students refused to wear their helmits on thier motorbikes. I woudl bed, threaten, and bribe them to wear them, but the best I got was for them to take a helmit, wear it, and then take if off when they got around the bend. One day, a guy crashed outside our school and half the school watched as he was taken into a car and driven to the hospital, where he died of a brain hemorrhage. Most people knew of this poor guy. I fully intended to make a point about this man. The next lecture, I told the students sternly how sad this man-- a husband and a father-- had to die when all he had to do was wear a ten dollar helmet, which would have very likely saved his life. My class listened patiently and politely to my stern lecture and then one brave student raised his hand and asked "Teacher, why Americans afraid of die?" I was so taken aback by the question that I didn't even bother to correct his grammar. Why are we so afraid of death? And who is more afraid of death, the person facing it, or the ones they will leave behind?

Anyway, end of rant. I hope that I haven't offended anyone too much.

Yes, we DID!!!

2008-11-05T09:39:00.004-08:00

See "Obama sweeps to victory as first black president"

I can't believe that I am actually tempted to get on the internet and email all my overseas buddies that I am proud to be an American for the first time in almost a decade. This from the girl who used to introduce herself to her English classes "Hi, I'm Kim, I am from America, sorry about that." I am so proud that the people of this country made such a brave and bold choice. I spent last night at a Democrat party watching the polls roll in. I don't think that I will ever forget the moment when my beloved West Coast came in and announced that Obama will be he next Commander-in-Chief. Thanks guys!!

(Look for me in the top right corner of that picture!)

Go Phillies!!!

2008-11-02T09:36:00.002-08:00

I managed to win St. Luke's College's "Who Will Win the World Series" game by being the only person to correctly guess that the Phillies would win. This is very exciting to me as a) I don't think that I have ever really won anything, b) I don't follow sports and basically picked a team out of a hat and c) well, um, that's it really.

Please, get out and vote on Tuesday. A lot of lame people I live with are saying that there really isn't a difference between the candidates. I can't really respond to this as I have been to busy to watch the debates so I can't really give concrete examples of how they differ. I will say this however: this was the same BS that people were saying in 2000 about Bush and Gore. Eight years later, one man has started an illegal was that has killed hundreds of thousands, and the other has spearheaded the movement against annihilation of the planet though global warming. No difference my ass.

As they say in Chicago: "vote early, vote often!"

Nothing... nothing.... nothing... then I miss THIS?

2008-07-05T07:53:00.004-07:00

Check this out:Man survives four-story plunge from apartment

Argonaut Apartments is where I live. The picture in the article is right outside my back door, where our laundy room is. No, I didn't know the guy that jumped out the window (I try to have as little to do with my neighbors as possible) but this story didn't really shock me. I am just praying this this happy family gets evicted.

I missed it because I went to see Prince Caspian. It was okay, but I would probably have been more amused by a guy jumping four stories out a window and surviving. The only good parts of the movie was when they didn't bother trying to follow the book-- like when the Narnians stormed the castle, a scene not penned by the great C.S. Lewis. Not that I don't like the book-- quite the opposite-- but I think that the scenes were better because they were designed to be in a movie, while the other scenes were designed to be in a book.

No matter how good her acting (which isn't really that good) the cinematic Lucy can never show how strong her love for Aslan is as the literary Lucy. This is why I pretty much feel that this movie proves that Hollywood (and Disney in particular) should make thier own damn movies instead of ripping off the plotlines of authors (unless the book happens to be Fight Club, but that's a different story.)

This includes Harry Potter (which finally got kids to read) and Lord of the Rings. Although I agree with Randal Graves (of Clerks 2 fame) on both the LOTR books and the movies: "Those fuckin' hobbit movies were boring as hell. All it was, was a bunch of people walking, three movies of people walking to a fucking volcano... Even the trees walked in those fuckin' movies."

Sioux City still sucks. I did have a good time at the Marti Gras festival yesterday (yes, I know it's July) where we had a "parade". I put "parade" in quotes because actually all it was was a bunch of guys in identical shirts throwing beads to the crowd. A few had large Macy-day type balloons which probably could have used a few more tanks of helium. The fun part was screaming out "Beads! Beads!" while clapping your hands like a deranged seal in the hopes that a necklace would be hurled your way.

A Sampling of Great Sioux City Minds

2008-06-20T11:24:00.002-07:00

Seven percent Give Or Take
Overheard discussion on fashion models in a Briar Cliff University stairway:
Girl 1: ... are so unrealistic. I mean, no one looks that way.
Girl 2: Yeah, totally.
Girl 1: I mean, I bet that, like, less then 10% of women look like that.
Girl 2: I bet it's more then that. I bet it's like 7%.
Girl 1: Yeah, 7%.
Girl 3: I bet it's more then that. I mean, what about all the starving people in Ethiopia?
Girl 1: Oh yeah. Well, 7% plus them.

Vocabulary Building
Overheard discussion between family of four (mom, dad, 5 year old, baby in stroller) while walking to work:
Man: ... messed up. I mean, he won't be going anywhere near there again. I took that dude down! [unintelligible] ... some bitch.
5 year Old: Bitch! Bitch!
Mom: ...

Birth Control Really is a Lovely Thing
I was sitting next to a classmate that was moaning about the difficulty of a nursing class. She asked me if I thought that the class was hard.
Me: Well, I have an advantage. I don't have kids to distract me.
Her: You don't have kids at home?
Me: Nope.
Her: Do they live somewhere else?
Me: Uh, no. I don't have any kids.
Her: Grown kids? [Note: grown kids aren't uncommon for a 32-year-old here.]
Me: No, no kids at all.
Her: Wow. Don't you even have stepkids?
Me: No. I'm not married.
Her: Are you divorced?
Me: No, I've never been married.
Her: Never? How old are you?
Me: 32
Her: Are you still a virgin?

Water Water Everywhere

2008-06-15T10:29:00.001-07:00

Actually, there isn't any flooding in Sioux City... we just got some really pretty thunderstorms and that was about it. The Little Sioux boy scout ranch is a ways away and we weren't hit.

I felt raelly guilty, actually. I was really hoping that something would strike down a lot closer. The hospital got put on a “Sky Alert” and I was disappointed that I wasn't there to help move everyone into the halls. When I heard about what happened the next day, however, talking to the doctors who helped really drove the point home that something like this isn't all excitement and is all tragedy. Because the hikers were kids who didn't carry any type of ID, notification of families was delayed and 12 horus later one boy's family still hadn't been told. That image really hit me hard-- of a mother who didn't know if her boy was alive or dead, or where he even was. So the next time that I look at a dark cloud it won't be with anticipatory excitement but with that image in my mind.

Funny to think that I used to be terrified of lightening and tornados. I guess I used to be afraid of a lot of things.

The flooding in the news is on the Eastern part of the state, and so we've only been affected in that a lot of our doctors and nurses are heading over there, leaving a shortage here. I wish that I could go and help-- the fact that I have classes sounds like a pretty lame excuse even to me.

Hey! Leave Them Streets Alone!

2008-06-04T10:11:00.003-07:00

Nothing new to report, really.

A few weeks ago I was awoken by some yelling outside my window at around 6AM. I live in a rather "colorful" part of town and the yelling was "Hey! You're a @#$%ing drug dealer! Get out of here, you @#$%ing drug dealer!!" I peeked out my window to get a look at the @#$%ing drug dealer and saw that my car was the only one parked on the street. So thank you, Mr. @#$%ing Drug Dealer, you prevented my car from getting towed as an hour later there was no longer a street outside my apartment.

I spent the day watching the men tear things up. Now I am not one to oogle workmen (for more reasons then one) but it is an attestment to my geekhood that I found the machinery-- especially the Excavator very graceful. They were like huge dinosaurs tearing up the street, moving so smoothly that it was easy to forget that they were controlled by humans and a few gears. If you ever see one, you should stop and watch it for a bit.

The streets in Sioux City are so bad that even George W. Bush-- who is in a bad position to complain about anything American-- pointed out that the city was wonderful but needed the potholes fixed. Like most statements made by Bush, I disagree. The only redeeming qualities that Sioux City has to offer are for the most part being dismantled by the Republicans (such as the library funding.)
Anyway, I am hoping that they take all summer to fix the street as while there isn't a street there aren't any drug dealers screaming up to people at my window. It's been a quiet summer.

The Sioux City Walking Tour

2008-05-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

I thought that this weekend would be a good weekend for the Sioux City Walking Tour. At the museum, I found a few brochures that had maps and “historical areas” in Sioux City. It was cold at the time, so I filed them away for a sunny say. The weather finally turned decent recently-- after snow on April 25th, I was starting to wonder.

So I took the maps off the shelves, dusted them off, and had a look. My first thought was that wandering around looking at what really is a bunch of identical buildings wouldn't be very interesting. I looked at one in particular on the corner of Nebraska and 3rd and thought “Hey, wait a minute, I have been to this corner about a zillion times and I have never seen that building before.” It was then that I noticed the fine print: “Buildings in italics are no longer in existence.” Great. Of the 16 buildings that I am supposed to trek around the city to look at, only 5 of them exist and one of those is the warehouse district-- famous, yes-- famous for it's smell.

And let me give you a sample of the “historical” narrative that this pamphlet boasts. Here is the listing for one of the remaining buildings: The Warrior Hotel on the corner of 6th and Nebraska.

Warrior Hotel, 1955
Constructed as the Fontenelle Hotel in 1930, it was known as the Warrior Hotel by the time it opened in 1931. Omaha hotel magnate Eugene C. Eppley purchased the Warrior during the mid-1930's. Eppley hotels sold the Warrior to the Sheraton Corporation of America in 1956, after which time it was called the Sheraton-Warrior. In the late 1960s Sioux City contractors Jospeth and Frank Audino purchased the hotel and renamed it the Aventino Motor Inn. The building has been empty since 1972.

Oh sure, Kim, you are probably thinking, pick the most boring listing and of course it looks bad.Sadly, the rest of the listings are like this: a history of who bought and sold the building and a history of the various names and owners of the property. Some of the more exciting entries talk about elevators being rebuilt, but that really is the extent of it.

So, in other words, the best that Sioux City can do is to lead me on a tour of the city looking at where a bunch of rather drab and boring buildings used to be before they got torn down. Wonderful. Sign me up. Underground Tour, Seattle, watch out-- you've got some real competition here in Sioux City.

where the F@&! have u been?

2008-03-01T18:22:00.001-08:00

That was the greeting that Sonia left on my Facebook wall this morning, Sonia having apparently forgotten the virtues of email. (True, I can't really talk.) It's a fair question, actually... A question that I have more or less been asking myself.

Sioux City continues to be a rather sizable disappointment. It's a living testament to why Wal-marts are a bad thing. Seriously, Micheal Moore should come here to shoot his next documentary on large-business centralization and the havoc that it can cause on the character of a town. After visiting the rather pathetic Sioux City museum, I picked up a few "walking maps" of the "historic" 4th and 6th streets. The fact that they are historic is really the only thing that is going for them, as every possible business has either closed or is in the process of closing as more and more people are getting into their cars and driving to the malls outside of town.

The social scene isn't much better. Walking home the other day, someone threw a rock or something at me while they were driving past. I keep falling on the ice and the bystanders keep watching with bored interest and no concern. Sarah pointed out that if we were 19 or had kids it might be different-- as things stand right now, people aren't quite sure what to do with us. And don't get me started on the dating scene. Since the men seem to have a tendency to knock their girlfriends up I have been sticking to girls, but all the lesbians here are catty, gossipy, and mean.

Another reason that I have been away is that work is hell. There is some sort of flu plague that has hit Sioux City and everyone and their grandmother seems to be landing on my floor at the hospital. I heard on NPR the other day that everyone who bothered getting a flu shot might have well been injected with water-- the strains that they predicted would strike this year were wrong and as a result we were all inoculated with the wrong dead virus. As a result, I've been forced to hand out about ten complete bed baths a morning as the hospital refused to crawl to a temp agency to give us a few more techs.

So, two years of nursing school (two years minus two months actually) and I am outta here. Sarah's trying to leave earlier then that-- she's a big help. I suggested that she dump her three year program and join me in my two year AAN program and get her BSN later and she just laughed at me.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you to all of you that wished me a happy b-day and demanded that I update my blog. I didn't think that my life was that interesting, and it's nice to know that you guys disagree.

Hey It's Beginning To Snow

2007-12-02T10:43:00.001-08:00

The first words out of my mouth on this first day of December weren't “Rabbit Rabbit” but rather “Holy Crap” as I looked out my window and saw that about two inches of snow had fallen over the night. The first snow is always a surprise for me, even this time when the weather people had been talking about it all day yesterday. I was exciting, having not seen snow in such a long time, especially Midwest snow (the Seattle stuff hardly counts). In fact, I think that I am the only person in Iowa over twelve who was actually excited about the snow. On Friday, when I mentioned to a patient that we were getting snow the next she ordered me so sternly not to use four-letter-words at work that for a moment I thought that she was serious as was going to tell my boss.

The first day of snow comes with a tradition of taking the day off and sitting at home sipping cocoa and listening to Christmas carols. I had to forgo the tradition this year as, like Thanksgiving, people still get sick on the first day of snow. It's actually quite nice to have a job where the world might actually stop spinning (for one person, at least) if I don't show up for work that day. Although it's a lot of responsibility, it's nice to know that the work that I am doing actually needs to be done-- something that can't be said for snake handling, writing tools for video games and teaching English to people in non-English speaking villages that rely on elephants for transportation.

I haven't really talked about my job too much... I am a nursing assistant (or a nursing “tech”) at a local hospital, and I really love it. I give baths, change beds, provide comfort, help people around, take vitals (blood pressures, temperatures, and so on). I get to do tech stuff to, like take EKGs, bladder scans, and play with catheters. I am also generally the one that will be the first to note an emergency, and so the most important part of my job is to be alert for that. Basically I am a cross between an orderly and a nurse. I do all the things that nurses are generally credited with besides giving medications. What I like the most is that I am in a position to help a person who is scared, in pain, or upset. And the best part of my job is that when I go to sleep at night, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have done something that day to make the world a better place, and got paid for it too!

Kim is a CNA!!

2007-11-24T10:32:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since my last update, mostly because I have been terribly busy. The first exciting piece of news is that, despite many setbacks and obstacles, I am a CNA, a certified nursing assistant. The obstacles that I speak of were all placed by Western Iowa Technical College (WIT) in Sioux City (I am hoping to get some Google hits on that lousy school-- if you are considering getting a CNA degree there do yourself a favour and email me first) who did everything in their power to prevent me from finishing the class. First they tried to cancel the class. Then they tried to push back clinicals for a week because someone was too lazy to call a nurse and get us medically cleared to volunteer in a nursing home. Then, come the day of the test, they didn't bother to sign us up. Although technically it was our fault because we were supposed to sign ourselves up, my entire class showed up at the test without having signed up, indicating that there was a breakdown in communication somewhere.
I had a cow. The reason behind my cow was that I was supposed to start orientation at a local hospital and my starting hinged on my passing the CNA test. I did manage to bully my way into the skills test, but I had to drive two hours to a different college to take my written because WIT was too lazy to sign me up themselves. It's a miracle that I passed my skills test. After fighting with administration they finally let me into the room although the rather unpleasant administrator commented that I was both lying about my employment and that "it wasn't right". She sat down and I realized with horror that she was the one administering the test. She was determined to fail me. I did a great job-- I did everything right, didn't forget a thing-- but I still got an 80%. Fine with me, I just needed a 70% to pass.
I remember working in Samoa and failing a student who didn't turn in a homework assignment on time. Although I was very clear about the due date and the consequences, she complained to administration and I was brought into the office and talked to be the dean. I showed her the syllabus and explained that I had been very clear about the due date. She listened to me, and then told me that the point of the class was for the students to learn, and that I needed to question that before all else. I admitted that the student had done the assignment correctly and reluctantly accepted it. At the time I thought that she was being unfair. Now I am glad that I got that lesson, and I was reminded f it during this CNA bullcrap. It's so easy to get wrapped up behind the red tape that you forget what you started to do. It's something that I need to try and remember as I do my job.
My job! I am working at a local hospital as a CNA. I really love it. It's hard to imagine that I would find something that is more satisfying then teaching, but working in a hospital is it. I pulled a 12-hour shift on Thanksgiving, and I have to say that although the patients and their families felt sorry that I had to work, it was actually one of the nicer Thanksgivings that I have had. I was working on rehab, where people who need to relearn basic skills after injury (how to walk, how to dress, how to make a bed, etc) have physical and occupational therapy. Maybe they had a broken bone, a stroke, or are learning to deal with a disability. All my patients have one thing in common-- they don't want to be here on Thanksgiving. I was thankful that I was able to help them, to talk to them, to hopefully make them feel a little less lonely. (It also gave me a chance to be thankful that I could walk. A nice way to put things in perspective.)
Anyway, I'll write more about my great job later. Until then, happy belated Thanksgiving and merry early Christmas!

The People of Sioux City Have Spoken...

2007-11-07T09:39:00.001-08:00

The People of Sioux City have spoken... and they want change. Yesterday was the first mayoral race in 53 years (previously they'd been assigned by comittee) and incumbents were tossed out and replaced. It was a pretty pathetic election, actually-- the turnout was only 21%. The new mayor only won by 374 votes out of the 9212 votes cast.

Not that I can take a real high moral ground here. To get me to the polls, not only did Sarah have to call me to remind me, but she also had to drive me, bribe me with Starbucks, and had to tell me who to vote for because I was too lazy to research the canidates myself. Aside from mayor, we had a coucilman to pick. We went for some guy named Rochester who, as Sarah put it, was "less anti-gay" then the guy currently in office. Slim pickings here in SUX City.

When I got to my class after the election and asked my classmates it they'd voted they looked at me like I was crazy and informed me that the elections were NEXT November.

Rabbit Rabbit

2007-11-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

This morning was the first morning in my life that I said "Rabbit Rabbit" when I woke up. You are supposed to say that as the first thing that you say on the first day of a month, but I have never remembered. It's supposed to bring good luck, so this November is off too a positive start already.

You can read about the superstition here. Wikipedia says that "Some have also believed [the superstition] is representing a jumping into the future and moving ahead with life and happiness." Things are starting to look up for me and my nursing career, so I think that this is a good sign.

I had my first clinical on Tuesday, and it went really well. This was for my Certified Assistant Nursing course. This is just a 75-hour certification course that I am taking to work as a Nurses Aide in the hospital and get some nursing experience while I take courses. The class is almost done-- I aced the theory section, and now we get six “clincials” or classes in a practical setting-- in my case, a nursing home.

Even after just a few hours I have already learned so much. I as assigned to a gentleman who needed help eating. He did not speak, and I didn't know why. At first I was actually a little jealous of the other students who were assisting with the more vocal residents who gave animated feedback-- the only feedback that I got from “my guy” was to see if he opened his mouth when I brought food to his lips. If he didn't open his mouth, he didn't want it.

Eventually I started to talk to him. I told him about why I came to Sioux City, what I thought of nursing, what I thought of the town, what I thought about the food that he was eating. I blabbled on about how I was trying to drink more milk after reading about the benefits of calcium in my Anatomy and nutrition courses. I talked about the different food groups and told him what he was getting. Eventually I asked a rhetorical question and was shocked when he grunted in agreement. Up until that moment, I had assumed that since he didn't talk, he didn't listen and he didn't understand. Although as a student I had vowed that I wouldn't make that mistake (I was one of the few in the class that talked to the CPR dummies, or “Annies”) I had just made it. That was one of the best lessons that I learned in the class, and it came from a teacher with no degree.

Life Sux

2007-10-25T07:08:00.000-07:00

(For those of you that are fortunate enough to not live in this god forsaken town, SUX is the airport and international code for Sioux City.)

No, things aren't going well but they've recently crossed the line into where they are going so badly it's funny. I had to find a new place, I'm flunking nutrition, I still can't find a job (although I have gotten a bunch of very lovely rejection letters from Mercy), my car is in the shop, and it's getting cold.

The place where I was staying didn't work out, and I wanted to try to find a new place before the end of the month. I looked at the ads and found a cheap furnished place near my school and went to check it out. When I got there, it took me a few seconds to pinpoint what was wrong with it-- no kitchen. I shrugged and thanked the nice man for his time and went to look at a few more places. But that little one-room "apartment" kept popping back into my mind. It was cheap, available, and actually quite well furnished with a bed, dresser, chairs and tables. It did have a fridge and a microwave. And all the utilities were paid, which in my mind translated nicely to three less things to remember every month. In the end, I decided to take it. I found a $9.99 single electric range at Walgreens and now I am all set, assuming that I can ignore the fact that I have to do my dishes in the bathtub. Fortunately I just got back from a place where food was cooked over open flame and I haven't had time to get picky.

Not only that, but I have irrefutable evidence that god hates me. It happened while I was driving to my new place. IO was in my car, everything I own in the backseat and was stopped at a light at the corner of my new place when I heard a loud pop. At first I thought that I was being shot at, but having lived in warzones I was enough of a gunshot connoisseur to know that the sound wasn't just right. My second thought was that something in my luggage was compressed and had exploded. I turned around to look at the back seat to check my stuff and I saw that my entire back windshield was completely shattered.

No, I have no idea how it happened. The people at the glass place are pretty clueless as well. The obvious answer is a rock, but rocks don't come flying at you on their own when you are at a standstill at a stoplight. This isn't Hogwarts. The light changed and I pulled into the apartment parking lot. I got out of the car, staring open-mouthed at what used to be my back window and was now a mass of spiderwebed glass. My one consolation was that the glass was still intact (thanks to the safety glass combined with the defrosting wiring) and that it would remain that way for a few days until I finished moving in. As I had this thought, I closed the driver side door and the entire window fell out of the frame into the backseat.

I'm starting to think that maybe I should have just stayed in Thailand.

You've Got To Be Kidding

2007-10-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

After more then three weeks of waiting, I finally got an interview for a nursing position at a local big hospital. As being an Secretary/Energy Clerk/Temp Worker is getting old real quick (see next post) I placed a ton of hope on the interview. Three different outfits, two showers, and no less then fifteen minutes of practice in front of a mirror later, I finally got into the car and drove to the hospital's HR department.

I made a great, impression, if I do say so myself. My interviewer was a Peace Corps wanna-be and had a bunch of questions about my background. Everything that flew out of my mouth was perfect-- the fact that I was a nursing student didn't hurt none neither. Anyway, the interview quickly took a downturn when she discovered my full-time-student-status and came to understand that I couldn't work full time or weekdays. The nursing assistant position that I was interviewing for required that.

But never fear. The hospital is a big place, and while opening a thick file marked “open positions”, my interview told me that there were many opportunities. She glanced through my resume, looked at my work history, and flipped a few pages. Here, she told me, was a perfect opportunity. Part time, mostly weekends. Good pay. Challenging. Flexible. I was all excited until she closed the book and leaned towards me, completely serious...

“How does a Unit Secretary sound? With your computer skills you'd be perfect...”

Adventures of a Tyson Temp

2007-10-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

My job continues on. It is still depressing, but now for a new reason. You see, as a job it's actually rather hard. I'd say about 75% of it is entering lists of numbers into different lists and that part is difficult in it's mindlessness and tedium. But when I am not doing that, I am doing work that really requires every bit of my critical thinking and logic skills-- which, if I do say so myself, are considerable. For example, I might have to enter a number. I don't know where the number is supposed to come from. So I have to go to the previous month, look at that number, and then pull the records from that month and hunt for the number. Sometimes I find the number-- that's the easy one. Usually, however, the number is actually two numbers added together, a number multiplied by another number (which can range from the easy: a 0.1 multiplier or the impossible, a 42 multiplier). Or sometimes the number is wrong. From what I am seeing, my predecessor was a real idiot and made lots of mistakes. Another part of my job is fixing all the mistakes that she made.

Every now and again I get a monthly report and a few of the numbers invariably don't match up with mine. At this point I have to go back into the weekly reports and find the wrong numbers. These numbers were taken from the difference in a meter reading, so I have to compare the start and end meter readings until I find one that was keyed in wrong. The meter readings are about 8 numbers long. (I am impressed, by the way, if you have managed to read this far.) The highlight of my day is when I find a mistake and I get to rip a new one into some poor meter-reading clerk in Texas or somewhere.

So why is this depressing? Well, I have determined that you need a college degree to be able to handle this job. The reason that it's depressing is that I know that the fifty or so people that sit around me are doing basically the same jobs. It depresses me to think that four years of college and lofty dreams and ambitions this is the best that they can do, and they are probably going to be stuck here for the rest of their lives, arguing with Texan energy clerks about broken meters and how many pounds of edible product where produced in the week ending 10/21/07. That's why I'm depressed. Those poor people.

I Just got the Clep

2007-10-02T12:30:00.000-07:00

I just took a CLEP exam. CLEP stands for "College Level Examination Program" and is the new way to get out of college credits. English Composition was one of the courses that I needed and I flat out refused to take it after 3 years of teaching English. I figured that I would ace the exam but got books from the library anyway.

(Man, I love the library. I can't believe that before I left America I used to just take such a wonderful resource for granted. Take it from me, kids. Go and visit your local library today. And give them money. They probably deserve it.)

Anyway, I took the first practice test and got a 70%. That wasn't great, but not bad either. I did some studying and took another test and got a 67% More studying and testing later caused my grade to sink down to 61% I decided to just stop studying at that point and just take the damn test.

Let me give you an example of one of the evil little questions that the test offers. See if you can see the problem before moving on:

In today's modern world, it can be rather difficult to connect with friends, family, and peers.

Highlight for the answer: The answer is that modern should be struck as redundant. Now although I can certainly see why the test writer would feel that way, I think that it's a debatable point and standardized multiple-choice questions should not be debatable! Modern can mean "from today" or it can serve as an adjective-- the opposite of "classic". Jane is a classic dresser in jeans and a sweater, Electra is a modern dresser in a leather skirt and boots. They can be wearing clothes that were designed and made on the same day, just bought in different stores

Having said all that, I am actually a lot more amiable towards the exam since I scored a 71/80. The girl at the desk was pretty impressed, as the passing requirements were only set at 50. If only they had a test for Anatomy...

Welcome to the Jungle

2007-10-01T04:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally got a job. I am working for Tyson Meats. No, I am not on the line slaughtering cows-- I'm not that desperate, although after two weeks of unemployment I was beginning to worry that it might come to that. The job market here is terrible!! I guess that Gateway (remember them?) took off and left a ton of computer workers here. So the skills that I thought would be very much in demand are actually a dime a dozen. Plus no computer biz wants to hire a nursing student, even if they did used to work for Microsoft. They know that they aren't going to get their 110%.

It's just 16 hours a week, which might actually work well for me since I am taking three classes (Nursing Assistant, Developmental Psychology, and Nutrition). I basically sit at a desk all day and enter data from the individual plants into spreadsheets while wondering why they just don't network all the systems so that the data gets automatically entered the first time that it is entered in. I thought about suggesting this but then thought better when I realized that such a change will cost me my job. I am taking a measly $9 and hour, which is the highest paid job that I have had in three years and only the third-lowest paying job that I have had in my life.

It is rather depressing, however. The first item that goes into the spreadsheet is "Heads Slaughtered" followed by a very big number. I spent eight hours today cataloging all the thousands cows and pigs were killed to allow me to earn my $9 an hour. The detached way that they were listed as slaughtered, processed, and turned into "lbs. of product" seemed so cold, especially when I considered that aside from me there was probably no one else who stopped to think that it was a shame that cow #6734 out of 214,539 cows had to die.

Other then that things are slow. Went to get my physical for nursing school and was amazed that the long and somewhat uncomfortable method of taking a temperature from when I was a kid has been basically reduced to waving a wand over the forehead. Was also amazed that they managed to somehow make the TB test even more uncomfortable then it already was. The things that change after three years overseas...

Basic Life Support

2007-09-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

Nursing goes well on Garretson Ave. Sarah finished her CNA course, loved it, and I will be starting it in about a week. CNA stand for "Certified Nursing Aide". A CNA generally works in a long-term care facility (like a nursing home) to provide care for the residents. Not exactly in my long term plan, but I think that working as a CNA will provide me with clinical experience that will help me a lot in my nursing courses.

Every little bit helps. Although it was MORE then 10 years ago (ack!) my limited stunt as an EMT is actually really turning out to help me. In the EMT course and working I probably took about 100 blood pressures, and the techniques that I used helped Sarah a lot in that part of her skills exam. It also helped me ace my BLS course that I took yesterday.

BLS, "Basic Life Support" is what most people think of general CPR. This class that I took yesterday was a bit terrifying. Things have changed since I left for Samoa-- they now teach us how to use AED (Automated External Defibrillator) but was really worrisome is how much they dumbed down the procedures. Although we were told that the new guidelines were just as effective, I really felt that they simply simplified the steps to a point where a trained service dog could probably be taught to give CPR. Which is great in that more people can give CPR-- but since effective CPR will break ribs and likely cause internal damage, is this really something that you want ANYONE to be able to do?

The instructor walked in an immediately assured the students that there was nothing to worry about in the class. She told us that the point of the class was to help us pass the test. "Don't worry, we WANT you to pass!" This alone got the red lights flashing in my brain-- I thought that the point was to learn how to save lives. Oh well, minor point. The new system is actually improved in that you spend a majority of time watching videos and practicing and lectures are actually cut down to almost nothing. The test is also better-- more common sense and "what do you do next" questions. Still, I seem to remember in the last BLS class I took in Seattle there was a lot more information and the skills were a lot more complex.

But the most important difference was that back then you didn't get the card unless you really knew what you were doing. We had one woman who didn't even pass the test and the instructor went over her wrong answers and made her do it again. Eek! I hope I don't collapse in front of her!

If you ask me, it's this results-oriented rather then process-oriented approach to problem solving that is ripping our society apart.

My Triumphant Arrival

2007-09-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

Finally got the hell out of Chiang Mai and said goodbye to Thailand. My journey home was surreal... it was only about 15 hours by the watch. I left on the 12th and managed to travel back in time while in the air to the 11th just to have the 12th roll around again.

Anyway I am touched that you guys have been bugging me to keep up my blog even though I am in boring old America. Sioux City Iowa is truly scary in it's lack of anything to do... thank god that Sarah is here. Today we went to a chili bake off. Half of the free weekend paper is devoted to chili-based debates (beans or no beans?) and so I guess that's it's a pretty big deal here. Sure you guys want me to keep up this blog?

Why I Hate Chiang Mai

2007-09-09T00:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I decided to "treat" myself by spending a few days in Chiang Mai before I left. Big mistake. I had forgetten how much I hate this town. In fact I think that the last 24 hours can be summerized as following: WAAHHH!! I WANNA GO HOME!!!

Rudeness persists. When I got to the guesthouse that I was supposed to stay at the woman did everything in her power to not let me stay. She saw my many bags and told me that she didn't have a room on the first floor. I told her that was fine, any floor was fine. She said that had a room on the 3rd floor. I sighed but then said that the third floor was fine. Wait, there wasn't a room on the third floor. Whatever, I said, just give me any room. She informed me that there was no bathroom in the room. Okay, I said. She told me that I would have to go across the hall to the shared bathroom if I wanted to take a shower. Great, I said, and I pulled out my wallet but she sighed loudly insisted that I look at the room first. I got the feeling that she was hoping I would change my mind. I was sweaty and tired but I didn't feel like arguing so I went upstairs, unlocked the door, looked inside, and came down with money in hand. When it was obvious that she wasn't going to get rid of my she reluctantly gave me a key and took my money, including a 100 baht deposit. She told that I could go to the room and take a shower. Yes, I got the hint. She also said that I could carry one bag, then come down and carry another. I smiled and thanked her as graciously as I could for the advice, which I then proceeded to follow. She watched me like a hawk, I guess to make sure that I indeed carried everything one at a time.

The good news is that I went to the dentist and was told that I have no cavities. I was happy and proud until she pointed out that due to the number of fillings that I have there are no more places for cavities to hide. I celebreated with a mocha smoothy (extra sugar) anyway.

Then I went to NES (The New Zealand English School) in Chiang Mai to try to claim the 5000 baht that was owed me. (I wasn't able to pick it in March since I had to leave so quickly.) Things went pretty fast downhill from there and I remembered why it will be a cold day in hell before I ever teach English again for cash. The director, Paul Chan, came out of his office and yelled at me, then told me that I should ask another teacher who spoke English, despite the fact that his English was fine. The receptionist told me that I should visit the office that I worked at. So, I went there and pretty much learned that they keep no available records and the time card was lost. I didn't really beleive this and pressed them a bit, and the director came in and came in to speak to me. He asked me what I wanted him to do. I asked him if there was a record that I worked there. At this point he started yelling and cursing at me saying that "he didn't give a fuck" and finally told me that he was going to get me "tied up and kicked out of Thailand". I asked him where this was coming from and two police came in that he'd apparently called before he came to talk to me. At this point I relized that I wasn't getting paid.

I sat in the office with the police wondering if it was possible for me to enter a country and not get arrested for something. The manager Paul Chan was screaming at them in Thai and it occured to me that for all I knew he could be saying that killed someone or stole something. I broke in, asking for a policeman who could speak English. A call to the tourist police got this. I was told what I already knew... I was free to go, I was not going to be tied up, and I wasn't getting paid since it was basically my word agaist to the director, who told me to "kiss my ass". I have never seen someone go so far to avoid paying someone.

I was pissed, but there's nothing I can do. I mean, it's only about $150, but damn it-- it was MY $150 that I worked damn hard for sitting in a hot classroom for 20 hours with a group of students that frankly were the worst I ever came across in my brief (and OVER, thank god) teaching career.

I wanna go home.

Goodbye CLC...

2007-09-07T02:17:00.001-07:00

Well here it is, the last email that I will write from CLC's powerful and rather strange (but much appreciated) satilite dish. Tomorrow morning at 6AM I will hop onto a bus that will take to me to a bus that will take me to Chiang Mai. I decided to spend a few days days there. Among other things, I want to see the famous Wat Dai Sutup (or something like that) which is apparently the "thing to see" thing in Northern Thailand. (I am not too hopeful as I have yet to meet a tourist who talks up the temple more then they talk up getting wasted in Pai.) Early Wednesday morning I will hop on a plane and get back to America to start my new nursing adventure. Stay tuned!

Thanks everyone for following me around Thailand... see you on the flip side...

It's my party... I'll pass on the crying.

2007-09-07T01:55:00.000-07:00

Kyaw Hlu Sien made the students throw me a goodbye party which unfortunately turned out to be an awkward affair. Despite the fact that I has specifically asked for no party, he told them to throw one anyway and didn't even bother to tell me-- I found out secondhand from a student. The food was great, but the entire time I sat there wishing that I had just taken off a week early and announced my departure with a note.

The Karenni Math teacher, Soray, ran the thing like a business meeting. He stood up and said stuff like "we don't have an agenda" and "this meeting is to thank our teacher, uh--" he stumbled over my name-- "Kim, and say goodbye." He asked the students to make speeches. Class 1, who I didn't have this year, get into an argument over who would have to do it. Yoom lost and stood up and said some forgettable things. Class 2 and 3 were better prepared and had their speeches written. Their speeches were a lot more thought out but unfortunately they didn't write them. Nee Eh could barely make it through hers, so peppered was it with new words. I appreciated the time that they had put into them but would have liked a speech that was made of their own words, even if there were mistakes.

I think that the worst bit, however, was when it came time for the teachers to give speeches. My expat compatriots couldn't do better then yelling out "Kim Rocks!" which was hardly moving. Soray, however, proved that this was indeed better then something. He alluded to something during our last meeting and I was pretty shocked by the event that he'd picked-- during the meeting Soray asked the teachers to come up with a schedule for testing. We'd already been in the meeting for an hour and I was getting tired. After some hmming and hawing I finally jumped up and the room watched in silence as a drew up a schedule for the week that allowed the classes to take their tests. After I sat down Soray told me that "this wasn't the way it was done here" and drew up a new schedule which I felt was lacking since it involved one teacher having three exams at once. "Then why did you bother asking me?" I wanted to say. I was surprised and hurt when Soray talked about this as the event that apparently defined my experience as a teacher ere. He said something about "cultures coming together" and I realized suddenly that the event was actually rather telling of my time here-- my opinion is asked then ignored because "it's not the way things are done here." Then why am I here? Good question. Throughout the three years one of the things that I am bothered by the most is being shown off as the resident American. I guess I am expected to just be white and be quiet.

Unfortunately, I am leaving way too late. I should have probably left about a month ago when I realized that teaching English was no longer something that I wanted to do. I have been really unhappy and I think that I will miss teaching about as I will miss shaking cockroaches out of my clothes in the orning. I just wish that I wasn't ending this whole thing on such a sour note.

Why'd it have to be snakes?

2007-09-05T20:52:00.001-07:00

Note: This is a picture from the web: this is NOT my picture! I was watching over my class as they worked on a writing assignment today when I heard my cat calling for me. I poked my head outside and called to him so that he could find me, and he came running. At the same time, I looked down and saw a black snake about the size of my arm. Length-wise, that is, it wasn't as thick as my arm. In fact, it wasn't all that thick it all which told me that it was too skinney to be a constrictor and too big to survive on small animals like mice-- therefore, it was most likely poisonous. I darted forward to intercept the cat but was too late. Fortunately, the cat was too focused on my to notice the snake and it crawled away, but not before I noticed it's neck flatten out briefly. Good god, this snake was a cobra! I had no idea that they even existed in Thailand, so I did a quick search and found that they are actually quite common and quite poisonous. I am pretty sure that what I saw was an Indochinese Spitting Cobra, or Naja siamensis. Note that the picture is NOT the snake that I saw, but rather a picture that I found on the internet. I found out that "Naja siamensis possesses a deadly poison. In addition, the spitting of poison can lead to damage to the corneas." It then drove the point home by adding a triple skull-and-crossbones. Pretty cool, huh?

Everyone who knows me knows that snakes have never bothered me, but that isn't true for all other critters. I am really proud of how far I have come since I started traveling. True, I screamed at a spider the other day but only because it was about the size of my palm and crawling up my leg while I was reading. Another spider (black and yellow) ambushed me in bed and I just pounded on it with my fist and went back to my book. I remember when I first got to Samoa and found my first giant cockroach. I screamed and ran out of the room and got one of the boys to kill it and afterwards would have to spend ten minutes psyching myself up to enter the bathroom. Yesterday, when I was packing, a comparable bug crawled into my bag. I felt around picked it up by a wing, yelled at it, then tossed the thing outside. I wonder how long it will be after I get to the states until I go back to my old, arachnophobic self?

HELLOOO Nurse!!!

2007-08-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

Sadly, my international adventure is about to come to a close after three years, but a new and more exciting one is about to start. I have just been accepted into St. Luke's nursing program in Sioux City, Iowa, to start in January. It's been a slow, long and difficult process and I can't believe that I finally found a program that will accept me.

After I get my degree, I am planning on heading out right away. I am thinking of re-joining the Peace Corps, then taking a position with Doctors without Borders or Care. But as my old Arabic teacher used to say, "small steps, Kim!" Let's see if I can get through the program first.

I can't believe that I am going back to Iowa!

Hormonal Problem Anyone?

2007-08-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, I am working on an assignment for my Anatomy and Physiology and I need to talk 2 people who have a hormonal problem and 3 people who have a problem with the digestive system (I am looking at you here, Ram). If you can help he, shoot me an email and I will send you some questions. If you can't help me but can bullshit something real good, then shoot me an email anyway.

Back at CLC

2007-08-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back at CLC. My trip back from Mae Sot was uneventful. I managed to snag the front seat of the songtow to avoid seasickness, which was nice. I felt bad for the driver who was obviously used to having his passenger keep him amused for the six-hour trip. I was too tired to try and patch together a conversation made up of our 20-word shared vocabulary so I politely offered him some of my breakfast and then pointedly put on a pair of headphones.

About halfway between Mae Sot and Mae Sariang, there is a massive refugee camp. I am sorry that I don't have pictures, but my camera isn't working. It's huge, and every possible place is taken by makeshift houses with leaf roofs and bamboo floors. Some of the houses have walls, many don't even have that. This is the closest that I will get into a camp, as foreigners aren't allowed. This makes me angry-- if Thailand is ashamed of the camps, then they should fix them so that are are livable to the point where they can show them off to the press. Anyway, we picked up a man and two small kids (about 4 or 5 years old) and they were removed from the truck as we left the camp. As the man was led away with the two scared-looking kids, I noticed that he was missing a leg-- probably from stepping on a mine-- and was fitted with a prosthetic. Hopefully he was just returned to the camp, but I wanted badly to yell at the guard that took him away.

The police were very paranoid on the way up to Mae Sot-- every one of them took my passport and examined it. Perhaps this is because of the new law that would require them to wear a "Hello Kitty" armband if they break a minor law like overlooking a foreigner. On the way back they were calmer and only one asked for my passport-- of course, it could be that they were the same guards and they simple remembered me.

Back at CLC, very little had changed. No classes Thursday or Monday, which is fine with me because I am behind in my own classes. Friday was a speedbump between a day off and a long weekend and so one one really wanted to work. Monday is the Queen's birthday, and most Thais celebrate my treating it as a mother's day. So I had some of the classes make Mother's Day cards. This was a bit of a gamble as many of the poor kids either don't know who their mother it, or have a mother who is passed on or a refugee in another country. Some of the kids don't even know their parents names, and have no foster families to take a missing parent's place.

Visa'ed Up

2007-08-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I got my visa and I am good to go until November although it's hard to say where I will be I will be when time for renewal comes up again.

I was a bit nervous about going through. Thailand has a law that says that you can only be in for 90 days at a time on a tourist visa. Now, I came in for 90 days on a tourist visa, and now I am on a new visa, so I am not sure if I am breaking the law or not. I don't think so, but if my name came up in their computer and they decided that I wasn't allowed to come back in there isn't much, as I learned back in March, that I can do about it!

So a little background for those unfamiliar with Thai visa laws: you can either get a 30 day or 90 day visa-- I have a 90 day. This means that every 30/90 days you have to leave Thailand and come back in, this is called a "border run". It's really, really stupid if you ask me. Most people just go to Mae Sai or Mae Sot, cross into Burma, get the enter and the exit stamp, and then cross back into Thailand-- a process that takes about 15 minutes, not including travel time.

It's particularly silly to me because my school is about 10km from the border, but I still have to travel 400km to get to one of the official checkpoints! Too bad the Kareni Army, who patrols the border, doesn't have visa stamps. The other annoying thing is that I have to fork over 500 baht to the Burmese government whenever I do this. I would much rather give the money to the Thais, and I don't know why they don't change their laws so that they can keep the money.

Heading to Mae Sot for a border run is always a little bit of a risk because they close the Mae Sot border so much. Mae Sot is considered "little Burma" and most of the signs are in Burmese. There are a lot of refugees, migrant workers, and illegals here, and it's also the flashpoint for protests and the hang out for NGOS and illegitimate aid organizations (illegitimate meaning that they are not recognized by the Thai government and operate under wraps, but also do most of the best work.) Anyway, all these means that there is a lot of potential for trouble, and when this happens they shut down the border and you can't get a visa.

Anyway, everything went fine. I left the country and decided to hang out in Burma for an hour. Myawaddy is a little border town that you can't leave (except to go back to Thailand). They actually don't let you in with your passport, you have to leave it at the office and they give you a temp. I took a quick hike around. I had tea in a real Burmese Teahouse with it's squat tables and what I imagined was political conversation at the next table (probably not). It was pretty chill except for a backfire or a firework or something that was very loud and gunshotish. I took a sip of my coffee and looked around to see if I should be alarmed, and all the patrons were staring at the farang to see what she would do. Sorry guys, no hysterics here.

The teahouse was really nice, and the guy who ran it was a cutie with a wide smile who I think accidentally almost way undercharged me for my coffee. It was clean and well put together. Outside, it was filthy and depressing, and I know that Myawaddy is probably one of the nicer Burmese towns because so many tourists have to see it. Dogs wandered around with their uteruses hanging to the sidewalk. Everyone was dressed in torn rags and spat bettlenut. The bridge was full of beggars, most of which were missing legs and arms. It was pretty appalling and depressing. Manners were low too, I got more "hey babies" in walking around for an hour then my entire 6 months in Mae Hong Son.

Back at the border, chatted with a nice Canadian couple that were getting thier visas renewed as well. The poor woman (a student of Thai) was a day late on her visa, and the Thai authorities really do a number of you as they hand out thier guilt. After the glares, you get a special stamp on your passport and have to fill out about three different forms, the entire time the office is staring at you like you committed some horrendous crime. I actually was three days late when I left Thailand last time and I thought that the Border guy was going to start crying at my apparent lack of respect for Thai law. Then you hand over 500 baht (about 15 bucks) a day for you subordinance.

I’m in Mae Sot for one more night, then I am taking the long trip home, but I think that I am going to break it into two days rather then one.

Run For The Border!

2007-08-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

Remember those old Taco Bell commertials? "Make a run for the border! BOONG!!!" Well, that's what I am doing. Can't believe that it's been three months already and my visa is about to expire!

I am taking this as a minivacation which I dearly need. For about a week I am not thinking about classes, students who arn't learning the present tense, Anatomy and Physiology, Chemestry... you name it, I'm not thinking about it. I am in the happen' town of Mae Sot. I don't remember this place being so dingy! Mae Hong Son is a lot nicer, maybe I should have taken a vacation up there. The creepest thing about this place are the expats. I don't know where the volenteers hang out, all I see is fat white guys who have swanky buisnesses in town that are generally the cover for something else, or scary looking guys with a Burmese wife and baby in tow, looking like they are almost done with a plan to escape this place, probably leaving the new baby behind. I am already starting to miss my safe harbour of Mae Hong Son-- clean, friendly, and for the most part creep-free.

I will be going to Burma tomarrow. If the weather holds up, I think that I will hit Myawaddy, which is a small Burmese down set up for tourest crossing from Mae Sot. 100 baht says I will hate it.

Midterm Blues

2007-08-04T04:19:00.000-07:00

They tell you in the Peace Corps to prepare for a feeling of sadness in the middle of your service, and that this is a pretty common feeling halfway though. I am finding that this is true whether you are serving for two years or one year or six months. Unfortunately for me, the condition is made worse by the fact that I already have a disposition towards depression.

I have had a good time with teaching, but I am getting ready to move on. For me, teaching comes easy. But the enthusiasm that is needed does not. For me, the hardest part of teaching is the feeling that I get when I am standing in a class that the students don't want to be there, and I feel a bit like an entertainment director on a slave ship. One of the classes is always demanding songs and games, but it's frustrating because the games that I come up with feel like work. I actually managed to even ruin Uno for the class by hiding the discarded card and making them play the game completely orally. (That is, you had to say "red three" and the next person would have to listen and put down either a red or a three.) This "jailkeeper" feeling has been difficult for me from the first day that I started teaching in Samoa. And I feel that were I a better teacher then my students would want to be there. I try to think of my best teachers and remind myself that even with them I only wanted to be in class about 40% of the time. I tell myself that I am holding myself to unrealistic goals, but it doesn't help too much.

My next career move will hopefully be in nursing where the object of my job will be to get rid of people so that I never have to see them again, rather then holding them hostage with an English book for an hour. I am really excited about this and have loved the three classes that I am taking. However, I haven't been hearing back from the school, which is also frustrating and depressing. This makes me upset with myself for being impatient, and the whole thing starts again. Still, I have a feeling that this will work out for the best, I just have to be patient.

The students this year are an incredible bunch, and they really are the only thing that is keeping me here. Whenever I think about leaving my students flash before my eyes and I put it off for another month.

Happy Buddhist Lent

2007-07-31T03:17:00.001-07:00

Betcha didn't know that Buddhists have Lent, did you? I'm giving up cigarettes and alcohol. Which shouldn't be hard since I've basically given up on both anyway. But it's important to acknowledge the fact that I have given them up. Sort of a positive feed back loop (A&P term, Sarah gets it). Anyway, it's easier then giving up coffee.

We went to the temple to walk around the big thingy but it turned out that this was supposed to happen the next day. The next day the kids were too tired from picking bamboo shoots (or "shoot bamboo") to head back, and I was too tired from my run. So I guess we are all crappy Buddhists who will be reincarnated as chickens.

Poor kids had to rummage in the forest looking for bamboo to eat because I guess there isn't any other food here. Yesterday they had to kill one of the chickens.

Ignorance Was Bliss

2007-07-31T03:03:00.000-07:00

I was reading through some of my old blog entries of Yemen and Samoa and realized that my life isn't as exciting at it was when I lived there. No being attacked by goons with firecrackers, no near-miss kidnaps in Marib, no students writing about the color of their panties. I think that a lot of this can be blamed on the fact that Sonia isn't here with me and she stubbornly refuses to come. I think that Thailand is too rugged for the little princess anyway.

It might SEEM like my life is boring, but I assure you it is not. As I read more of my Anatomy and Physiology book every day, it turns out that my life is really in high mortal peril every minute. It turns out that moving, my heart's continous beating, breathing, and other processes that keep me alive basically all boil down to a few measly Ca+ ions being in the right place in the right time!

Yes, I am learning how even the slightest movement requires a plethora of chemical reactions to happens, ions released and collected, and neurotransmitters being produced and reuptaken. Makes me want to lie on my bed and not move to introduce as little stress as possible and save any space Ca+ ions for the pumping of my heart and the contractions of my diaphragm.

But that's no good, according to the book, because if I don't move then my muscles will atrophy into little puddles. So instead I thought that maybe I should just move as little as possible-- like when I absolutely have to get up to eat, teach class, or make coffee. Which is convenient, because that's pretty much what I do anyway.

No good either. The book has informed me that unless I take in at least 30 minutes of exercise a day, my bones and muscles will decompose into little piles of dust by the time I am 35. Now I've heard all this before, but unlike the previous carriers of this message, I am not being offered a chance to join a gym or buy the latest slim-fast craze. No, my book simply offers in excruciating molecule-by-molecule detail how this decomposition will happen.

So, as a result, I have been jogging every day. Not an easy feat in tropical Thai weather, let me tell you. But I feel better about this workout program then ones in the past. For starters, I don't have to get up to do it, which was the doom of past attempts. I jog at dusk, when I am starting to burn out slightly and even running for 30 minutes seems more appealing then another chapter of physiology. Plus, that's the time that the mosquitoes come out, and I don't think that they are very good at hitting a moving target.

Dang!

2007-07-21T03:41:00.000-07:00

My new favorite student 'o the week is Ms. Dang. Dang is pretty incredible. She came here and not only did she not speak a word of English, she was also illiterate in her own language, Thai. She couldn't read or write. (She could, however, say "chocolate". A woman after my own heart.) Talk to her in English and she'd just repeat what you said. Today, she can respond to most pleasantries such as "how are you" or "where's Emmett?" or "is this stuff spicy?" and even "I'm thirsty/hungry/angry/tired." She's worked her butt off and it shows.

Meanwhile, I have been really busy. I have been studying Thai and also working on my prereqs for nursing school. I got my 1100 page Anatomy and Physiology book in the mail (thanks, Sarah!) and I am also taking Chemistry and Psychology. A&P is nearly impossible! During a Thai lesson, Dang sat with us, fascinated, interjecting long strings of Thai. She could not understand that just because I could say "Hello, I am hungry" I couldn't understand long rapid 30-second monologues. To get rid of her, I finally opened my A&P book to the cut-outs of pregnant women and developing fetuses and shoved it at her. That shut her up for the rest of the lesson, flipping through the pages in wonder. She couldn't read the words, obviously, but she was quick to pick up that the drawn pictures of cut-away vaginas and GI tracts were part of her body. I was impressed. Now, whenever I am sitting at the table she'll come up and demand to see the "baby book".

Today she found the section on breathing and circulation and so I taught her how to use my stethoscope to listen to her own lungs and heart. After listening to her heart and mine she went running to her house to listen to the hearts and lungs of all the other girls. I taught her about her pulse and she ran around checking that too. Then I tried to explain to her through gestures about how the cirulation system works (not easy, you try it!) and she got the basic idea. I explained (or gestured, rather) that the heart sped up through lots of movement. She leapt up and started to jump and jog in place so that she could hear her heart go fast. Then she put the stethoscope around her neck and announced that she was a doctor. The pictures are her reading the A&P book and wearing the stethoscope.

Unfortunately, I don't really know what her story is. She only finished 3rd grade, and she speaks Thai, not Burmese. I don't know why she didn't to school-- she should have been able to go to the Thai school. Her family, like all families around here, isn't rich but do seem to have enough money to provide her with a cell phone and nice clothes. They should have been able to handle the school fees. When I asked the others what she was doing while not going to school they said that she was cleaning the house. Cinderella incarnate, I guess.

And the bug of the week is *ba ba bum* FROGS! Yes I know that they aren't bugs but they are everywhere. Little guys the size of a fingernail. Walking around campus I have to watch the ground constantly so that I won't step on them. I can't take a picture because they are too small to focus on. They are adorable and step up from last week, which was large hand-sized spiders.

What are the kids listening to today?

2007-07-13T08:04:00.000-07:00

So, once upon I time I worked for this great startup called MongoMusic. They allowed you to make music lists and would then recommend music based on what you liked. It worked really well and I found some of my favorite music at the time there. Then we got bought out by Microsoft. Microsoft promised us that they wouldn't touch a thing about our online radio and then proceeded to not only gut the functionality of the startup but the people who'd they relocated from California to Seattle and proceeded to then fire when they started getting comfortable. (Disgustingly, this plan to "rehire" the people into other places at Microsoft-- because a music analyst is such a hot commodity there-- was announced on 9/11/2001.)

But the radio was still pretty good until they finally threw out the MongoMusic one (whose code, I am proud to say, was given a major overhaul by yours truly and then viewed by thousands daily) and then I left the country and didn't revisit the site since.

I went there today out of curiosity and found that the music radio that had been written by a startup and removed and replaced by some Microsoft creation had then been removed and replaced with code written by another startup. Makes perfect sense, don't you think?

So I've been sampling some of the music clips off Amazon to find something that's worth spending my money on and I'm pretty shocked to discover that all my favorite bands now suck. The Indigo Girl's new album contains not only recycled musical themes from Rites of Passage but actually contains recycled lyrics as well. The latest Sarah McLauchlan album is a *blah* Christmas Album! WTF?!? Even Suzanne Vega let me down.

Where I am going with this:
The reason that I went back to MSNMusic was that I was hoping that they'd finally turned on MongoMusic's recommendation service because I desperately need some new, modern, music. My old heroes have let me down. So please tell me, what are the kids listening to nowadays? If you were a fan of the alternative Cranberries/Sarah McLachlan/Melissa Etheridge type then please shoot me a line to let me know what the hell you are listening to now.

Life's Small Victories

2007-07-08T04:37:00.000-07:00

Some of my hard work has finally paid off. After weeks of harassment, my students have finally started to wear their motorcycle helmets. I got two of the male students to wear helmets for a 2km trip to Nai Soi without any fight as all (usually the students just laugh at me when I insist on wearing helmets for this trip) and one of my students, Wanna, knocked on my door to ask if she could borrow a helmet to go to Mae Hong Son. I was so surprised when she made the request that I thought I must have misheard her!

It's just plain common sense. The director of the school has had his health greatly compromised because he wasn't wearing a helmet and was caught in a landslide when driving to town. I would have thought that that would be enough to get them to protect their heads, but they still insisted that helmets aren't needed. I gave them a rather gory and exaggerated version of my own accident and I figured that they were just laughing the silly white girl behind their concerned faces. Apparently not!

"Mr. Malaria" Tun is still symptom free but now he is plagued by some sort of stomach thing. Took me ten minutes and the help of five other students to determine if he was having regular bowel movements or not. I was able to see for myself that his appetite hadn't changed much, but what happens at the other end I could not be a witness to. I'm not too worried because he's eating and other stuff on a regular basis so it's not an obstructed gut. I spent another ten minutes trying to determine it it was a stabbing pain, a cramping pain or a dull ache. After a while Tun just started to just say "yes" to all my questions which pretty much wrapped up my interview. If he's not better by tomorrow we're sending him along with 100 baht to the clinic to let those poor people deal with him.

Fly Away Butterfly

2007-07-06T01:58:00.000-07:00

The students interrupted me during class to inform me that a butterfly had gotten caught in a spider web while I was teaching in one of the quasi-open-air classrooms. They coached me as I borrowed an umbrella and cheered when the butterfly flew away. That's really what I love about the school-- the respect for life. The only things that really get killed with a vengeance around here are the mosquitoes. This morning the cats followed me into the classroom and lounged on the students desks. Rather then kicking them off, they carefully placed their notebooks out of the way of the sleeping felines.

Butterflies were the bug of the week about two weeks ago, now it is ants. Ants is a decided step-down, but still an improvement over the previous weeks of the wasps and the termites before that. My favorite remains the few days of the fireflies where sometimes my room would be lit up so brightly by them that I could read in the dark.

Having a few low-key minor crisises. They are irrigating the rice paddies around the school and I am pretty sure that this is causing the water to get shut off from the school. We have large water tanks that hold about four or five days of water and they are getting pretty low. Fortunately it's also been really cool as we head into the real rainy season (what we had before was just practice) so one shower a day is adequate. In addition, we haven't had cell phone coverage in Nai Soi for about two days now. One of the students, Yoom, explained to me that this is because we've had rain for a few days and the cell signals can't get through the clouds. Since we don't have this problem in Seattle I am a bit skeptical of this technological explanation.

The student's language skills are quickly improving and I am trying to get more of a gist of their past histories. I've been focusing on the four boys from Lak Thai. They were here last year and either were, are, or will be Shan soldiers. (Hopefully this will be more clear when they finally nail down the different tenses.) I am just starting to learn about their situations. Tun, the kid with malaria, is a 19-year-old who apparently left his entire family in Burma and hasn't seen them in three years. The kids aren't terribly shy about talking about their families. Yee told me that his father died a year ago because he was old. When I asked him about it he started to laugh and another kid laughed with him, saying “he thinks it's funny that his father is dead”.

And the rains starts up again.

Malaria Shamaria!

2007-07-02T21:37:00.000-07:00

Emmett, can I use your shower? And by "shower", I mean a bucketful of malaria water."

- Kevin, one of the new volunteers

Things have pretty much returned to normal. My malaria case, Tun, is up and about and running around like nothing ever happened and doesn't seem to be relapsing or showing any signs whatsoever that less then a week ago he was suffering from a possibly fatal disease. The other three Laktai boys (Aung, Lu, and On) are being closely watched since the four of them celebrated their brotherhood by giving each other tatoos with the same machine-- Tun going first, before he got malaria. So far, so good.

I have decided not to go on antimalarials. Sarah found a really great drug which wasn't hell on your liver and kicks in in two days. The drug is one of the few that is good for the strains of Malaria found in this area, but ironically it can't be bought here. I would ask for someone to send it but with the way that the mail goes here it will be the cold season by the time it shows up. I am still waiting for a chemistry textbook that I ordered six weeks ago. I have had about as much luck with the mail in my travels as Hilter had in Russia.

I did have my first major motorcycle accident and walked away rather miraculously with nothing more then a briused knee. I'm sort of glad that I got this out of the way as it was an inevitiable event. I was heading through an intersecion that had neither stop light nor heavy traffic when a car came out of the mysterous nowhere. I jammed on my brakes but forgot that I was supposed to use the footbreak. Years of riding bycycles and mopeds had trained by reflects badly for a motorcycle. The bike didn't stop and I was faced with the choice of trying to swerve around the car or taking my chances with the curb. I picked the curb. Fortunatly, when I flew off my bike I fell into a think bunch of Thai soft jungle bushes. God did punish me by giving them thorns. I couldn't believe that the bike was okay, with the exception of a broken fuel gauge and a flat tire. Check that one off the list.

Malaria stalks CLC

2007-06-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

Today one of my favorite students, Tun, was diagnosed with malaria. The poor kid is burning up and there isn't much that I can do for him. We have him on strong drugs and I can only pray that they are the right ones for him to take (the labels are in Thai.) He's being brave as hell.

It was surprising how sudden the whole thing was. Tun was in my class and doing his normal good work when he suddenly said quietly "Teacher, I'm cold." I thought at first that he was just trying out the grammar point that we've been working on and I was about to say "Very good, Tun! Who else is cold? Lu, are you cold?" when I noticed that he had his shoulders hunched and his hands clenched between his thighs. I touched his forehead and immediately sent him to bed with two Tylenols. When I checked on him about 30 minutes later, he was wrapped up in the 90 degree Thai heat in a winter blanket.

They got his blood tested and gave him some drugs. The label is in Thai but he only speaks Chan. I assigned a smart Thai-Chan speaking interpreter (Yee) and demanded that he take all the pills and get lots of rest and water.

The thing that I love about Tun is that he really smiles with his whole face. He managed to smile at me when I sent him to his room, smiled at me when I made him wear a helmet to go to the clinic, and then smiled at me when he came back from the doctor, so it really broke my heart when he was too sleepy and sick to smile when I checked on him this evening (although he did manage a small one when I asked for my name to check that he wasn't delirious.) I'll try to get a better picture up of him when he gets better, but until then I hope that you keep him in your thoughts.

As for me, I'm debating whether I should go on antimalarials or not.