Catie Jumps!

In recent months, Catie has seen ups and downs in her riding career...including many BIG changes. Most recently, we have moved Catie to a hunter/jumper barn. This was following a bad fall in which Catie was thrown from Miss Blue after being spooked and taking off at a gallop. Catie was willing and ready to try again with Miss Blue just a week after her accident but was unable to do so with the instructor she was riding with. This prompted us to try and find somewhere for Catie to ride and move forward with her goals...mainly jumping. We found a little barn by the name of Fairy Tale Farm and things there have worked out for the best for Catie. She has been able to take the good foundation that she had built with the Masters and work with another instructor and start jumping! I can't describe the emense pride that fills my heart as I watch my daughter grow as a person. Part of that growing has been watching her get thrown, fall off, pushed around, and have her heart broken, only to watch her push back with more determination in order to reach her goals. So Catie jumps! She loves it and I love watching her do it!

Still Waiting...

UGH. My mare STILL hasn't given birth. We are at approximately day 354 gestation. My psyche has grown weary of worrying while waiting to ensure that everything will be OK. I also just want my mare back. I want more than anything for us to be able to close this chapter, which began on that fateful evening in October when Shiloh came in with colic and our vet told us during a rectal exam that she was probably pregnant. I want to be able to move through the next chapter and get through the weaning of the baby. I want the baby to go to a good home post weaning...something we are currently working on while we wait for our foal's arrival. I am ready then to move on to the following chapter where we can start to put Shiloh into a regular work program and start seeing what she can do. All we can do for now...is wait...patiently.

Just When I thought I'd Seen It All ...

In the ER at the trauma center, we see a lot of patients who are drug seeking. Because it's the ER we cannot turn patients away, we must trust that the patients who are being seen have valid complaints and we must treat them all. Most drug seekers come in complaining of chronic back pain. Chronic back pain is hard to find the cause of in the ER, so the docs do the usual lumbar spine x-rays, which come back with normal findings, give the patient a script for 10 vicodin or perocets (enough to get said patient through a weekend of partying) with a referral to see a primary care physician and send them on their way. Most of the drug seekers we see are recreational users. We may see them a couple of times a year, today with chronic back pain and in a few months with chronic shoulder pain and then a few months later with another chronic ailment until we circle back to the back pain again. These seekers typically are careful and don't use a particular ER facility too often. They often rotate between area hospitals in order to get what they want. There are those however who are seen just a little too often in our trauma center ER and are addicted. Our docs may give them what they want the first couple of times they come in but they then draw the line and tell them they can no longer "help" them. I have seen ER docs get in patients faces and tell them that they are no longer going to serve their habits and they will receive nothing more than Ibuprofen for their "pain" in our ER. As soon as these patients figure out that they are not going to get what they want they don't even sign themselves out; they just get up and leave. The amature seekers will come in with "hand pain", "wrist pain", "foot or ankle pain" and after the x-rays come back without positive findings and once upon examination by the ER doc the patient can move their appendage in all directions, they are told they will get nothing more than Tylenol or Ibuprofen for their pain. The amatures then storm out just like the seasoned pros without signing themselves out. This all leads me to yesterday...

I thought I had seen just about everything in the realm of drug seeking patients. The pros will even go as far as claiming "abdominal pain" (which is just as hard to diagnose as chronic back pain in the ED...although docs will go to more extensive testing i.e. CT's and ultrasounds as well as X-Rays to find the source of the problem)and will force themselves to throw up to prove how "sick" they are or to prove how much "pain" they are in. I've actually seen patients put things down their throats in order to make themselves vomit. Disgusting. So yesterday, I had a patient that I have X-Rayed on several occasions in the last 2 months (3 separate occasions to be exact). In fact, this patient and I are on a first name basis, I walk in the room and say, "Hi E***" and I get a "Hey Hiliary" back. He's here for his shoulder, again. This is his 3rd shoulder dislocation in 2 months. They have just re-located his shoulder and he has dislocated it again before even leaving the ED. This guy has been given some fairly heavy sedatives and 4 mg of morphine since coming in while they reduced his shoulder and he is able to get up off the ER bed and walk pretty soberly over to my room, although his eyes are glossed over like he's high...scary, huh? He knows the drill in the X-Ray room. I barely have to adjust his positions for my x-rays. The kicker...he volunteers to do an axillary view so they can see that his shoulder is dislocated posteriorly (his words, not mine). Listen, NO ONE with a shoulder fracture or dislocation EVER volunteers to do an axillary view because it HURTS...A LOT! But this guy does, amazing. I take his axillary view and send all his films and take him back to his ER room where he will wait for them to come in and give him another cocktail of drugs while they put is shoulder back in for the second time in one day. I distinctly remember the last time this guy was in the ER (about 3 weeks ago) and it was a different doc on. Dr. W got in this guys face and told him that he knew what he was doing. He told him, "E***, I am here to save people's lives. Any YOU are wasting my time. Someone who dislocates his shoulder this often is doing it to get high. You need a surgical consult and I can't help you with that here in the ER with a chronic problem. There ARE people her who need acute care for acute injuries and illnesses. STOP wasting my time." I love Dr. W...he's not afraid to give patients straight talk. So I find it interesting that there are people out there who are willing to purposely injure themselves to get high and who have such a drug tolerance that they are able to pretty soberly walk to the X-Ray room after being given enough medication to put any "normal" person down. Interesting probably isn't the right word...sickening, maybe closer to the right word. All I really have to say is WOW.

Impending Birth

So yes, my mare is pregnant and no we don't have as much time as we thought we would...the more I think about this the more I realize how rare it is that we have the time we thought we were going to have in order to get something done or prepare for something. I spend so much of my time trying my hardest to live in the moment and enjoy the blessings that I have so that life does NOT pass me by but somehow it continues to escape me. Moments pass too quickly and those moments somehow elapse into hours, days, weeks, months and years and I am left wondering, "where did the time go?"

It's funny how all this has come about. Last June, I was standing outside our trainer's tack room talking to her and here comes Noah down the barn isle way after talking to Shiloh for a little while. Noah stops at the tack room and says, "Mom, what if Shiloh had a baby?" I said, "Ummmm, no! Shiloh's not going to have a baby." Our trainer and I laughed about the notion and I didn't think any more about it until Shiloh colicked in October and during a rectal exam we discovered that yes, she was pregnant. Then last night, Noah was sitting in the car drawing in a notebook while Catie was having a riding lesson. Noah, who doesn't ever talk about the horses and really doesn't even pay them much attention when we are at the barn, is drawing Catie with a baby horse. At first, Amy thought maybe he was drawing one of the horses there at the barn or something, so she asked him who he was drawing and he said, "Shiloh's baby." Amy asked him if he thought the baby was going to be black because he was coloring the baby black. He answered matter-of-factly, "No. I just don't have any other colors. The baby will look like Shiloh." So Amy asked him if he thought the baby was a boy or a girl. He says without a doubt in his mind, "I think the baby will be a girl." Sometimes I really think Noah has a sixth sense about these things...we'll just have to wait and see if what Noah thinks is what happens...somehow I think it will.

Cate and I went out this afternoon to check on our diva Shiloh, who is heavy with foal, and wash her tail well. We were doing this thinking that we had at least 2 weeks before this baby would be here. On Sunday, when Amy had been out with her her vulva was tight and closed, looking much like a raisin and her udders were as flat as always showing no sign at all that there was a baby that was soon to be here. Today however, I began, while Cate was grooming Shiloh, by running my hand over her backside and feeling the tissue above her tail. Tissue that was hard one week ago at the base of her tail was definitely softening. This prompted me to immediately move her tail to the side and look at her vulva. Shit...it was soft and elongated.
Which then prompted me to look at her udder and quickly. Double shit...swollen udder filling with colostrum and milk. I figure we have less than a week before we have a baby on the ground.

If I was feeling panicky about the birth of this foal before, now I'm feeling like I might have a nervous breakdown. Funny, I wasn't this nerve racked with the impending deliveries of my own children...maybe because I felt some kind of control over the situation since it was my body. I feel like I have absolutely NO control over this at all...and I don't like feeling like I'm not in control. I feel like Noah has more control over all of this than I do, interesting enough...maybe control isn't the right word here...maybe just knowing that it's all going to be ok. I think Noah knows it's all going to be ok.

Cate Moves On and Really Learns to Ride

At the end of October, Cate had to say goodbye to her beloved Boo. Not because he passed but because he was moving on to a new adventure and a new job as a therapy horse. Cate has more stick-to-it-ness and determination than any other little girl of her age that I have seen. She nearly gave up riding altogether a year and a half ago due to a bad trainer. We rectified that situation and since she has moved in the right direction with her riding...advancing by leaps and bounds every time I blink. Boo was a horse that Cate had a very close relationship with. At 27, he gave her challenges and helped rebuild her confidence. Boo always seemed to know if Cate wasn't feeling her best or if she'd had a bad day because when she greeted him he would wrap his whole head and neck around her body while she hugged him. He was therapeutic for her and was able to make her feel better almost instantly. In the time that Cate and Boo rode together, Catie went from a girl who had loved riding once and still had horses in her heart but also had a lot of fear to a girl who stilled loved riding and wasn't afraid to try new things. She had gone from the girl who would barley go at a walk on a horse to cantering and jumping her first set of crossrails in under a year. So at the end of October when it was time to say goodbye to Boo-bear, Cate had a hard time with it. She felt like she was loosing a part of her because she and Boo had become so close and quite a team.

Beginning in November, Catie began riding Blue, a 17 hand grey appendix quarter horse who has A LOT of motor and loves to GO, GO, GO! I know that Catie has felt disappointment in her riding time with Miss Blue. It was like having taken 30 steps forward with Boo and now having to take 20 steps back with Blue. She is a completely different horse to ride. We tease her sometimes and call her muley...because she has a mind of her own and is ALWAYS thinking. We also call her Cate's crazy race horse...because if you let her she will motor and take you to the races. The early lessons with Miss Blue in November and early December found Catie finding out what she was really made of and seeing that all of the good ground work that she had done with her balance had paid off. Cate has learned in her time with Miss Blue that she has to be assertive ALL THE TIME and she has to think ALL THE TIME. Miss Blue is still somewhat green and is not the easiest horse to ride. Her canter is not quite balanced and is not very comfortable to sit to. Her trot however is floaty and easy to post to. Cate has had Miss Blue take her to the races at the canter and nearly scare the poop out of her. I will admit that I myself began to wonder mid-December if the partnership between Cate and Blue was going to work.

In late December, Cate took a couple of lessons where she was primarily working on her hands...more specifically learning how to properly half-halt and how to properly hold her mare so she wouldn't take her to the races. Things went well in the first "hands" lesson and Cate did some cantering with Blue for the first time in weeks but she was still having a fear issue. Cate was afraid that Miss Blue was going to take her to the races again. Cate's instructor and I decided that the next week Cate would ride Eeyore and solely work on her canter while still applying the "hands" work of this week's lesson. This worked. Cate was able to use her new hand knowledge and work on her cantering without worrying that Eeyore was going to take her to the races. Although Cate likes Eeyore and finds him a little easier to ride than Miss Blue, I could see that Cate really liked working with Miss Blue and missed her.

The first week in January, Cate was back to riding Miss Blue and Miss Blue was acting like a different horse. I think some of it was jealousy...Miss Blue also likes working with Cate and was jealous that Cate rode E the week before. I think the other part was that Cate had decided in her own mind that she wasn't ready to give up on Miss Blue and walked with a new confidence that day. Nearly the entire lesson that week was spent on Cate trying to get Miss Blue to canter. Cate stuck to it too. She didn't give up. She did a sit trot and worked her legs and gave her cues over and over and over until after nearly 45 minutes Miss Blue finally understood what Catie was trying to tell her and picked up the canter. They cantered one direction and then the other...all the while it was much more controlled than it ever had been before. When Cate got down that evening, I could see there was a change between the two of them. Neither of them had given up on the other.

Subsequent weeks have seen Catie feeling much more comfortable with Miss Blue's canter with more control of her mare and better upper body and leg position. Cate said to me two weeks ago that she thinks she is finally starting to get Miss Blue's canter and she's even starting to feel like "A professional". Last week she told me that she thinks she even likes Miss Blue's canter. A far cry from their first rides in November together.

Miss Blue loves having a job...which right now is working with Cate (who is primarily the only one who is riding her other than one other girl who jumps her on occasion [not regularly]) and Miss Blue loves to jump. In fact, I would go so far as to say that jumping is Miss Blue's favorite! So much so that two weeks ago Cate and Blue were working ground poles and instead of trotting them Miss Blue would jump them and come off the poles at a canter (like she would a jump) and here is my daughter with her new found confidence riding right through it and regaining control and bringing her back down to the trot unafraid and having fun all the while. :)

My heart swells with pride every time I see Cate stick to it, even when it is hard, and she is rewarded with good feelings because her hard work has paid off. I have also watched a deep relationship build between Miss Blue and Cate and although there will never be a replacement for Boo (because there is only one Boo) Cate has been able to move on and allow another horse into her heart. For Christmas we got Cate a poster that hangs in her room which says, "The color of the ribbon doesn't matter. I know we did our best. All that matters is that we reached our goal of working together." I think she takes this message to heart.

My Diva

Often times when I am stressed to the max I find myself in desperate need of what I consider, "horse happiness". I have discussed before the ability of a horse to take away all my stress in under 3 minutes. Some days, I think my mare is equally as grateful for me as I am for her. Wednesday morning I walked into my barn and my mare hears my car and instantly comes up to the back gate to greet me. Her eyes are snotty from all the harvesting going on and they are somewhat tired...I can tell. I rub her forehead and slip her halter on to bring her in for a good groom down and to clean up her eyes. Shiloh seems to need attention. She is somewhat of a princess. She loves to be pampered and made pretty. I brush her and her bottom lip quivers. She also has a deeply satisfied look on her face when she is the soul focus of my attention. I stand in front of her and she rests her head on my chest, closes her eyes and breaths deeply into my breasts. We stand forehead to forehead like that for a long time...just taking each other in. This is when all my stress melts away. I can feel her stresses melt away too in her heavy sighs. I wonder what she may be stressed about...she doesn't outwardly show stress, but I can feel her whole body relaxing as she releases those heavy sighs...like her stress is also slipping away. Most often she is calm and quiet. Maybe she's stressed about the growing baby inside her belly and wondering what is going on with her body. I can remember being pregnant myself and feeling as though my body had been taken over by an alien. Do horses feel like this? I wonder. Today I was pressing on her belly where I thought the baby might be and felt a tiny push back. Shiloh turned her head and looked at me as if to say, "Ummmm...what are you doing? You are pushing and something is pushing back. Do you mind?" It was quite comical. The more time I spend with my diva, the more time I feel I need to spend with her. I miss seeing her everyday and I find myself wishing we could have our horses at home...on our own property, where I don't have to negotiate 3 hours of my day to go out and spend time with her.

"Thank You For All You Do"...or "You Loose."

Some weeks working in a level one trauma center are just plain exhausting. I mean REALLY exhausting. I find that I often thrive on the busyness, intensity, stress, and just plain fun. We see a lot of really awful things and you find yourself looking at life very differently. I have seen kids come in shot up like swiss cheese (or 50 cent) and end up walking out of the hospital like 3 months later. I have seen chests cracked with hearts massaged and aortas clamped. I have seen bellies tapped and brains on the table. I have heard more stories from gunshot and stabbing victims about them minding their own bidness when these 2 dudes came up...there's always 2 dudes, btw...just like it's always only 2 beers when they are asked how much they've had to drink. I've seen people die on the trauma table and I've seen them make it out of the OR only to crash in the unit and come back again. I guess what I am trying to say is that you have to make light of a lot of very serious situations in a trauma center otherwise you will go insane. This week at the trauma center has been exhausting and not because of all the lives that we've saved. Some days you walk in and just know that it's going to be a fan-freakin'-tastic day...like yesterday....

I walk in at 6am and glance at the room rotation board and we're screwed. We were already short 1 tech and 2 techs have already called off for the day and it's Tuesday, a day that typically starts at 7:30 with 6-7 C-Arms going. This Tuesday was no exception...6 scheduled C-Arms going at 7:30. Do not think that for one minute that I am angry or upset for 2 people calling off, because I am not. If you are sick, please do me a favor...STAY HOME! I don't want your stank ass sickness! What I get frustrated or angry about is that we have no back up plan. I mean com on! We work in a trauma center!! HELLO! Slow days are few and far between I feel. A busy day in a trauma center taxes everyone. Everyone has to be a multi-tasker and you have to be in 3 places at once especially when we are 3 techs short. Sometimes this is why I prefer the OR...less stress. Only one doc and one patient to worry about and as long as I am skilled well for the case...I am golden...no worries.

So I was waiting for the OR to call Tuesday morning after J and I finished our morning portables and the boss walks in and he wants to have one of his "huddles" about customer service. He starts giving us a line about how positive we need to stay and how concerned we have to be and all this scripting b.s. that he wants us to use with patients about how we are working on the issues of wait times and we know how it's a concern for them and we want to be sensitive and respectful of their time...blah, blah, blah. As I am listening to all this b.s., I am wondering if he even has a clue...like if there would be a back up plan for when we have call offs to get some contingent techs in to work how we could serve our patients better. But have no fear...Bossman hasn't gotten the contingent positions approved or posted so there's no one we can call in to help care for them mounting needs of our patients...just work your ass off while smiling and being sensitive to everyone's needs as you do it. I mean what did he think was going to happen with the worst cold and flu season that we have seen in years is predicted and we have full time girls who are on FMLA because they are having babies. How short can we run and still be able to viably take care of our patient needs?

This brings me to hour 5 in the OR Tuesday morning...I have barely had time to pee, let alone wipe and now it's 1pm and I have yet to go to lunch. I eat breakfast at 5am so 8 hours later my blood sugar is in the toilet and I am grumpy to say the least. Well, grumpy does not really describe it really...I was angry. Just like my kids, I get angry when my blood sugar drops below a certain level and nothing but food can bring me back to a point of rational thinking. At 1pm, a tech from the Rad Tech Week Committee calls over to my OR to tell me that someone will be over shortly to releave me so that I can go to lunch but in the meantime she is going to put away all the subs from the catered lunch and wants to know what sub I would like her to set aside for me. My special waitress skills had bottomed out with my blood sugar. I snapped at her, because she had been "serving" subs to everyone since 10:30am and wishing them a "Happy Rad Tech Week" and a pleasant "Thank you for all you do" while everyone else was working their tails off on an already short day. I don't need someone who isn't really working to "thank me for all I do"...my patients do that with a look of gratitude, a touch or squeeze of the hand, or by simply telling me thank you...the docs do that in the same way when I walk into the trauma bay or into the OR. After I snapped that I didn't need releaving because the case was done and I was cleaning everything up. I hung up the phone rather abruptly without saying much else. I think by then I was beyond angry...I was seething. I printed my pics for the residents and put my C-Arm away, storming back to the light room. It was now 1:10pm and I was told to go to lunch.

One thing I hate more than anything else is fakey. I don't do fake. Especially when I am angry...I can't physically do fake. So I go out to the back hallway to get my sub and such and I am greeted with fake "Happy Rad Tech Week" and "Thank you for all you do". I can't stand it. I get my lunch and go...trying not to say anything because sometimes it's just best that way. While sitting in the breakroom nearly devouring my lunch because by this time my stomach has reached over and eaten my liver and is still not satisfied, my friend asks me if I have scratched off my "lottery" ticket. I tell him no but get it out and start scratching it off. On my lottery ticket, under the scratch off part, it says "Thank you for all you do!" with a radiation symbol. I asked T, "What does this mean??" He says, "You loose. Mine says, 'Winner of a free drink pass.'" I then tossed my "Thank you for all you do" in the trash and if I had had a match at that time, I would have lit the bitch on fire.

Here's my thing...if you want to "thank me for all I do" then have a back up plan for staffing when people call off because they are sick. Have enough techs to take care of the patient needs. When there are enough of us to take care of the patient needs then we are all happier techs...giving better customer service to our patients and fellow techs.