Thursday 13

Thirteen Things about...This Thursday Thirteen is dedicated to my insane week.1. I was hospitalized Monday into Tuesday with a small bowel obstruction.2. It's the worst pain I've felt in my life..and I've had 3 so far. One at age 9, 19, and now 28.3. Scott was by my side the whole time, and as great as he was, I was so sad because I know I scared him to death.4. I'm lucky the obstruction did not require surgery...*sigh of relief.*5. This will probably happen again, but I'm thinking positive.6. I went back to work today and we had "mis-match" day where our scrubs didn't match, we wore unmatched socks, jewelry, and clogs etc...it was funny, and our patients enjoyed it.7. I really felt missed at work...I received so many calls, texts, and messages. Today each doctor that I saw stopped me and asked about the ordeal and expressed their concern, some of them even called to check on me. I'm very lucky to have such great co-workers, and work for such great Docs. It's not just work they are like family.8. I finally made a brand new recipe last night and It was G-R-E-A-T.9. The house is in desperate need of cleaning up because it has been neglected most of this week, that's my job for tonight.10. Laundry hasn't been done in 2 weeks secondary to the insanity, so I'm also working on that tonight.11. Scott is out tonight fixing both of his sisters computers, then to his parents to fix his mom's car...I wish he was home.12. I'm so happy tomorrow is Friday and I'm hoping to end the week on a much better note than it started.13. We realized this week that we're going to have to cancel our trip to Boston in September b/c of my cousins wedding, and we're in a wedding the following weekend...just not enough time :( I hope we can reschedule that trip, we both have always wanted to go there.

Fabulous Fajitas

One of my favorite things to do is cook. I absolutely love it. If I wasn't an RN I'd consider being a chef. Anyway I like to try a couple new recipes a week if possible. Although around here recently things have been so insane that I really haven't had much kitchen time. Tonight I was feeling rather blah from the obstruction since I'm still a little uncomfortable, so I thought that cooking would cheer me up and it did. Scott and I love fajitas so so much and usually he makes them. Tonight I decided to make them totally from scratch. Usually we cheat and use McCormick's awesome fajita marinade. Here's what I did:

2 lbs. steak sliced thin
1/2 cup of beef broth
1 green pepper
1 TB. butter
drizzle of EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
1 Tsp. sea salt and pepper
1 TB cumin
1 Tsp Old Bay Seasoning
1 lime zested and juiced
2 cloves of fresh garlic minced
Flour tortillas
Toppings: Shredded cheese, sour cream, etc.

Combine steak, broth, salt, pepper, cumin, old bay, lime zest, lime juice, and garlic in bag. Shake around to make sure all ingredients are mixed well and meat is covered. Refrigerate at least two hours.

Cut up green pepper
Sautee in pan with the TB of butter and EVOO until tender.
Add meat and marinade mixture
Cook until meat is at your preference.

Serve meat mixture on a warmed tortilla and top with your favorite toppings.

Result: We LOVED them!!! Definitely will make again. I think Scott was secretly sad because I stole his thunder and made them from scratch and they may even be better then our packet mixture that we've used for years.

Great to serve with Spanish rice, or chips and salsa.

Note: Fajitas can give off a lot of juice and get kind of runny. I took a little of the fajita juice and some corn starch to thicken the marinade mixture in the pan. It was awesome! Enjoy :)

Recovering

So today I'm just relaxing, taking it easy, and recovering. All in all I'm feeling much much better and I'm very grateful for that. I'm really sore though still...my ribs, neck, and back are killing me. I'm sure that's from throwing up my insides for more than 12 hours (sorry for the TMI).

Me and the dogs are hanging out and being lazy, and who'd have thought we're pretty good at it ;) We went to Mc Donald's to get my favorite...sweet tea!...they just love going out for rides. And they look so cute with each of their heads hanging out each window in the Xterra. Other than that I've spent the morning watching Food Network (since I'm addicted), playing online, and hanging out on the back deck while the pups run around and play outside. The weather is so nice here in good old Pasadena today, it feels like fall! I love it, because that is my absolute favorite season.

Well tomorrow is back to work and I'm actually happy about that. I like having my normal routine, and actually feeling productive. Thanks to everyone for their text messages, phone calls, myspace messages etc. I truly feel so so blessed to have such great people who care so much.

Interesting

Considering that I was in the hospital from yesterday evening until today, I stumbled across my horoscope:


"All signs point to today being somewhat of an emotional day for you, so get ready."

Huh!? Who'd have thought...even the universe knew my day was going to suck.

911

Oh what a night. Last night Scott and I went to Easton to help my grandmother. On my drive home from work to meet Scott, I noticed my stomach was acting up a little, but I thought it was nothing. We get to my grandmother's house and are talking and helping her around the house and I start to feel worse. Granny and I went to Ledo's to get carry out and I had her stop at the local Rite-Aid so I could run in for some medicine. We get home I take some stomach meds, and we sit down to eat dinner. Now for those of you who don't know me, I love food, I love to eat, if it were a career I'd eat all day for the money and enjoy every second of it. YUM! I took only one piece of pizza and was stuffed. Uh-oh! So we hang out at my Granny's a little bit longer, while her and Scott are on her computer I'm laying on the floor writhing in pain. I told Scott "come on we have to leave somethings wrong." We barely made it out to Rt. 50 and we had to stop on the side of the road about a million times so I could be sick. We called Hopkins and told them what was going on and they said to go to the nearest ER. We tried to drive it, but I was getting worse and couldn't handle the pain. So luckily our friends Dave and Shubhangi live right off of Rt. 50. We went to their house...at this point I can't stand up straight and can barely walk. They call 911 and the ambulance comes to get me, luckily Scott rode up front. We get to the hospital and I'm restless, it was awful.

Because of my CF I do have a history of having bowel obstructions. I had one at age 9, and one at age 19...i kind of have an every 10 year history unfortunately. I knew that's what it was. It is by far the worst pain I've ever experienced in my entire life. They finally put an IV in me and gave me Dilaudid which knocked me out and took the pain away for a little while. I was getting Zofran for nausea around the clock, but I just kept vomiting. I was sent down for an abdominal X-ray which was negative. They finally put me in a room, and made me drink horrible Barium. That came right back up to. I went down for the CT scan of the abdomen which did show that I did have an obstructed small bowel. OUCH! So yet another round of Dilaudid and Zofran. So I ended up being able to get a little bit of sleep finally once there was nothing left in my body to vomit. Yuck. This morning the doctors came in and said they were going to transfer me to Hopkins, and have a surgical consult. Then by the fate of the universe, the obstruction reversed itself THANK GOODNESS!!! So they watched me for another hour and hydrated me a total of 3 Liters of Normal Saline. I ended up being able to go home, avoid surgery, and avoid a transfer to Johns Hopkins Hospital. I'm home now, absolutely exhausted but I know how bad this could have been and it wasn't. I'm also happy that Scott was by my side the whole time and was absolutely wonderful. He's the best. Also a big thank you to all of the text messages, and phone calls, and concern from everyone. I truly feel grateful and loved.

Monday Peeves

I was inspired by this one from "The Daily Meme" blog. Anyway I found one that tells you to list a Pet Peeve of yours every Monday (and pettiness is encouraged!) YAY!

Although I have a list of pet peeves, here's one of my biggest ones:

LOUD CHEWERS!!!!!
Ew!!! Please Please Please people chew with your mouth closed!! No one likes to see the lovely work of your digestive system's saliva breaking down your food as you chomp to the high heavens. GROSS!!! And the sound of loud chewers smacking their lips around is enough to make me want to gag.

There! I feel so much better, and I think I accomplished the pettiness part too. WOO HOO!

Great weekend

We had a great weekend. Friday was a lazy night in and I loved it. We relaxed, made dinner, had wine, and rented "The Eye" very scary but cool. It was a great way to end a long week, and this stupid fighting of this cold. Saturday was again a mega chill day. We didn't have plans until night time, so I spent the day relaxing, drinking coffee, listening to music, and doing a whole lot of nothing, which was totally wonderful in my book. :D Saturday night was a lot of fun for us! Our local bar, The Victory Lounge was having their annual Hawaiian Luau party. All proceeds go to the dog rescue association of Maryland. Since both our dogs Elektra and Hooper are rescued we fully and happily support this cause. It ended up being an awesome night. My co-workers and I and their significant others along with some of my closest friends hung out for the night. We had a great time at the luau. Sunday was just as nice. Again we spent the morning chilling out and ah-hem recovering from Saturday night ;) We went over to our very close friends Dave and Shubhangi's tonight for a cookout. They are some of our closest friends and we are in their wedding on October 3rd. We had a wonderful time grilling out, having some drinks, laughing, carrying on etc. We're so fortunate to have such great people in our lives. Anyway tomorrow is back to the grind of work etc. We're going down Granny's in Easton tomorrow after work, which is about an hour away so we can help her around the house and do things. It's been hard for her to keep up with everything since the passing of Pop last year so we try to go down often to help out. Here's to another crazy week...

Nostalgia

My grandfather passed away on June 21, 2007. It was and still is one of the hardest things I've ever gone through. My grandfather I were very close and not a day goes by where I don't think of him.

I get a lot of traits from my grandfather as well. He was very nostalgic about everything, I am too. He would take a million pictures at an event or for no reason at all, just because it's life and it's precious, me too. He wrote and journaled a lot about anything and everything, me too. In fact at his funeral I had written about a 12 paragraph poem about him, that the words just seemed to flow out of me. I got the courage to stand in front of everyone with my 4 cousins behind me and read it to everyone. I know he would have been so proud of that poem.

Shortly before my Pop passed away of his pancreatic cancer he asked a favor of me. He asked me if I would take all of his photo albums (a ton!) and scan each picture and put it on CD's for everyone in the family. That way everyone in our family would have a copy of every single picutre that he ever taken. Wow I was honored that he asked me to do that for him, he knew that kind of job was right up my alley. It's A LOT of pictures and takes a while to do, but I honestly love it. I scan the pictures in whenever I can my goal to be finished by Christmas and give everyone in the family a set of the pictures on CD's as a gift. Plus it gives me a chance to look at Pop's life, and I feel like he's right here with me when I'm working on this project. I miss him so much. So today I am relaxing, drinking my coffee, listening to my music, and scanning scanning scanning. I know he'd be very happy that this project is going so well.

The picture above is my favorite picture of me and my Pop. It's Christmas day 1984 when he and my Granny gave me my care bear for Christmas. You'd have thought I'd won a million bucks :)

Friday Feast

Appetizer
When was the last time you had your hair cut/trimmed?
July 4th...my sister in law is a beautician so she cut it at the family party :)
Name one thing you miss about being a child.
Not having a care in the world except for what time you had to come in from playing from sun up to sun down.
Salad
Pick one: butter, margarine, olive oil.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil. yum
Main Course
If you could learn another language, which one would you pick, and why?
I'm actually re-learning German again. I took it for 4 years, and have gottena little rusty, so I'm refreshing now it's great and very challenging. I'm also taking Nursing Spanish too.
Dessert
Finish this sentence: In 5 years....
I hope to be a mommy :)

Thursday 13

Thirteen Things about JESS

1. This is my first Thursday 13.
2. I'm at work right now waiting for my first patient of the day.
3. We just got back from Las Vegas last week and it was awesome! I'd love to go back some day.
4. I'm very excited for football season...GO RAVENS!!!
5. I'm obsessed with steamed crabs...can you tell I'm from Maryland ;)
6. I've had a major urge to go camping, hiking, bike riding, etc. recently
7. I'm hoping that a bunch of friends and co-workers are going out this Saturday to a Hawaiian party at a local bar. fun.
8. I love macaroni and cheese and could eat it everyday and be extremely happy!
9. I love to cook, and have a goal to make at least one new recipe a week. Although this week it's been all about carry out.
10. My cousin and I text eachother an inspirational quote of the day and I think it's pretty awesome.
11. I'd like to finishing painting my upstairs wall and hallway this weekend.
12. This is my favorite #!13. I love taking pictures and think that you can never take too many!

The Pizza Fiasco

So tonight I was going to make Chicken Carbonara from scratch. Then, Scott called me at work and asked If I really felt like cooking or just getting carry-out. Twist my arm since I'm so tired, carry-out it is! So after work I ran to the store to look for a new Raven's jersey since at work we wear our jersey's on Friday's. No luck, oh well. So I order a pizza and sub from Ledo's and pick it up on my way home. It was ready super quick and was super hot, awesome!..so i thought. I get home to sick Scott and he's happily awaiting the arrival of his pizza. We sit down to eat and he asks where the blue cheese dressing is. Crap! I knew I forgot to ask for something! I should know better, in all the years I've known Scott, the man lives for blue cheese dressing. Oh well I think to myself we'll have some in the fridge no big deal. WRONG! I don't think we've ever not had blue cheese in the fridge, but sure enough we didn't tonight. so he eats a piece of his pizza, and after the 2nd bite realizes they gave me the wrong pizza. Ahh! I orderded buffalo chicken pizza, and instead I got just a regular pizza with chicken on it. So he makes a call to Ledo's tries to explain the dilemma to the person on the phone, blah blah, they try to charge me for another pizza, they finally understand that they gave me the wrong pizza etc. What a night mare this has turned out to be. So much for quick no fuss carry out right? So Scott heads up to Ledo's finally gets his pizza-free, and for all of his trouble, gets a giant vat of blue cheese dressing. Yay. Did I mention my sub was perfeclty cheesy, greasy, and awesome ;)

Back to the grind

Back to work this morning despite this stupid cold. I do have to say though I am feeling better, thankfully. I knew I was going to get this cold when two of my co-workers last week said they had a sore throat, then two of our anesthesiologists come in wearing masks. Hello red flag, I knew I was doomed! Oh well despite the fact that I'm still mega congested, my face actually hurts, and the things coming out of me are like colors of a rainbow (kidding) I'm thankful that the sore throat is gone, and no fever. Woo hoo. Tomorrow I go to Hopkins which I secretly dread, but I know I'm seeing some of the best doctors in the world. I just get so damn uptight about my PFT's. Ah if they are down even a little I panic and usually cry. I need to just prepare myself that I have a cold, it's in my head and chest, and they aren't going to be great just like anyone else's wouldn't be great in this predicament as well. Easier said than done!

Work went well today. You know the cliche you always hear about work...the one that goes something like, don't worry the place won't fall apart without you!? Well sometimes I wonder. I got calls both days I was off sick this week (not that I mind helping others) BUT...hello I shouldn't be the ONLY person who knows whats going on, you know!? Even the boss had to call me about stuff. Ahh! Oh well on the bright side it's nice to be missed, and nice to have the reputation of the one who has the brain and knows what the heck is going on. Today Scott (husband) called out of work because he has it too. :/ Poor thing. I know the dogs are happy though, between the two of us someone's been home so far everyday this week. Ok well tomorrow is going to be a long day, work then Hopkins where there is always always always a long wait before they do anything with you, it's just so nerve wracking! Oh well at least dad usually goes with me, and we go out for a drink/dinner afterwards which makes it all better. Until next time....

Done deal

Ok so again today I've been spending my day off work because of this cold designing the blog. As you see earlier my brain just couldn't absorb it all. So today I stopped by moms for a pot of amazing crab soup, and she made me a ham sandwich...yum. I then picked up some greasy chinese food for lunch, I was able to get into and understand how to set up this blog. Finally! Woo Hoo! And I'm starting to feel better from this stupid cold, BONUS!

Information overload

So I'm sitting here trying to figure out all the bells and whistles of how to set up this blog etc. I have to admit I find it kind of confused. Ahhh!! On myspace I learned all that stuff so quickly and it was pretty darn easy. This....I'm finding a little different. I keep jumping from link to link, page to page, I think my eyes are going to pop out of my head.

Day One

Finally set up the blog yay!! I'm getting over a stupid headcold that everyone at work has had for about a week now. Oh joy. So around 6am I'm at work spiking IV bags for the patients for the day and I keep hearing that little voice in my head telling me I shouldn't have come into work today. And that voice was right, so after setting up everything this nurse took herself home. So I've spent the day with the dogs doing a whole lot of nothing. Watching TV, sleeping, and re-hydrating. What a day, I actually enjoy doing nothing sometimes. Although my head is so stuffed I can barely keep my eyes open. Ugh. And the wonderful husband brought me home an awesome lunch from Boston Market. Ahh macaroni and cheese can always cheer me up! Until next time...