Day 2

Tris, it's day 2...oh my word, I had to walk thru Zellers at the mall and I kept staring at the bread, the chocolate, the mini eggs, the chips, the pop, the pastries...yes, Zellers sells pastries...anyway but I am day 2 fruits and veggies...you know that I love you cause I am doing this during exam period...but I feel pretty good so far, a bit low-energy but whats new about that right:) okay so I think I will do a couple days in a row of jus the cleansing foods...but for right now I am eating salad and nuts and apples and salad, and salad... oh are we still allowed to drink tea? cause I am...no coffee though...just water and tea... My roomie wrote a paper on Gandhi, and she told me that he believed that a person should eat food like medicine, only to survive...kinda killing the joy a bit but at the same time, it helps me keep at this when I tell meself, what would Gandhi do...and then I eat some spinach. but he didn't believe in condements or spices...can I just say thats rediculous...my roomate is laughing as I type and talk out loud...I am stranger than fiction...and I creep her out... but seriously Tris, I am trying hard to stay disciplined...I'll go first...I love you more than all the carbs and sugar in the world...your turn:)

Sexuality in the Golden Years

So, clinical is wrapping up only one more week, one more week talking about topics that pertain to people residenting in retirement homes. Blood pressure clinic-check. Diabetes clinic-check. Foot Care clinic-check...and now, for the clinic of our choice...Sex.

Yup, my group has decided that this topic would be a challange, it would break barriers, hopefully get people to come to clinic and as always probably cause a bit of a stir maybe start some really complicated questions...sex usually does...so yeah, everyone decided that this was something we should do a clinic on.
my group is the most crazy inspiring mix of idealism and down right earthyness that just might pull this off with flying colors...and then there is me...yes, me teaching a sexuality clinic...please all don't start laughing at once...all my classmates know I am religious and my parents are missionaries- they wonder how I got to be where I am today, i am right there wondering with them-they usually tease me with, 'what would your parents think', if I contribute to the conversation at all.

It's all about promoting healthy lifestyles and realizing that sexuality is affected when illness or chronic disease and age affect physiological functioning. As my textbook says, "although sexual activity declines as one ages; sexual interest and competence of older adults do not necessarily decline." Whether it's normal age-related changes or illness sexuality is affected and that can impact the persons emotional and mental state too...so yeah, i am now researching for this presentation. don't laugh.

ok, maybe you can laugh alittle...

k you can stop now...

stop...


not gonna lie, I am kinda glad my sisters, bro-in-laws and parents are across the globe sometimes...cause i wouldn't hear the end of this if they were here...

stop laughing

Remembering march 2007

the very first month i blogged I witnessed one of the saddest moments of my life...today I was preparing a diabetes clinic and couldn't figure out why I have been feeling so NOT into diabetes...usually when i don't want to do something, or find something stressfull instead of plowing through and finishing a job well, I just turn it off, don't pay attention and leave it alone...so my diabetes assessment tool was short, thrown together and just handed in as a bit of a write off assignment for me...then half way through the clinic I remembered why I have such huge issues with diabetes, why I hate talking about it so much, why it breaks my heart...this was my blog entry 4 years ago this month...
I had a baby die yesterday. She was born flat and unresponsive. We did chest compressions and ppv on her for a long time. We prayed and cried and prayed and prayed some more. I don't know what to say about how I feel or what went wrong. But that i am totally wrecked and completely at peace that God is bigger than birth. Do I feel that if only she had gone to a hospital things would have turned out different, of course! But I also know that God doesn't make mistakes, even though i do, and He plans divine appointments and He gives you enough strength for each new day of troubles. And i was drowning in troubles yesterday. Andi's choir sang a song about the earth being tired. There is nothing more exhausting than witnessing the Devil do his best to take our joy, hope and strength by showing us how powerless we are in life and death situations. In turning the miracle of birth into a terrifying display of human weakness, inability and showing us that we are just a breath away from death.
I wanted so much to help women in labor, to encourage and witness the thrill and joy of a new life. This was my worst fear. This was the one thought that i prayed against, i wanted God to spare me from a baby dying at birth, you know, you just figure if your in this for His sake, He can be big enough to keep all the bad things from happening. But God didn't spare Jesus, and He wouldn't let me come out of this training without this experience. being a missionary is not bringing God's magic touch into the life of a desperately poor woman. being a missionary is praying and doing chest compressions, cleaning up the blood, dressing the baby, and listening to a father cry.
I am hanging on to the fact that God can bring life into any situation. He can reveal himself in the dark sometimes better than the light. Although the fig tree doesn't blossom, the labor of the olive tree fail, the flock be cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stahls, yet i will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The lord is my strength and He will make my feet like hinds feet, and He will make me to walk upon my high places. hab 3:17-19.
This baby died in large part to undiagnosed, untreated diabetes...and although though finding out the reason for her death helped alittle...I still hate diabetes. Tomorrow I have to present this clinic to a room full of people who are being helped with medicine, nutrition, education about diabetes...this is a good thing. I hope I am more myself tomorrow and up for that task than I feel right now...right now I cried alittle, for a baby i only held and never got to 'meet'...

I hate diabetes.

I hate my paper...

I wrote it in a day...researched while i wrote and as I got into it and ideas began to role I was like...man, I am sure creative in a pinch...12 hours later, copious amounts of rereads and currently doing the reference page I am so over my paper, there isn't a shred of love for it...not that I even wanted to love it to begin with...it was on a bogus topic trying to make young nurses broaden their minds a bit...can I just say my mind is so broad right now you could run a truck through it...I am open minded already...this is now torture...cruel and unusual forms of punishment...to make the only paper due for the class at the end of the term when...EVERYTHING else is due...plus it sucks...I hate writing papers...

sometimes I think teachers all sit around at coffee break and plan their torurous methods all together..."Hey, what do you think of making them all hand in a pre-paper outline before they write the paper...possibly during reading break."
"Thats a great idea professor 'details', and why don't we all make it due in APA format with 92 references? Just to make all the minions sweat alittle."
"Oh professor 'cyborg', your phd in psychology is really adding to our methods of training."
"And then we can make the paper due right before exams, just to make it nearly impossible for them to have any leftover hours in their day to sleep."
"Training these next generation's minds in any sort of disciplined behaviour involves going back to my experiences in the POW camps during Vietnam."
"Tell us more, tell us more, professor 'navy seal', this years nursing students need to meet the terror of reality so they don't enter the wards thinking nursing will be rewarding, stimulating, compassionate, or anything other than pain. Pain, pain and more pain..."

mehhh, still have to refurbish all my quotes into the right format...

for the record I am pretty sure my prof's don't plan this out in order to torture us...somehow it just feels that way...all the time...pretty sure I am developing a conspiracy theory over all this...

poop on papers...

I could start my paper, but I won't.

Tonight is survivor night-me and my roomate watch it. She apparently has always been a fan. I watched it back in the day, when it was still this new way of doing television...reality TV, where your real life is recorded and edited till it looks semi interesting and the drama of the natural unfolds...hahahahahaha...anyway, back on track. I somehow lost Survivor in the midst of so many other rivals over the years...Now survivor is the granddaddy of many other winner reality shows we all know and love like, big brother (aka in prison with random strangers who tan lots), amazing race (aka actually amazing, cept for they don't pick canucks to be on the show), the bachelor (aka hot guy makes out with 25 clueless girls) and the bachelorette (aka cute girl dates 25 eligible men and picks the one thats younger than her). The list goes on but I have seen at least one season of all these shows which while never actually resembling reality to me always manage to suck me in; in a sick sort of fascinating while disgusting me all at the same time way that has proved to be my downfall.
Side note: my mother says her side of the family has an adictive personality...I blame my Ranch genes...I think it's the ranch side she was talking about...
Now, I am back to where it all began...Survivor... it' s got me in it's grip...proving yet again that a TV program does not have to have any sort of mental stimulation, purpose or worth other than simply being something on TV for me to watch...for me to sit down and love it...
Side note: I am also of mennonite background which brings with it this incredible gift of self-incrimination or an innate need to hate anything that resembles anything that doesn't directly impact the greater good of mankind and cause an end to social injustice and bring world peace...
So it ends up being quite the reflective process to first find a way to thoroughly enjoy my program and the moment the TV is off and the realization of what I just did hits me thoroughly reproaching myself for what I have done.
I am not sure where I am going with this blob...but Survivor is on in an hour and somehow I have to find some sort of redeeming quality in for me to justify watching it to my menno-side...
thinking
thinking
thinking
Exercise!!!!
I am going to walk down, as in take the stairs instead of the elevator, to the TV room and blood will circulate and I will think so much clearer for my clinic day tomorrow if I do this...I will interview my client so much better, i will listen more and so to Survivor I will go...

The earth is tired

Sometimes, when I am in my little cold world here in the peg, shut in by blizzards and all i can hear is the sound of wind gusting around the corner of my building, this is all there is. It feels like i am trapped in this endless blowing wind and snow and although there is more world out there. i know this in my head, for right now, all that ends and there is only the blanket of white and howling outside. Somewhere out there, in this great big world, there are people whose lives just tore right apart...broken by nature...lost in a storm...not winter and this cold tomb I am in, but the earth actually breaking apart right underneath them and then water crashing down around them...I can't imagine the earth just opening like that and swallowing me up...I can't imagine how sad it must be to just stand on those empty broken streets and realize that not only are your loved ones gone, but your life is forever changed, your whole world, your little patch of earth just broke underneath you...the earth is old and tired, falling apart around you...
Someone out beyond this white is suffering...but I am cocooned in this place, frozen

these are the golden years...

one day we will look back on all this mess and think, "that was such a great time." Today one of my clinical mates was expressing his views on this fact. And then added, "But i am having such a great time in this moment too." In all of our worries about grades, the stress of assignments, the pressure of working in small groups and being constantly evaluated, being told we are 'adequate', trying to balance all this out with a life, and some people having families of their own already. And he (my classmate) is absolutely loving it!
and then there is me.
Truly, as I was thinking about his completely earnest admission I got alittle bit caught up in the fact that, yes, I am here...in a high intensity, lay it on the line kind of place right now. And I am working towards something that I keep telling myself is worth it in the long run (the looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong run). Every time I sit through a redundant lecture or participate in a time consuming group project I start wondering if i am wasting my time...but then I look around at some of my more 'hopefull' mates and hear them say things like, "this is the golden time...the glory days..." and as much as I really don't think this is very glorious or ever will be, in fact, it may be something I prefer to forget. This moment of deadlines, bus-stops, blizzards, and a sinus infection...is more than just the dreary getting by of it. It's more than just a means to an end. It's life, it's breathing, changing, moving, unpredictable and freakishly scary...and thats enough for me right now. I am at peace with that.

maybe, just maybe it even has a bit of a silverish lining to it...I'm not really the golden years type...so silver might just be as positive as I get, but silver is a precious metal too...

and now I am going to contemplate Lent...