Ronan wishes you a Not So Happy Halloween!

“I don’t want a Happy Halloween, mum.”

This kid LOVES his basketball!  Please, try to ignore the dog.  And cat.  And, actually, me as well if you can.  (Also, there is a water spot on the lens.  Sorry.)

I’m going to post two separate videos today.  This one, because it’s my favorite of all time.  The next one, because it makes me laugh… and I want to make you laugh.

If you’ve already seen this… it never hurts to watch it again!  I watch it at least once a day.  It still makes me cry a bit.  Ha!

Just love.

As you may or may not know, I am a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer.  That is just a huge mouthful of words that means that I do ultrasound.  I have to admit to you, I used to be lucky enough to work in the field of my passion: Obstetrics… pregnant mommies.  But since the birth of my child, and the overwhelming desire to stay at home with him as much as possible, I have taken a job as an Ultrasound Technologist in a busy hospital.

Ultrasound Resonates is a way for me to share stories of my experiences in ultrasound.  Privacy and HIPAA will always be protected in these stories, but they are really a way for me to share an accounting of the people that touch my life through my work.

Last night was a busy shift.  It had been slow nearly all day, but as soon as all of my day-time co-workers punched out, the Emergency Department punched in.  Within fifteen minutes, there were several ultrasounds in the queue, and my evening help wasn’t scheduled to come in for another hour.  I sent for a few of the patients, knowing that by the time transport got them to me, I would no longer be scanning solo, and I got to work.

When you’re busy and behind, it’s very easy to get frustrated by the exams that are ordered, and the people that you get used to seeing in the ED.  We call them “Frequent Fliers.”  Some of our most common customers are young pregnant women who are mistakenly told by their friends that if they go to the Emergency Room and say they are in pain, they will get an ultrasound and find out the gender of their child.  We HIGHLY DISCOURAGE this practice, mostly by completing OB ultrasounds without ever showing or telling the mother what the results of her exam are.  We point out very clearly from before we even touch her with a probe that we are not allowed to talk about the ultrasound, and that the doctor in the ER will tell her what the exam showed when she returns to her room.

One of the transporters dropped off an ER case for me, and left.  I glanced up at the camera and saw a young woman in the hall with her husband waiting.  A quick check of her ER chart told me that she was about 10 weeks pregnant with abdominal pain.

And then I did it.

I made a snap judgement.

I immediately assumed she was one of the young ladies that came to the ER to see her kid.  I instantly found myself upset at her for wasting my time, and coming to the hospital when she could have just stayed home.  I wasn’t rude or mean to her when I brought her into the room, but I wasn’t exactly warm and compassionate either.  My snap judgement had made me curt, even cold towards her.  When I had her prepped, I started asking her the routine questions.

“When was the first day of your last menstrual period?”

She told me.

“Which pregnancy is this for you?”

‘This is my tenth.”

SEE?!  There, I was RIGHT.  My snap judgement was RIGHT.  She just cant stop having babies.  I bet she does this every time.  Just keeps coming back to the hospital.  I bet she keeps having abortions.  I see it all the time.

“And how many children do you have at home?”

“Seven.”

Seven children?  Holy crap.  Who wants that many kids?  How many of those are accidents?

“Ok.  So you’ve had two miscarriages or abortions?”

She paused.  “… No.  I had a baby last year that died at 4 months old of SIDS, and 3 months ago I had a miscarriage at 18 weeks.”

…

Wow.  Take a breath here, Mandy.  That’s some heavy stuff to go through.  No one deserves to have to deal with that.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry.  I can’t imagine how difficult that was.”

She then proceeded to tell me what was going on, how she’d been feeling pain for a few weeks, and assumed when she went to her OB appointment that they would tell her she had a urinary tract infection.  When they didn’t find anything, she started to worry.  With her recent history, her mind just wouldn’t rest.  And I could completely empathize with her.  I even had tears in my eyes as she spoke.  Every night when I put Ronan to bed, I worry that he wont be there when I wake in the morning.  It’s a very REAL fear that she has already lived.  My worst nightmare has been her reality.

From that point out, things were different.  We talked, we laughed, and I found out that she is actually an amazing person; a loving mom, a caring wife and a hard working nurse.  She told me about her seven children at home, and how each one of them was planned and lovingly awaited.  She told me how all of them got their names.  She said how they have partners that they help take care of and get ready in the mornings, and about how when they go to the grocery store, people always come up to her and compliment her on her well behaved children.  She could tell me things about every single one of them, each one as precious and amazing to her as the last.

Last night, I found out that she was the kind of mother that I want to be.  When she left my department, I had nothing but respect for her.  While I didn’t get to tell her anything, I let her go with the peace of mind knowing she was about to find out her baby was ok.  And I found out that my snap judgement was dead wrong… as they almost always are.

Worth A Thousand Words:  I posted as my facebook status the other day that it cracks me up when Ronan finds a random paci and puts it in his mouth. He was standing up at the TV stand, and I didn’t even know there was a paci over there. I called his name, and he turned around with his very first paci in his mouth. Silly kid.

April 12, 2004 -

This whole “weblog entry” thing seems a little weird.  I mean, I joined a “diary” site, and it was a diary.  I wrote it for me, and I read it to myself.How likely is it that other people will read this if I don’t post the address?  Not very, I’m thinking.

So today, I should study for a math test tomorrow.  And then I have to go to work.  Woooooooooo.

I’m going to do a 10 day fast.  I think I’ve already decided on that.  Ten days instead of something sick like a month.  I’ll keep updates on how I’m doing:  I will be updating for myself, as I’m the only person reading this.

You know, I’m sure doing something like this increases some sort of intelligence.  I’m not sure which sort.  Writing, grammar, vocabulary maybe.  I’m not sure.  But it seems like if you’re writing, and thinking about writing, you will get better at it.  I really should be writing my Control paper.  Here goes:

Yeah, I got nothing.  We’ll just keep putting it off, then!  Yes.

“That’s What She Said” posts are ancient history – Blogs from my very first Xanga.

Not always proud of what they say, but oh well.

Don’t you love growth spurts?

Last night, I went to bed with my little chunk of love.  His rolls make me giddy, his second chin brightens my day,  I absolutely LOVE the way his little belly hangs over his diaper.  Except today… today there was a different baby in my bed.  Someone stole into my room in the middle of the night, and switched my hunk of honey-loving with a longer, skinnier version of my son.  Just like that, his wrists stick out of his sleeves and his pants aren’t quite long enough.  Just like that, the tabs on his little diaper come closer together than they did before.  JUST LIKE THAT, he can stand up and hit his head on things that were far above him yesterday.

What an amazing thing to behold.  My son is quite literally growing up before my eyes.

I had this amazing, funny idea for a blog – but it involved my husband.  So, being the good wifey that I am, I ran it by him first.  He vetoed.  So now, I’m going to try to continue the same idea (albeit less funny) without involving him at all.

A few months ago, I was disturbed by the fact that my nose hairs stuck out of my nose when I smiled.  So… I clipped them.  Yes, I took nail clippers, stuck them up my nose, and shortened the length of almost ALL of them.  I then proceeded to inspect my handiwork by smiling and turning my head to all angles, being sure there were no longer any hairs sticking out.  I was pleased with the results.

Fast forward a few weeks, when the recently clipped hairs begin growing back.

My nose hairs are now long enough again to reach the opposite side of the nose on which they grow.  Only now, instead of tapering to a gentle point, they are rudely and squarely cut off at the end.

My nose hairs now JAB the INSIDE of my own nose, and they are driving me CRAZY.

Every facial expression, every time I wriggle my nose, every SINGLE time I sneeze, the inside of my nose is poked by a hundred sharp, annoying, frustrating nose hairs.  And I am at a loss as to what to do.  Do I cut them again, shortening the length yet prolonging the problem?  Or do I let them go, live with the inner-nose torture, and hope they’ll grow out long enough to solve the annoyance?  Letting them grow out again returns me to my original problem: the nose-hair smile.

I must find some way to get rid of the nose-hair smile.

Worth A Thousand Words:  I had an adorable apple hat made for Ronan.  Just in time for the cold weather.

Check out her produce, err products at Kabob Hats.

I know what you’re thinking, and NO, this isn’t a post about that.

On my drive to work last night, I thought about a few things that I’ve been meaning to post about for a while now.  I get these ideas stuck in my head, and I have this urge to get them out but just never blogged enough to get around to it.  My posts usually ended up being pissed off rants about something horrible that’s happened, or a depressed recounting of my horrible day.

But I was thinking about how incredible it is that I can remember the exact moment I lost my total innocence, and how the world around me became a darker place.

My dad and I were sitting in the living room of our house in Smithers, B.C.  I was probably about 9 years old, and we were watching TV and talking.  Dad and I talk all the time.  He’s probably the smartest person I know, and I credit him for not only my intellect but my desire to constantly be better than I am.  I can’t remember exactly what we were watching, but I know some sort of commercial came on about a program on the second world war.  Now, up until this point in my life, I had firmly believed that people were good – the whole world was good.  I knew about war, and murder, and all of those bad things… but they didn’t happen any more.  We, as humans, had grown past all of that.  I knew that.

I remember asking my dad why Hitler did all of those bad things.  I remember saying, “People were really evil back then.  How long ago was that war, Dad?”  I clearly remember thinking the number 500 years ago in my head.  Dad replied, “World War II was about 50 years ago, Mand.”

What?  50 years ago?  Grandpa was alive?  People let this happen?  Hitler killed all of those people just 50 years ago?

I couldn’t get a grip on it.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I cried myself to sleep that night, and it took me weeks afterward to get those thoughts out of my head.  Suddenly, everything in my life seemed a little darker.  The world I lived in was no longer essentially good, and that was a hard thing to let go of.

It’s sort of sad… after that moment, no single thing I learned about the way the world worked seemed all that bad.  Compared to the evil of murdering millions of people, the rest of the bad stuff was really just sorta bad.

I look at Ronan, and so desperately want to protect him from that moment.  I want to hold him close, and keep his innocence, his child-like wonder intact.  But to be quite frank, I think it’s probably a bit of a miracle that I made it all the way to nine years old before mine was taken away.  I suppose I should just hope that he makes it that far as well.