Archive for November 2006


Sick of it…

November 27th, 2006 — 4:18pm

I’m just sick of it. All of it.

I’m sick of these “Tired Santa” commercials. Like I need another reason to feel less than festive during this holiday season. All I see on television are countless versions of Santa, completely stressed out because no one wants to sit on his lap and ask him for gifts or Santa being ignored by kids because they are so enamoured by by Best Buy or whatever gifts already under the tree, or the infamous Santa coming home early because “everyone” is giving one another gift cards from wherever. Ugh. I’m just sick of it. It’s nearly December and I am no where near being in the Christmas spirit.

I’m sick of dealing with everything that’s happened in the past four years. I feel like I should just get up and drive to a new state and start over with my life. Just find a new place to live, find a new church and just start over.

I cried today and they weren’t happy tears. I feel like I’m being punished and it doesn’t matter how many times I fall to my knees displaying my sorrow for my actions in the past, these things just keep coming back to bite me squarely in the ass.

Obsessions are heightening, yet depression is coming. I have less than three hundred dollars to my name, yet absolutely no manner of income. I want so little, but need so much. When does this get easy? When do I get to start living my life?

I don’t know. I’m just sick of it.

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Why…

November 22nd, 2006 — 3:31pm

We, my generation, we are Generation Y. Rather than a voiceless, aimless group, we ask the questions and demand answers. We are the first generation to grow up with computers, and one day the history books will reflect how this electronic intrusion has manipulated all of human thought. I find it ironic that I say this as I write in an online blog, but today all I ask is Why.

Why do people pass away? I know the chemical and physiological and evolutionary explanations, but these just tell me how; they never answer why. Why is that I can see one person on a Sunday afternoon, say hello to them, give them a hug, talk to them and wish them a happy, blessed week, and then seven days later learn that I will never speak to them again? Yes, she looked slightly paler than usual and she did have a bit of a limp, but I knew she was sick and just assumed that this was a part of it. Never had I imagined that I would never talk to her, attend meetings with her or hold hands during altar call ever again. There’s a part of me that still struggles to understand it. It doesn’t quite make sense in the grand scheme of things. There are so many cruel, terrible people in this world that never deserved to make it to the ages that they have, but they keep on laughing and living and being their cruel selves. Why should this Christian just slip away before another Sunday’s service?

In my heart, my only comfort at that thought was that I know she was saved and now she is at peace, but in my mind I am still confused. Who’s name did the pastor just say? No, that couldn’t possibly be her. It must have been another Kimm; someone I don’t know. Then, the realization hits and further questions are asked. Anger and wonder endures. Is this what will happen to me when I pass from this world? A mention during the announcements? But, what was I expecting the pastor to do?

I haven’t cried yet, though I do feel like the tears are just underneath my thoughtful facade. The service is Friday; she passed on Sunday. I feel almost robbed; like someone should have told me that there was a chance. It just seemed like she was sick, not fighting for her life. It’s not fair that people should die.

As a Christian, I know she’s at peace, but as a human being, this is where I struggle. I’m still in a state of disbelief and I am worried about what’s about to come. Not just the service, but those in future. There are so many more souls in my life now, so many more people I have to love. All I have is the question, how many times will have to endure this over the years? I know there’s no way to discern an exact number, but I know for certain, it is far too many.

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Groggy

November 17th, 2006 — 11:36pm

I had my second ankle surgery today, and amazingly, it when far better than the other one. My throat is a little sore and I’m still a bit “out of it,” but more or less everything went fine….except when the physician giving me the primary physical noted that my heartbeat was slightly elevated and that I needed to have it looked at. But honestly, all that has to do with is sheer nerves. I would imagine that anyone’s heartbeat would be a little irregular prior to surgery. No matter how minor it is, there’s no telling what could happen in the operating room. For the past week, I’ve been plagued by nightmares of waking up in the recovery room minus my left foot, while the nurses tried to explain what had happened. If anything could cause an irregular heartbeat, I would say that is more than sufficient.

Having now undergone four ankle surgeries, I have the entire system down:

First the arrival at registration where they ask for anywhere from two to four hundred dollars up front, depending on one’s insurance, and the woman prints off the initial plastic bracelet. It has my full name, age, date of birth, the fact that I’m female (if that wasn’t initially evident), and my doctor’s name.
Then up stairs to the family waiting room, where they ask you who you are with and give you a rundown of the situation. If the doctor has anything to tell you, he may come out and talk to you prior to the surgery.
Then you go back to pre-op, where a nurse goes through your entire medical history: allergies, heart disease cancers, etc, and then makes you take a pregnancy test, regardless of what you have to say. Then you strip down to your underwear into that oh-so-ugly hospital gown that I’ve never managed to tie in the back by myself and once you’ve changed, your family or whoever you brought with you is allowed to come back and sit with you. The most nerve-racking part about the pre-op part is listening to everything else that’s going on around you. There’s something discomforting about hearing ALL the nurses complaining about just how tired they are or how ready they are for the weekend to come. It kind of gets me worried and all I can think about is how I would go lax on job, especially when I didn’t want to be there (hence the rapid heartbeat). It’s also unnerving listening to the nurses go over the same questions with other patients just a curtain away from you. Why do I know that the guy next to me is married, has had ACL reconstruction, a hernia operation and a vasectomy? Because he was loud and proud with all of his information. I suppose I am the type of person who just does not want to know about everyone else’s problems…Anyway, normally once the nurse leaves to grab my parents, I take that opportunity to pray, because really, you have no idea when you will be able to do it again. I didn’t today though. I guess it slipped my mind, as shocking as that seemed, but I did pray in the room just prior to surgery, as well as sang church songs to myself.
Once your family greets your in your beautiful gown, you get a moment to hand them any valuables, like the cross I never take off for example. Though now that I think about it, why would they need to make you take off something like a cross prior to surgery? I would think that if there was anywhere that I would need one, it would definitely be during a surgery where there’s no telling what would happen once the anesthesia knock me out cold.
After some time with your family, the nurse takes you back to the “other” pre-op area, where everyone is exceptionally clean and wearing scrubs and those surgical hats. Here is where you meet some of the nurses that will be in the operating room with you as well as the resident and the anesthesiologist. A nurse will administer the IV drip, which for me, has always hurt badly and even hurts more than my freshly operated foot following the surgery. From my own horrible past experiences with nurses taking blood, I know it is absolutely necessary for them to put the IV in my hand rather than anywhere else. I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of nearly passing out while nurses dig around in my arm searching for a vein that had just slipped out of sight, that the claim was just there a moment ago. One time, the initial nurse tried, then another nurse, the one of the doctors in the area and then finally they had to bring out a nurse from the neo-natal ward to administer my IV. Needless to say, I want to do everything in my power to keep from having, yet another disaster in pre-op.
The nurse starts the IV and the finger heart monitor, and you start to meet the others while you wait. Today, my heart really began racing when my doctor asked on which foot we were operating. Now, every nurse, doctor, whoever, you will meet prior to entering the operating room will look at your plastic bracelet and constantly ask your name, date of birth and on what they were operating, so this was not unusual for my doctor to ask me this, but when he looked at my x-rays and then looked back at me, I admit I got scared. He’d been given the information for my right foot and there was a bit of confusion, since my surgery time had been changed about four times before today. Fortunately, everything got straightened out, but seeing that the expression that not everything was going as planned in your doctor’s eyes, does tend to cause a bit of stress.
When I met the anesthesiologist, I was given this anti-nausea patch behind the ear, because I had also had enough for vomiting profusely due to the anesthesia. Miraculously, it has worked perfectly up to the moment. Should I ever have to go through this again (and hopefully, I won’t), I fully plan to ask for this patch again. Today was the first time, I’ve come to 11:00PM the night of a surgery and still feel fine, sans vomiting! (Oh, damnit! I missed Law and Order!)
Anyway, then comes a bit of a wait depending on how many surgeries your doctor has in front of you and the prep time required for your own. Sometime in there, they give you a little something to relax you a bit and before you know it, you are being wheeled down the hall into the operating room.
The operating room has never failed to be overwhelming for me. First of all, it is so bright in there, it is nearly blinding. It’s also freezing and regardless of how long those hospital blankets that they keep coming at you with are, you will definitely feel the cold of that room. The nurse and the resident will wheel your bed right next to surgical bed and have you move yourself over the stationary bed. Then, the spread your arms out across these posts that slide out from the surgical bed and they come at you again with the warmed blankets, while sticking you with the circular disks they use to measure your vitals. Once they do all this, (someone took my glasses, but I really don’t remember at which point) they come at you with the face mask.
Now, for the past surgeries they’ve asked me to count backward from ten, but for this one and the one I had in September, they just placed the mask over my face and I was out within five seconds. I prefer not having to count because the lower you get before passing out, the more stressed you get that the anesthesia isn’t actually working and you’re going to feel the whole thing.
When you wake up in the recovery room, you know that some time has passed, but it does not register immediately. It feels like you just closed your eyes for a second and then ended up in the recovery room. I’ve had all types of experiences waking up in the recovery room, from kicking people the foot that they just operated on, to feeling it absolutely necessary to get out of that bed. What is always a constant for me, is the thrashing. I wish I could explain, but when I wake up like that, I just thrash my head from side to side until I can get a grasp on my bearings. This time there was just a little thrashing, but the last time, I actually had a few nurse holding me down as I struggled in the recovery bed and attempted to rip the oxygen wire they had going under my nose from my face. The last time I also discovered I had a type of sleep disorder, where I nearly stop breathing while I sleep. They kept having to wake me up to get my oxygen back up over 90. This time, they had to wake me a few times, but it was not nearly as bad the previous.
When the nurses are satisfied with your vitals, they ease you into a wheelchair and to the post-op area where they help you get dressed and give you a little something to eat, since you haven’t had anything to eat since 8pm the previous night. Your family greets you hear and they give you any pertinent instructions before easing back into the wheelchair and to your car so you can be driven home. I’ve always had issues staying awake for any length of time while in post-op, because I really can’t sleep prior to surgery. I just feel like there’s something else that I’m missing or forgetting and sleep never occurs.

*Sigh*

I’ve gone through this surgery thing far too often and quite frankly, I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Hopefully, this will be the last aside from something like childbirth….

Oh well: Here’s praying!

3 comments » | Favorite, On Me

Oops! I did it again.

November 17th, 2006 — 10:30pm

Whoops! Right when I decided that I was ready to return, I discovered that majesties of WordPress that not only allows me to import all of my old Xanga posts into one blog, but allows me a blog on my own site.

So, while my time here has been exceedingly fun and I am certain that something will happen in the future to make it imperative for me to return to blogger, I feel that it is time to say goodbye once more.

All of the posts from this blog and my Xanga, can now be found at my own blog: blog.doriennesmith.com

And so, Adieu….for now at least.

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Just to test….

November 15th, 2006 — 4:42am

Mmmm…..testing a blog….a new WordPress blog….

So, I’m kind of ridiculously obsessed with SVU. It is just interesting….I guess.

Hurray for testing!

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Staples….thou art blacklisted!

November 4th, 2006 — 7:11pm

So….I was put in charge of the plan to have calendars printed for our church, using images of members and of the church in general. The plan was tell sell the calendars to make a buck or two. So, I pester anyone I can think of to get various images from church events, I take the time to Photoshop the image for each month so that they all come out beautifully, I go to Staples and arrange for the calendars to be printed; I do all of this and what happens? I am totally screwed over by Staples!

I spoke to THREE different people at the same store on THREE different dates and each time I went over, what I wanted to be printed, when I needed them by and the final cost. THREE TIMES this was discussed and THREE TIMES I received the same answers. So today, I make some final adjustments to images that were too small on the proof and head on over to Staples to pay for the 100 calendars for our church where I learn that not only were their bogus dates on the calendars, “John’s Birthday”, “Nini’s Wedding Anniversary,” et al, they made sprial bound calendars instead of stitched, but also, the final cost was not the agreed upon $200 I had discussed with three different people; my calendars were going to cost over one thousand dollars!

Apparently, each of the people I spoke to regarding these calendars neglected to mention that the $200 cost applied only to pre-printed Staples calendars, not those with custom images; that which I needed for my church. Ready to burst into tears, I demanded to speak with a manager, who informed me that while they could possibly offer me my order at a somewhat reduced price, there was no way they could offer me the previously discussed $200 calendars. So, I took my proof and my order and walked out of the store, so upset that I nearly screamed on my way out.

It’s November and these are 2007 calendars. I am literally out of options because nowhere else would someone offer them cheaper. What irritates me the most is that I did everything I was supposed to do, and I still can’t catch a break. It was not like I was just stupid and ASSUMED that the $200 price referred to custom calendars. I asked three different people if I could get 100 calendars with custom images for $200 and they ALL said yes! I was sandbagged by the most incompetent group of imbeciles in the printing industry.

In the back of my mind, I think that I should have known better. I once worked for a Staples and left not four weeks after starting because it was clear that they were going to leave me at the Copy Center, all alone, and without any training. There were days when people came up to me and asked how much X and Y would cost. Since, I felt it irresponisble to give people a price and not have the information to back up the said price, I simply said that I didn’t know. Rather than let someone make an order and end up in the situation I found myself in tonight, I simply said I was ignorant in the matter, and hoped that I would later receive training.

All I’ve got to say is that I refuse to go down quietly. I will be telling my tale to anyone who dares listen. I will voice my utter disgust with Staples to any business I come across and I will be lodging a complaint come Monday morning. I was let down on something simple like church calendars. What if this had been something even more important, like wedding invitations or novel manuscripts? I refuse to buy anything from Staples ever again; even if it’s Staples brand staples. I don’t care! I would rather do without than give another dime to a company such as this. It just makes me wonder, how many other people have been hurt by this extraordinarily incompetent sham of a business called Staples?

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