So it would appear that a politician, thankfully not from the USA, in Germany thinks that marriage should be over after 7 years. She believes that, "The basic approach is wrong ... many marriages last just because people believe they are safe," she told reporters. "My suggestion is that marriages expire after seven years." After that time, couples should either agree to extend their marriage or it should be automatically dissolved, she said." Anyway if you want to read the rest of this trash. check out....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070921/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_germany_politics_marriage
Friday, September 21, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
My exercise regimen
So after having my Rower take up space in the living room for the last two weeks, I have finally put it together and it is ready for rigorous (I hope) use. Now that my Ultimate season is pretty much over I am going to need to work out to stay in shape on a regular basis. So for the foreseeable future. I will be working out on my elliptical and rower 4-5 times a week for up to 1 1/2 hours. Man I miss Ultimate already :P
P3
So I am midway through my first week of my residency. Orientation is over (Thanks God!) and so it is time to visit patients. My clinical assignment is Pain and Palliative and Pediatrics (or as I like to call it P3). And what that means is that I will be visiting Peds patients (ages from 4-24) that may be trauma patients, young mothers, etc and trying to support them and their families through their time in the hospital. For me that will be easy. The much tougher part will be the Pain and Palliative Units.
The pain unit is for patients that have chronic pain from an infection, surgery, cancer, etc that just will not go away and is so severe they have to come to the hospital to relieve it. Usually they are very hard to interact with as they need to have their pain brought down to a level that is bearable. Once they are at that level they still may be hard to support.... well b/c they are in constant, high level, pain. And if you have ever been in a high level of pain for a long time you would know that the last thing you want to do is talk to someone. Or on the flip side if you are with someone who is in a lot of pain, it is hard to be there as we as humans find it hard to be around someone who is in a lot of agony. However they still need to be supported both Spiritually and emotionally.
Finally, the hardest unit, is the Palliative unit. This is end of life care. Every person who is in the unit will die. They may not die in the hospital, they may be sent to Hospice, but they will die normally within 1-2 months. And they stay with us for that time, if the patient can not be stabilized to be discharged. This is hard. Death is hard. Even for Christians, whom have an amazing hope and future after death, Death is hard. Who here wants to loose a parent, sibling, relative, or friend? We all want them to be here for as long as possible and when we are told they are going or are gone even the strongest Christian will be brought to their knees; and that is OK....Grief is normal. It is hard trying to help a family deal with a patient who has suddenly become terminally ill/stroke/heart attack and whom they may not be communicative with their loves ones even unto their death. Thus their love ones will not have closure. It is hard for families whose love one has been fighting for years, whom they have been with each and every day (maybe hour) of the patent's illness, and yet they still do not want them to die. It is hard to tell families it is time to stop being aggressive in treating their loved ones and that we, the health care team, have done all we can do and it is time to say goodbye.
Believe it or not this is exactly where I want to be. I am thinking of becoming a hospice chaplain when I finish my residency next Sept. And so this year will be very hard but it will be a great training and learning experience for me. I believe God will be stretching me very far beyond my usual limits and I will be way outside my comfort zone (remember I am a introvert).
I ask for prayer. I have already had two deaths, one of which I was in the room for and I expect many more... right now I know of one that will be happening soon. And that is a lot different than my internship as I would normally come and be with the family after the patient had died. Now, a majority of the time, I will be with the family when the patient passes and man will that be hard! And man I CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT GOD or your prayers, thus I thank you in advance.
The pain unit is for patients that have chronic pain from an infection, surgery, cancer, etc that just will not go away and is so severe they have to come to the hospital to relieve it. Usually they are very hard to interact with as they need to have their pain brought down to a level that is bearable. Once they are at that level they still may be hard to support.... well b/c they are in constant, high level, pain. And if you have ever been in a high level of pain for a long time you would know that the last thing you want to do is talk to someone. Or on the flip side if you are with someone who is in a lot of pain, it is hard to be there as we as humans find it hard to be around someone who is in a lot of agony. However they still need to be supported both Spiritually and emotionally.
Finally, the hardest unit, is the Palliative unit. This is end of life care. Every person who is in the unit will die. They may not die in the hospital, they may be sent to Hospice, but they will die normally within 1-2 months. And they stay with us for that time, if the patient can not be stabilized to be discharged. This is hard. Death is hard. Even for Christians, whom have an amazing hope and future after death, Death is hard. Who here wants to loose a parent, sibling, relative, or friend? We all want them to be here for as long as possible and when we are told they are going or are gone even the strongest Christian will be brought to their knees; and that is OK....Grief is normal. It is hard trying to help a family deal with a patient who has suddenly become terminally ill/stroke/heart attack and whom they may not be communicative with their loves ones even unto their death. Thus their love ones will not have closure. It is hard for families whose love one has been fighting for years, whom they have been with each and every day (maybe hour) of the patent's illness, and yet they still do not want them to die. It is hard to tell families it is time to stop being aggressive in treating their loved ones and that we, the health care team, have done all we can do and it is time to say goodbye.
Believe it or not this is exactly where I want to be. I am thinking of becoming a hospice chaplain when I finish my residency next Sept. And so this year will be very hard but it will be a great training and learning experience for me. I believe God will be stretching me very far beyond my usual limits and I will be way outside my comfort zone (remember I am a introvert).
I ask for prayer. I have already had two deaths, one of which I was in the room for and I expect many more... right now I know of one that will be happening soon. And that is a lot different than my internship as I would normally come and be with the family after the patient had died. Now, a majority of the time, I will be with the family when the patient passes and man will that be hard! And man I CANNOT DO THIS WITHOUT GOD or your prayers, thus I thank you in advance.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
And this is faith
This is an excerpt from the journal on Charity Goeorge's web page. This is from her father....
Charity arrived back at Madonna around 5 pm. It hasn't been as peaceful of a day as the previous two days, particularly her eyes and vision seemed to be bothering her. Even so she was quite responsive to questions asked of her. One thing we noticed the resulted from the abdomen abcess and her not being able to take medications through the feeding tube together with the transfer between hospitals is that her medication list got somewhat messed up. Some medications were dropped and some weren't resumed as we thought they had been. This however might give us a bit of an idea how her body responds to some of the medications. Because she was off the Celexa anti-depressant for several days (she is back on it) we are watching to see how that might affect her emotions. I arrived back in Kansas City near 10:30pm so that leaves Sylvia solo at Charity's side until Jeremy gets back to Lincoln later this week. We keep looking for answers, and hang onto hope for as long as the Lord gives Charity life. There still are some promising possibilities for her. We look for the Lord to allow, and guide all the pieces to come together to make those possibilities, realities for Charity. While this spiral of events in these last months continues to leave us all deeply wounded, perplexed, and uncertain of the future we cling to the reality that God is, He is sovereign and He is ultimately good.
Charity arrived back at Madonna around 5 pm. It hasn't been as peaceful of a day as the previous two days, particularly her eyes and vision seemed to be bothering her. Even so she was quite responsive to questions asked of her. One thing we noticed the resulted from the abdomen abcess and her not being able to take medications through the feeding tube together with the transfer between hospitals is that her medication list got somewhat messed up. Some medications were dropped and some weren't resumed as we thought they had been. This however might give us a bit of an idea how her body responds to some of the medications. Because she was off the Celexa anti-depressant for several days (she is back on it) we are watching to see how that might affect her emotions. I arrived back in Kansas City near 10:30pm so that leaves Sylvia solo at Charity's side until Jeremy gets back to Lincoln later this week. We keep looking for answers, and hang onto hope for as long as the Lord gives Charity life. There still are some promising possibilities for her. We look for the Lord to allow, and guide all the pieces to come together to make those possibilities, realities for Charity. While this spiral of events in these last months continues to leave us all deeply wounded, perplexed, and uncertain of the future we cling to the reality that God is, He is sovereign and He is ultimately good.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)